tracks that reference telephone numbers or dialling codes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk0iT7egdd4

The Cramps - "Under The Wires" deals with telephone etiquette in general and is definitely my favorite song on the subject.

bitches and hoes in different area codes

721! 923! 810! 375!

867-5309/Jenny (duh)

The Marvelettes - Beechwood 4-5789

The Troggs - 665-4321

I don't know if you'll find any dirty deeds, but calling 362-4368 in my state will get you an exchange in the city I was born in.

The B-52's - 6060-842

Holy shit this song rules
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE6il_A5LJs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhJg1finpyU

He gets frustrated when he can't get through:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqY6mXULzpw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpBJShUcq3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DdcfjmStWk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw-7lyTSiDw

only put this up on a brum thread the other day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2apquxKKQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_muFwwTSMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4njPe2_rho

Dunno if nickn's link referenced it; but if not, here's that "Don't Call Us" backstory:

The song "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" is notable because it contained a practical joke at the expense of CBS Records, which had just turned them down for a recording contract. The song includes the sound of a touch-tone telephone number being dialed. That number was an unlisted phone number at CBS Records, and would have dialed that number had a telephone been held up to the speaker as the song played.

Cool!

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Sunday, January 22, 2006 6:42 AM Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k_BgzSDQNk

Roots - Section

All the way live from 2-1-5, all the way live from the 6-1-0
Gettin cash, get the gusto
One time, it's the dynasty flow

ha i think i had that track in the back of my mind r|t|c

Holy shit this song rules

Yes! It's been a while since I heard 665-4321, I had forgotten the drumming is so sparse - there's not a cymbal on it.

kindaofftopic but i hadnt thought of it in years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQOOA6BPlm4

telecom exchanges come to life

basically every pitbull song in the last 2 yrs

yeah sure there's all manner of 305 and 504 anthems

City Boy - 5705

Brenda Lee - Bigelow 6-200 (the b-side of her very first single)

I'm not sure if calling this number would involve reciting "Bigelow 6200" to the operator (which would have been quaint but plausible in rural towns in 1956) or just dialing BI-6200. in the latter case, it should be written as "BIgelow 6200".

Glenn Miller, PEnnsylvania 6-5000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OddgsPyCJmU

Shit, meant to post this, oh well...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5N46p2aU68

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/njmOcLPBn6w"; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

obviously don't know how to do that...anyways, check out the time's "777-9311"

Just post the url and it will do that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njmOcLPBn6w

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8127460.stm

Tony Toni Tone - Whatever You Want

call 6-3-2, 21-3-5...

Thousands of music fans have been bombarding an Oldham family with calls - ever since their telephone number featured on a rap track.

US rap artist Soulja Boy included the ex-directory number in his latest hit, Kiss Me Thru The Phone.

Since its release, Gerry Matley and his wife Catriona Howard Smith have been getting about 60 calls a day from fans hoping to talk to the 18-year-old star.

They said some of them even sing the song down the phone.

"We just tell them that he doesn't live in Oldham," 52-year-old Ms Howard Smith said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIksbyVq5jA&fmt=18

what a tune. call 4894608 and iiiiii'll be here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUAwdXRbyWM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOro2Wf-E30

Motorhead-Emergency

"Switchboard Susan"

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4xnojjprNF0/TBT8mr5XiNI/AAAAAAAACCg/XNwY91DviIo/s320/AREA+CODE+615+-+ST+A.jpg

Anyone remember this band? A bunch of Nashville session musicians, including several who backed Bob Dylan on Blonde on Blonde and Nashville Skyline. They made two rather likable albums IIRC.

I wonder how many people less than 50 years old would even recognise "PEnnsylvania 6-5000" as a telephone number if they didn't already know what it meant. Phone numbers in many US cities were originally only four digits, then five (formatted #-####). When they went to seven digits, the phone company tried to make it easier for people to remember the longer numbers by making the first two letters relevant to the place you were calling, hence PEnnsylvania 6-5000, or BUtterfield 8.

