Back in the 1990s sometime, I walked into a record store with some friends. The store was Hyde and Zeke Records in Gainesville, Florida, and as they normally did, they had a record playing on their turntable. The record was simply titled Great Phone Calls. This wasn't a music record, but an album of crank calls someone made, and it was hilarious.
The most popular crank callers of that era were the Jerky Boys. Their stuff was funny, some of it even hilarious, but at the same time it was rather silly. Great Phone Calls took crank call albums to a whole new level. Instead of a circus full of crazy characters, this record keeps it simple. The characters making the calls are not cartoonish like the Jerky Boys, instead you have a guy who really wants to join your band or a guy who needs a pizza made according to his very specific dietary restrictions. The humor is more confrontational than absurd.
The creator is not credited on the album, at least not on the original edition, but it has since been revealed to be Gregg Turkington. Gregg is also the man behind comedian Neil Hamburger, a character we find an early version of on this album. Turkington not only gives us an entertaining album of crank calls, this album also serves as a guide to what makes a good crank call. So for reasons not even completely known to myself, I shall now examine each of the phone calls on this album, one by one, and see what makes them great...
I'm In Your Band
The first call is a musician responding to a "bass player needed" ad. The caller attempts to audition over the phone, without an instrument, and will not take no for an answer. He attempts to win over his mark through humor, juvenile verbal abuse, pleading, and a challenge to a fight. If you've spent any time around musicians, you've surely encountered the overzealous type who is constantly trying to promote himself. Here he takes that stereotype to a point that walks the line between absurd and still believable. He comes at his mark as though he is doing that guy's band a favor by wanting to join and is insulted by the rejection. When the mark moves to get to some sort of resolution, the caller switches his tactic and keeps the call going. Then, when the call runs out of steam, he ends it on an ominous note. Being the one to hang up on the mark is always the cherry on top of a great call.
Cancel It!
This is a short one, and isn't particularly "great" on its own merits. It does, however, serve as a prelude to a better call appearing later on the album. This call is also significant, as it introduces the Neil Hamburger character. This is an early version of Neil Hamburger, and the character would develop significantly over the next several years. Still, it is interesting to hear this character's origins in this call. The joke in this call is repetition. It's a three step process: ask the mark a question, wait for him to begin to answer, and interrupt with the catch phrase. In this instance, it only went a couple of cycles, but in a real world situation, you can see how many times you can go through the steps before the mark ends the call. Each time you can shoot for a personal best.
Hijinx / Hijinx and a Child
These are two calls that kind of go together. The premise is a robo-caller calling to promote the premier of a new film called Hijinx, starring Robert Duvall, Shelly Long, and Bette Midler as... The Ringmaster. This type of call is basically just for wasting the mark's time. With the promise of getting something for free, they have to stay on the line and listen to the whole spiel about the film the "computer" is giving them. There is a little bit of a payoff when the mark is asked for his comments, but it's not much.
The second call is the same premise, but a child answers the phone. All this does is demonstrate the difficulty in steering a child through a crank call. It's made even more tricky by playing the part of a computer, as you don't have much room to deviate from that character. It's not easy and the payoff is just not there. Basically, if a kid answers, just hang up.
A Score to Settle
Here we have a guy calling the person who used to beat him up in high school. Of course the mark has no idea who this guy is, despite the numerous, oddly specific examples of the abuse he suffered at the hands of this bully. This call demonstrates some good tactics to use on a crank call. There are accusations of a past wrongdoing to keep the mark on the defensive. He is not given much of a chance to think about it before the next, increasingly bizarre accusation is leveled. Throw in some verbal abuse, a challenge to a nude fistfight on hot coals in the woods, and some non-sequiturs and you have a guy that just wants to get out of that call. It's simple, yet effective, and it will leave the mark trying to remember who that could have been.
Blood Pizza / Graduate of Yaoo
These two calls are similar, as they both concern someone with very specific dietary restrictions trying to order a pizza. However, the tactics vary somewhat between the two calls. In the first call, the caller attempts to order a Chinese pizza and lists several bizarre toppings he wants. It's pretty clear that English is not the mark's first language, and the communication issue with the request has the call descending into absurdity rather quickly.
