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The Accidental Invention of Holding Music · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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  Speaker 1: to our guest producer today, the one and only Tari Harrison.
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  Speaker 1: Uh no, uh oh, and I've been uh. You and
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  Speaker 1: working on one of our favorite shows in the Ridiculous Universe.
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  Speaker 1: That's ridiculous news. With our pals uh Mark and Bill.
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  Speaker 1: You may recognize them from a previous appearance on this show.
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  Speaker 1: That happened, right, yeah, no, that happened. We're in person.
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  Speaker 1: universe that we occupy currently. That's true. It's all true, folks. Uh.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And you know, I like this statement about the universe
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: like thinking metaphysically, because this is a true story. A
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  Speaker 1: few weeks ago, I had a dream where I was
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  Speaker 1: talking to what I think was God, but I got
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  Speaker 1: put on hold and I woke up convinced I had
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  Speaker 1: heard this amazing music. And you know how it is
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  Speaker 1: when your mind creates something in a dream. I spent
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  Speaker 1: like twenty very blurry, not fully awake moments trying to
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  Speaker 1: record the two night I had heard. Uh, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: afraid to play it back, but just as uh, we
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: were getting on to record today, Uh, you had when
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: you came on, you were listening to real life, not
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: dream hold music. Yeah, man, I hold music is interesting
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: because it is a thing that's been around for a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: long time. So folks have, um have the opportunity to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: do a better job at it. Let's just say some
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: have taken that challenge and run with it. Uh and
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and made you know, have very high fidelity hold music.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I've been on hold in my car before and I
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: literally heard like low end bumping, you know, on my
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: on my set, I don't even have like a fancy
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: system or anything in my car. But you know, with
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the with the hands free, you know, connected, I was
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: hearing all kinds of low end fidelity and crisp hies
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and mids and in that music. Uh, not the case
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: with the decay Have County Watershed, which is who I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: was on hold with this morning. It's all staticky, uh
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  Speaker 1: really broken up, very harsh, you know highs. It's just
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: like very unpleasant to listen to. Also stylistically all over
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the place. I gotta say like it goes from like
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: something that sounds sort of like a sound alike the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Police song, like sort of a rock sand vibe, to
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: like Mendelssohn and then back again, all interspersed with a
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: very kindly voice telling me that the rates are going
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: up six percent, so super helpful. Didn't actually get a person,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: That's why I was sharing this with you. I was
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: on hold for an hour, so uh, get your house
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: together to cab County Watershed. Your hold game um is
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: weak and your customer service is weaker. Yeah. I also
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  Speaker 1: want to give a very special thanks to a musician
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: named Alex Cornell. I've i've mentioned this. I can't remember
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it's on air off, but for many years, during one
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: iteration of our corporate overlords or another. Uh. This company
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: where where I have worked for more years than I
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  Speaker 1: care to announce. Uh, this company had a hold song
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  Speaker 1: that had lyrics and had a country vibe. It's called
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  Speaker 1: I'm on Hold by Alex Cornell. I'm not gonna play it.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think we should, but if you want to
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  Speaker 1: stare into the void, folks, then journey with me and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Alex Cornell. There, Alex, I bear you no ill will.
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  Speaker 1: It is not your faults. But after having been on
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: hold with your song for a number of years, for
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  Speaker 1: egregiously long times, uh, it did break my mind a
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  Speaker 1: little bit. If there is someone we need to thank
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  Speaker 1: slash blame for this, well, it is not the water authorities.
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  Speaker 1: It is not Alex Cornell. It's not even an elevator
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  Speaker 1: operator back when those were a thing. It is a
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  Speaker 1: man named Albert Levy, who in nineteen sixt you filed
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  Speaker 1: a patent for something called a telephone hold program system.
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  Speaker 1: Levy is the guy who invented the idea of listening
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  Speaker 1: to something other than silence when you are waiting on Uh.
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  Speaker 1: When you are waiting on a human to answer the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: other end of the telephone. Uh. This really was the
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: idea of alleviating border I guess, or as he as
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: he puts it, occupying a collar. Yeah, it's neat. Um.
