February - 1985
I honestly have no idea why I thought that it might be an interesting idea to record telephone conversations. Radio Shack used to sell this patch cord that had a suction-cup that would affix to the speaker part of the backside of the telephone receiver, and the other end could be plugged into a recording device. If you connected it just right, it would pick the audio conversation through a small microphone inside the suction-cup end of the patch cord. I used my Panasonic boombox to record everyday conversations I had with friends.
The audio quality of this track is very low. You can barely make out what is being said in some of the conversations. In February 1985, I was 21 years old. I had been living in my first apartment only six months. I was working full-time at the local bakery six nights a week from midnight’s to late morning. I was also in a cover band with a guy named Ron. Since Saturday night was my one and only night off, we used to take rides up to Milwaukee to go hear local live rock bands. Getting home at dawn was nothing new for me.
So, this was what I did before I got my first answering machine…and yes, I told people that they were being recorded - which was nothing new for most people who knew me. They had long since been used to me recording everything. They didn’t know why I recorded everything, but they knew about it. Who would have though that this many years later, it’s still kinda cool to listen to these old conversations again?
Telephone conversations