The other call is more effective but still falls a little flat. The caller is a fat man who wants a low calorie pizza and the mark is another person whose first language is not English. The mark plays along for a bit. but then gets tired of the nonsense and just wants the caller to order food.
Pizza places are an easy target for a crank call, but there's not too much you can do with it. They just want to get you off the phone as quickly as possible so they can get back to making the food. They might humor you for a bit, but eventually they will realize there will be no legitimate food order and get rid of the call. I'm not saying they can't be good calls, they're just kind of basic.
(Write My) Name on the Toilet
We're back with Neil Hamburger on this one. Here he's calling The Punchline comedy club trying desperately to get booked. The mark attempts to give Neil the number for booking only to be interrupted constantly by Neil's really bad jokes. This call works well because that pushy self promotion is not uncommon in club booking circles, and you can tell the person is over it within the first five seconds of the call. What makes this type of call become more or less humorous is the amount of bad jokes you can tell the mark in order to get him to book you. Of course, the more terrible jokes you tell, the less likely you will be to get booked, but that's not really what we're trying to do. Of note in this call, is the origin appearance of Neil Hamburger's 7-11 bit.
You're Not Good Enough / A Special Request
Two more calls to pizza places. The first one goes rather well; he gets the mark to engage with him, even with all of his crazy talk, eventually telling the caller he's not good enough to run a pizza place. The second one is just your average fat guy with dietary restrictions call. It's amusing, and he gets some good one-liners in, but the conclusion is predictable.
As we've seen from the variety of characters being used for these calls, you can play it in lots of different ways. Fat guy, drunk guy, crazy guy... you can get pretty creative. They probably won't fall for it enough to actually make your pizza, so the real measure of success is how long can you keep them on the phone trying to figure out what you want to order.
Rock & Roll
This is another special request pizza call. Again, the mark's first language is not English, and I think that actually makes this call less effective. The caller delivers a great line, the "rock & roll" that the call is named for, and it misses the target due to the language differences. If the person who answered the phone had stayed on the line, I think it would have gone much better.
Pickle Potato
This time the call is to a hamburger place. The language differences, again, make this one not go as well as it could have. The caller delivers some great gibberish lines, but the mark just tries to keep up and make the best sense of it that he can. Like most of these restaurant calls, it's funny to the audience but the mark probably just shrugged and went back to work.
The Man from Hott
One last pizza place call. The man from the "976-Hott" line wants a "hott" pizza. This time we get someone who speaks fluent English. It makes the interaction a little better, as she understands what the caller is saying. However, as with all restaurant calls, the mark just wants to get on with her work and the call ends without any satisfying conclusion.
Music of the Night
In this call, the caller is answering an ad for saxophone lessons, calling after midnight because he plays "music of the night". You can get some good soundbites out of this one — Insane Clown Posse samples this track in some of their earlier material — but overall it's kind of a dud. All the mark does is try to get the caller to call back at a different time and then hangs up when the caller starts to get inappropriate.
A Nationally Known Comedian
This call was not on the original vinyl edition of the album, it was added for a CD edition, I believe, but I'm including it because this is one of the really great calls on the album. Neil Hamburger returns and we get to hear the entire 7-11 joke in all its glory. The joke is basically a shaggy-dog type of story, and he keeps the mark on the line for a full 6 minutes. Properly executed shaggy-dog stories are always great, and the execution here is excellent. He even gets the mark to start anticipating the story and quizzes him on some details from earlier in the joke. This call should be taught in any college level crank call courses.
Unfortunately, crank calls are becoming something of a lost art these days. This album is from the days of land lines and few houses with caller ID. It's not impossible, but it's definitely not as easy as it used to be. Now days, you would likely get a call back from the number you called, if they pick up at all, and in the worst case you might get a visit from the police.
This album serves as a document of a bygone era when people actually answered the telephone when it rang. The voice on the other side could be anyone: a friend, a relative, a salesman, or just some buffoon with too much free time on his hands. Bless those brave telecom frontiersmen of yesteryear, who dialed out into Bell's untamed wilderness just to make someone's day a little more surreal.