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  Speaker 1: It's certainly in the days of you know, switchboards and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and um, you know of telef telefe telephone telephony being
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: much more of an all encompassing thing. If you weren't
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: on the telephone network, you weren't part of this world. Um. Now,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: obviously with cell phones and computers and something like, it's
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: much less stress being put on that system and it's
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: almost becoming kind of a thing of the past. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean the idea of, like, I mean, to wait
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  Speaker 1: for a human to help you with your problem. Um,
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  Speaker 1: why not give you a little something to occupy your
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  Speaker 1: time with, or at the very least, you know, keep
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: you from hanging up, to encourage you to kind of
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  Speaker 1: stick around. So what is the deal with the concept
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  Speaker 1: of holding? Right? This is the definitely like something that
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: had to be kind of creative, the idea of being
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: put on hold. In twelve, the Sydney Morning Herald Um
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: reported on a man in Adelaide who was kept on
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  Speaker 1: hold with an airline called Quantas for fifteen hours fifteen
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  Speaker 1: hours and and this was not necessarily due to the
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  Speaker 1: soothing tones of whatever you know, hold music was being
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: shows it, but it was apparently as a result of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: a recorded message that you know, this is again part
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  Speaker 1: of the irony of being on hold, this sort of
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  Speaker 1: liminal kind of like um limbo space that we occupy.
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  Speaker 1: This voice assuring the gentleman that customer Service AGA would
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  Speaker 1: be with him quote soon. So you just stayed on.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I've been there, you know. Sometimes there there will be
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  Speaker 1: a message saying in the times are longer than usual,
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  Speaker 1: and so you can kind of mentally prepare, but you know,
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  Speaker 1: you can have it on speaker and just do other stuff.
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  Speaker 1: That's what he did. He was working and reading and
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: just waiting. And as he told the newspaper, quote I
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  Speaker 1: wanted to find out exactly what they meant when they
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: said they would be with me as soon as possible.
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  Speaker 1: So obviously this guy's kind of taking a stand for
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the little guy. I appreciate that. Um. And and this
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: is you mentioned Ben thinking metaphysically earlier. This is ultimately
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: this idea of the whole space and what that occupies
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: in our minds and our lives. Is kind of a
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  Speaker 1: philosophical or metaphysical question. Yeah, I like to call it
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: audio purgatory. That's really what what whole being on hold is. Also,
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  Speaker 1: want to shout out Tom Vanderbilt over at Slate Rode
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a roade a great article. We're pulling a lot of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: this from called your Call is important to us. Uh.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: What we may not know, especially if we're some of
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: our younger, ridiculous historians in the crowd, is that back
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: in the day, you had to be on hold just
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: to make a call. The first transatlantic telephone call occurred
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: from New York to Paris, and The New York Times
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  Speaker 1: wrote about it in describing it like this, For those
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  Speaker 1: who speak for the first time, there is no thrill
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  Speaker 1: comparable to that which comes with the first signal. You know,
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  Speaker 1: New York Hall is coming through. Hold the line, Wait
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  Speaker 1: a minute. That minute is a thing of every mixed emotions.
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  Speaker 1: One feels that something memorable should be spoken and can
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  Speaker 1: think of nothing to say. So for early callers, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you don't quite know if it's gonna go through. Your
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: sort of waiting in the wings to see if you're
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  Speaker 1: part of the play will actually commence. And one thing
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  Speaker 1: we didn't say about Levy. We'll put this in the
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  Speaker 1: title to make up for it, folks. But one thing
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  Speaker 1: we didn't say about our buddy Andrew Andy to his
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: friends is that he sort of accidentally invented this thing.
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  Speaker 1: Originally he owned a factory. And no, it wasn't a
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  Speaker 1: factory that made musac. It wasn't a factory that made telephones.