BTW, the Hotel Pennsylvania still uses that number to this day - it's the oldest unchanged phone number in New York City that has rung the concierge desk since they opened in 1919. Today, of course, you would have to dial ten digits to place a call (212.736.5000); until about 15 years ago, you could leave off the first three numbers if you were calling from within the local area.

Are there any songs that reference modern 10-digit phone numbers? (not sure how long UK phone numbers are, but US is exclusively 10-digit for mobile numbers and most landline phones (although there are still a few states where you can make some calls between two landline phones dialing only 7 digits).

When I was a kid in the 80s, you only had to dial the last four digits of a number if you were in the same prefix. My buddy's number was 7315.

If you wanted to call Little Rock, you had to add a 1, as in 1+376-8111. (We still only had one area code then.)

ciara - you can get it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yII3aBqhL3M

"404-612, hand me the phone, i'll put it in for you..."

Maestro - 416/905 (downtown and suburban Toronto area codes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfuuLVC152g

i'm sure Kardinal Offishal must reference them somewhere too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW32Z9MCU_0

I've long noted the changing roles of telephones throughout pop music history, tracking both social and technological changes through the years. Take, for example, this lyric from Lily Allen's last album:

Who'd have known
Who'd have known
When you flash up on my phone
I no longer feel alone

I think had the song been written even five years earlier, you wouldn't likely have used the words "flash up" to indicate an incoming call. I'm imagining a color photo lighting up on an iPhone, not a mere caller ID display from earlier in the 2000s.

There's a Tin Pan Alley/ragtime song from circa 1899 called "Hello My Baby" that became a barbershop-quartet standard, which to my knowledge is the first pop song to prominently feature a telephone conversation in its lyric. You listen to it now and can sense how novel and magical this new "telephone" thing must have seemed to someone in the late 1890s, allowing our man to talk to his girlfriend and ask her to "send me a kiss by wire" even though she is far away!

By the 1950s phones had become part of the social fabric of teenagers, especially those lucky enough to have a phone in their own bedroom (although probably not their own phone line, you had to wait your turn)

In the 1960s there were alot of women singing weepy songs about sitting at home alone by the phone, hoping it would ring. That's so '60s - who waits at home for a phone call anymore? And why doesn't she just call him?

You know that Beatles song that starts "When i call you up/your line's engaged"? When was the last time you heard an engaged signal? Not very common since call waiting became ubiquitous.

Tommy Tutone referenced a dime needed to make a call from a pay phone. Coin-op phones cost at least 35 cents per call the last time I used one, which of course was about 12 years ago.

There's a Smithereens song from the late 1980s, "Behind a Wall of Sleep" (off Especially For You, one of the pitifully few truly great albums from that decade):

Got your number from a friend of mine
who lives in your hometown
Called you up to have a drink
Your roommate said your weren't around

Actually getting someone's phone number still took a bit of work. And how often do your calls get answered by your intended recipient's roommate? Ah, I remember those days before cells phones, when we all shared a house phone line. An entire generation is growing up not learning the lost art of taking a message for someone else. And since I shared a phone with my 5 flatmates, we all got to know each other's friends and family, something we miss out on nowadays when everyone has their own phone with them at all times. Everyone had a noteboard on their room door where other people left messages they took for you when you weren't home. Do people still have these?

There was no "drunk dialing" before mobile phones. What would I do, wait in line at the pub's pay phone, then drop a quarter in, and call someone who is probably out at another bar, so s/he isn't home so your call goes unanswered. You could sometimes leave a drunk message, but not everyone had an answering machine.

The times they have a-changed....

I think I'll call up 1-800-GOOG411 and ask for "Memphis, Tennessee".

I'm glad someone beat me to 416 to the 905.

Caracas (Gran Caracas)             212