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  Speaker 1: It was a factory that had a problem with its
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  Speaker 1: own phone service. And this is where Tom Vanderbilt notes
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  Speaker 1: over at Slate that a loose wire was touching a
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  Speaker 1: steel girder, and the steel then was acting as an
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  Speaker 1: antenna and was picking up a signal from a radio
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  Speaker 1: station nearby. The wire tapped into the audio, and then
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  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, when you were on hold calling
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  Speaker 1: Levy's factory, instead of just hearing nothing but the hum
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  Speaker 1: of the void, perhaps or some little clicks and audio ghost,
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  Speaker 1: you would you would hear the station's broadcast. And Levy
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  Speaker 1: didn't know about this until someone who had been on
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  Speaker 1: hold told him, and he said, hey, uh, Andy, uh,
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  Speaker 1: you know I'm calling about the Tuesday thing. I just
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  Speaker 1: want you to know. The radio was playing when I'm
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  Speaker 1: when I'm on hold, and uh, that's brilliant. You're a
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: smart guy. I'll order six more thinking about bobbers or
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: whatever it is you make at your factory widgets, you know,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: do dads. So it's kind of interesting because you know,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: we we already had music as a brand, you know,
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  Speaker 1: kind of um getting trademarked in nineteen fifty four. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and there I I guess that was sort of in
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  Speaker 1: the zeitgeist. I mean, like you know, to your point,
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  Speaker 1: Pamis was kind of done by a mistake, you know,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, when I hear a bare wire touching a
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  Speaker 1: metal girder, I'm glad nobody was killed. Instead, they just
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: got some like pleasant lilting you know tunes piped in,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you know, on the line. Um. But I do believe
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  Speaker 1: there is some kind of parallel thinking going on here
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  Speaker 1: because music is also, of course, this concept designed around
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  Speaker 1: filling boredom in like you know, kind of procedural interactions
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  Speaker 1: with music with something that kind of like make you
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  Speaker 1: feel like you're not actually in some sort of hellish
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: liminal space. You know, God knows what when you'll ever
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: get out things like the d M V or or
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  Speaker 1: in an elevator or what or what have you. This
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  Speaker 1: was just taking it kind of into the virtual space.
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  Speaker 1: And I guess if you think about it, telephones are really,
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  Speaker 1: in many ways the first form of virtual communication where
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: you're not actually occupying the same space. Um. So yeah,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the the idea of the telephone hold program seems pretty um,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: pretty innocuous on its surface, but it has really you know,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: created an incredible legacy of of this thing and of
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: various iterations um and uh. You know again, it was
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: designed for a very specific purpose, and it all kind
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: of has its roots I guess the idea of being
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: put on hold in those earliest days of tele phone
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: communication the switchboard, where you would you know, call the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: switchboard operator and say I'd like to place my call
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to like you know, WHICHITA to five three or whatever
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: it would be, and I mean, like, ho, please, we'll
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: try the connection and you you could be on hold
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: for a while, and like you said, been this whole
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: idea of like what do I say when they come?
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: That's kind of where the idea of telephone etiquette came from, right,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of saying hello or ahoihoi or whatever it
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  Speaker 1: might be. You know, Yeah, and this whole. This whole
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  Speaker 1: idea of being on hold and needing to fill that
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  Speaker 1: with something um to kind of keep people from getting anxious.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe hanging up came from these earliest days of telephone communication.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: M hmm, yeah, you have. May you may have called,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: for instance, the doctor's office and had the receptionists say, uh,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, Dr Crinkleberries medical facility and crinkles. Also
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: we sell hold police because they're really busy and they
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: have to switch back and forth. This was happening with
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: literally every busy switchboard back in the day. And this
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: was exasperating to Levy, at least if you believe the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: language of his patent, and we're not going to read
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: you the whole thing because like many patents, it's quite long.
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  Speaker 1: But his entry to the patent office, which as he
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: said Curse in nineteen sixty two in Spring, says in
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the course of receiving telephone calls, and it goes on
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: to talk about the dead silence, the collar has to
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: endure while operators are trying to chase down their parties.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: And then you know what happens if an operator forgets
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to check in again, what if they get busy? Uh,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the application has a key line here. In any event,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: listening to a completely unresponsive instrument is tedious, and calls
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: are often abandoned altogether or remade, which leads to annoyance
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and a waste of time and money. And so the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: idea is that when you put them on hold, do
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you just hit some sort of button that puts the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: callers line on a source of program material, often music,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: but it could really be anything. It could be a lawnmower,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: it could be a cat yelling if you know, if
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: you are angry at the caller, uh. And the ideas
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: this would pacify them and maybe you know, now I
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: think about it in a time of high stress, the
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: idea was, maybe it'll give them a little chill room,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: a little green room in the great performance of life.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: And this idea, you know, it starts off with music,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: but eventually someone realizes we can use this space, this
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: literally captive audience as people to advertise to. And so
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: by the nineties, companies began mixing music with messages. There
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: was one company we found called American Telephone Tapes that
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: would purposely find announcers with sultry voices to break into
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the music every forty seconds or so, kind of like
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: a higher a higher cadence of the DJs that you
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: hear on radio today. Yeah, it's interesting because I mean,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: you know the idea of advertising on these uh these
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: whole spaces. I don't referring to it so like like
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: uh mystically, but it really is kind of a space
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: you have to you have to kind of interact with it,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: you know, like you know, you have to uh be
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: aware of it, you have to occupy it to some degree. Um.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: But I think I don't I don't know that I've
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: ever heard like advertisements for like outside products, because I
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: think companies to these days are so aware that being
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: on hold is just the last place anyone wants to be.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And usually there are ways of of not having to
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: call and deal with a person, of of paying bills
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: or sorting out issues you know online. But I don't
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: know about you, Ben, but I sometimes for certain things
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I really want to talk to a person. Um. Maybe
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I'm old fashioned, but um what I will here if
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: not advertisements. I think people today maybe just wouldn't put
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: up with that on being on a really long hold
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: and then also feeling like you're being you know, shield
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to buy other products and companies that are unrelated to
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the the you know, service or or company that you're calling. Um,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: there will be internal messages, you know, things like UM E,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: T N D now has uh, you know, pay as
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: you go or whatever it might be, you know, and
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: that's gonna be a little more palatable. And if all
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, you're hearing an advertisement for
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: some other thing, I think a lot of people would
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: be very cranky about that. Yeah, and it also could
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: make your business look bad. I mean, it doesn't make
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: your bank look particularly awesome if all of a sudden
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they're having ads for you know, uh, chiropractors or something
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: in your area. So yeah, there was definitely a diminishing return.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: And I agree with you. The vast majority of messages
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you're gonna hear while you're on hold nowadays are going
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: to be internal advertisements, right, special offers from the company
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that you are already calling. And that might be a
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: bit of a pickle for the folks who have to
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: answer the phone when they get through that phone queue.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Let me say this on behalf of everybody on the
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: planet who has ever worked in a call center. If
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: you have a problem with a company, if you are
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: very angry at a company. The person you are talking
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: to is not in charge of that decision. They will
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: do their best to help you, but they take a
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: lot of abuse from people who are just looking for
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: a punching bag. You don't have to be that person, folks.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: You can be better than that. And I've had you know,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: like anybody else, I've had a lot of conversations about
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: egregious or acrimonious things that a company has done. But
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I always try to remember that person on the front
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: lines is not the CEO. They're not the person in
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: charge of whatever went wrong. They are there to help you,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and the best you can do to show that you
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: appreciate that help is not be an utter pill to them.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: And uh, I hope getting some amends from people who
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: work in call centers or have worked in call centers.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: It is a very tough job. I was working at
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: an insurance call center once upon a time when Hurricane
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Katrina hit and it was just a horrific situation all around. Also,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: if we could bring Levy back and tell him the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: results of his invention, the results of his very forward
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: thinking accidentally discovered patent, I would say that he might
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: be surprised. A lot of people just don't like hold music.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Now they expect it, they don't like it, and just
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: like our caller over there in quantas, you know, eventually
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: you have to start questioning the absurdity of that canvass
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: bonds that's always like fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes as soon
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: as possible. I get the feeling most of the time
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: there isn't really a system in place that lets them
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: gauge like call volume. So I think it's all pretty canned,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: like like in terms of like the expectation and um,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I think some whold systems maybe a little
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: more robust than others, a little more like automated and
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: have computer you know, um intervention to some degree. I
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: think for the most part, it's kind of like we'll
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: get to you when we get to you here, enjoy this,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: uh this little xylophone diddy and to to to get
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: you through and keep you from going insane or make
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: you go insane, because that's the thing about hold music too.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna hear top forty jams or like the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: radio because I imagine, um and then maybe maybe you
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: know this specifically that this is a consist is a
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: form of broadcast kind of. I mean, it's it's a
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: broadcast of well and I guess directly to you, but
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: it's happening, you know, in a lot of different iterations,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: So you would have to own the copyright to the music,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: which is why a lot of wold music it will
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: be the same thing over and over and over again
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: because the company is either you know, licensed this for
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: use in this way or possibly even you know, hired
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: somebody to do it for them to create this whole music. Uh,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: perhaps it's some iteration of their theme, you know, tune
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: or whatever it might be, if it's a brand that
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: has you know, an associated jingle or something like that.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Or it'll be classical music, public domain music, and all
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I have to do is license the recording um and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: not and and pay any kind of any rights soldiers
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: for the actual compositions. Yeah. Yeah. It always reminds me
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: of an amazing bit from an amazing show called thirty Rock,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: where wherein they want to make a biopic about Janice Joplin,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: but they can't afford the rights, or they don't have
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the rights to her, to her life story or or
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: her music, so they call her Janice Jorplin or something
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: like that, and they do nothing but parody lyrics of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of of famous Jannis Chopolin and the Heartbreaker songs. It
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: is amazing. I am going to pull up a clip
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: at some point if I get a break today. Uh,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: you know it is true. Uh people also get this
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: sort of this weird relationship with Hold music. When you
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: hear it, often it becomes like a commercial jingle or
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: people start to love it at first ironically and then
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: an ironically, like me with Alex's I'm on Hold song again, Alex,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know what our legality is here, so I
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: wish I could play it. But if you're hearing this
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: right in and let me know if it's okay to
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: play it, We'll end an episode with it one day.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: And I'm glad that you mentioned the idea of having
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: a relationship with this these bits of themera that are
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: kind of meant to be pretty disposable. Um that there
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: are communities even that come up around like being obsessed
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: with a particular brand of Hold music, or say, like
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: you know, Walmart Music, you know from throughout the years,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: like you can actually get tapes and recordings of like
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: all of that stuff and people like remix them and
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: do all kinds of crazy stuff. But um, there is
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a really interesting story behind the generic hold music from
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the tech company Cisco. UM. Cisco, who you know, installs
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and maintains like corporate telephone systems, and apparently they're there
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to this day, I believe, at least as of this article.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: In so they may have changed it. I can't speak
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: to I haven't been on holding on a Cisco system
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: UH in recent years, but there is a piece of
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: music that they have used. Um Ira Glass actually did
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: an episode of This American Life that was composed by
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: an I T guy UM that you probably haven't heard of,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: by the name of Tim Carlton UM. This article from
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: The Atlantic by extas c Magical describes him as a
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: mostly unnoogle able UM I T guy Tim Carlton UH
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: And in fact, on the Atlantic article they posted a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: YouTube clip of the piece of music, and it has
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: been removed due to a copyright claim by Tim Carlton.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So he's got skin in the game when it comes
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to this. But he had a buddy named Derek Deal
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: who went to work for Cisco, and he heard one
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: of his little ditties that he had recorded on a
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: four track and was like, this is it, this is
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the one, this is this is gonna this has got
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: to be the the cisco Hold music. Um. And eventually
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: it did go on to become the cisco Hold music
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and um, you know, was heard by millions. Not exactly
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the way I would consider people thinking about breaking into
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the industry or becoming a star, but you can't deny
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: that this dude's tune has been heard by millions of people.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: And there has been almost a little community that has
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: developed around it, with people remixing it, recording their own versions,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: posting things on you Tube, and all of that stuff.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating. Yeah, And speaking of fascinating and gratitude, iowa
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: big thanks to Sophie Hagney. I just found this MPR article,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Like I just found it as we were as we
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: were recording, I was thinking about that relationship too, and
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about you, Alex Cornell, my favorite paras
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: social relationship that I have. There's an MPR article about
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Alex and about the I'm on Hold song. It was
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: for Uber conference. It's selected by nine out of ten
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: call organizers, or at least it was as of it
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: plays a million times a month. And this comes directly
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: from Craig Walker, the CEO of dial Pad, the company
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: that owns uber Conference, which was a phone line that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: we used a lot for work back in the day.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Alex Cornell is not a working musician, man. This is
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I'm on Hold is the only song he's ever written
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: because he was a co founder of uber Conference and
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: he wanted to have better hold music. Holy smokes, hold
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: e smokes. I should say uh this yeah, right, Nope,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: on left behind. So we see that there is an
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: entire You could rightly call this a genre, right if
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: you think about how many people listen to it on
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: a daily basis, then hold music hits a lot of ears.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: And I didn't know this either, man, but apparently there
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: is a thing called a comfort tone that companies might
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: transmit even when you think you're just silently on hold
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: for a moment, which is when the maybe the person
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: at the call center hits the mute button and you
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: think you're on hold. They can still hear you if
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you're you know, like cursing to yourself or having another
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: conversation anyway. A comfort tone is a barely audible synthetic
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: noise that signals a connection is still there, very like
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: a hug from a ghost for your ears. It's a
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: weird way to put it, but hold music itself is
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: a weird thing. And uh, you know, no, this might
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: be a shorter one for us today, but I remain
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: astounded that the guy who patented telephone holds music did
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: it because of an accident. You know, the history of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: communications and technology, they're often happy accidents, you know. I
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: talked about this um with folks that I record music with.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: For example, like a lot of studio equipment and things
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that that have have grown to become used in a
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: certain way, we're not really designed for that use, Like
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: like things like compressors, which is like a really you know,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: in the old days, a big old piece of studio
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: equipment that was designed to even out the the loudness
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: of different things that were going over a broadcast signal.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: But then some and figure out, oh, well, if I
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: use it wrong, or what if I crank this, you know,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the threshold up on or the peak reduction or whatever,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, then you're getting these really kind
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: of pumpy smashy sounds out of these things are like,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: you know, the idea of delay that would be a
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: thing that in broadcast would be used so that things
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: could be happening on a delay. So if there's some
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: swear that goes out, you can pull it back um
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: or echo or whatever. Like there are these are artifacts
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: that that would have been at one point considered undesirable,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: but then if you harness them and use them again
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: quote unquote wrong, you can get all kinds of new
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: things out of it. So I think this like kind
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: of falls in that category. Um, not exactly the same
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: because it wasn't intentional, uh misuse or intentional. It was
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: just sort of like capturing this like this happy accident.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: And then you know, obviously do you think the guy
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: got paid? I like, like, uh, is this the same
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: as copyrighting a podcast? I wonder if the patentrols would
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: go after this guy because it seems pretty broad, like
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: like like the patent for podcasts was like a serialized
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: audio thing on a on a feed on on an
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: on demand feed. So the idea of like transmitting music
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: over the telephone. Surely this guy didn't just have own
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: own that concept, you know, lock Stock and Barrel. Well
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: he did for a while. Because tech patents are a
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: little bit of a different beast often, you know, like
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the idea of clicking or a mouse or hitting an escape. Uh.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: His patent was standing the test of time, just like
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: hopefully ridiculous history. Uh. This is this is the story.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear. Everybody's favorite old music, ridiculous history.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: It's your favorite hold music, the weirdest hold music, the
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: stuff you hate. Let us know. You can find us
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: on Facebook, where we are ridiculous Historians. We've also heard
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you about the social media stuff, trying to get back
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: that back up and running. But in the meantime, we're
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: going to call it a day and we'll be back
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: later this week with another new piece, new to us,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: piece of ridiculous history. In the meantime, I think our
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: very first and uh, very specialist thanks goes to our
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: audio specialist guest super producer for today, Torii Harris and
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: try Thank you so so much, tiny crowd, tiny crowd,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, huge, thanks for keeping the trains running
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: on time and pointing out the lawnmowers and leaf blowers
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of the world where we're sorry in advance Monday morning thing.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Who are these people? I guess they Yeah, they gotta
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: feed their families do I hold no grudge against you
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: lawn mower and or a leafblower. Huge thanks also to
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Uh super producer in absentia,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: uh Max Williams, who I hope is enjoying a lovely
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: vacation right now, and Christopher Aciota is here in spirit.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: And thanks of course to our own audio hold music
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. Uh No, it
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: looks like we both got to make some calls. Good luck,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: may fortune and the dial pad be ever in your favor.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Ben, I appreciate it. Hopefully I
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: won't take another hour this time. I feel like i've already.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Is there sunk cost fallacy and staying on hold? You
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like exactly, Yeah, I think there
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: can be. It depends on what you're after, because there's
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: really no other way to get it. I've done it.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I've done it a couple of times. But
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I I have a great time if I if I
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: know I'm on hold, it's just a cognitive road trip basically.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: So I'll pick up a book, I'll do some chores
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I've been putting off. I might go and take a walk.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: There are other worlds than these. We'll see you next time.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Fix For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or where ever you
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.