This year for the 2023 A-Z Blog Challenge, I’m going to begin by listing a song or musical subject, and then see how fast and how far I can completely blow up my own “stream of consciousness,” and head “off the reservation,” by linking every real, and “Zulu Delta-imagined” fact, piece of music trivia, or not so apparent connection to what is racing around my head to that song in an “unstructured, graffiti-like” format. Complete and utter nonsense! Turn it up and turn it on, but as Van “The Man” Morrison said…….”It’s already turned on!”

Broken Phone Booth Picture by Zulu Delta

In 1991, Chris O’Conner wrote, produced, sang, and played all the instruments on “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand.

Chris recorded the song in his friends garage with the help of a partially broken tape machine.

The song title doesn’t appear anywhere in the song. 

I suspect that the person who would have been responsible for typing the lyrics for the record would have gone out of their mind by having to type so many words for one song title.

I suspect Bloggers blogging about the title would have had similar fates.

Chris wasn’t really producing “commercial” music at the time of his creation, he was just trying to learn how to engage a recording device. 

Because he was just goofing around, he added some cool sound effects and an overdubbing track of B.B. King singing his live song, “How Blue Can You Get.” He didn’t have permission to use King, but “somehow” got away with it.

Regardless, it was a very cool title. It should be; the majority of it was stolen from a 1978 Bruce Cockburn song, one word shorter; “Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand.”

Bruce himself was the Canadian singer/songwriter of such marvelous songs as “If I Had A Rocket Launcher” (also popular on WBRU at the time), and “Wondering Where The Lions Are.”

Chris made the Album “Rocket” for $1000, as he worked his full-time job as an Air Traffic Controller in Los Angeles. A division of Columbia Records picked up his album Rocket in 1996 and release the single “Standing…….”

He rounded up his old band, “The I-Rails,” and they became “The Primitive Radio Gods.”

Since then, phone booths have come upon tough times due to the proliferations of cell phones.

Superman no longer has a place to change into his Super Suit; delaying galactic help.

Kids have no place to “find” spare change in the coin returns.

Lovers have no place to kiss when they’re at the Gaspee Lounge; so, the booth and Lounge went out of business.

A.K.A….The Kissing Booth!

Phone companies not giving a damn about the actuals phone, made gazillions selling the phone booth advertising on street spaces under the guise of a public service.

Kids in London have to wait in long lines to have their pictures taken in old red phone booths.

Speaking of London phone booths, Doctor Who’s TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) has lost its camouflage as a Time Machine posing as a Police Call Box.

And finally, teenagers hanging out at the “Soda Pop Drive-In” can no longer attempt to break the Guinness Book of Records, for how many people they can stuff in a phone booth. This is not to be confused with the early days of Southwest Airlines when flight attendants would have contests for how many businessmen they could jam in the onboard head (toilet compartment).

It’s probably just as well these booths are gone, as most of “those” teenagers are 70 and 80 years old now, and have brittle bones; probably from jamming themselves in phone booths in their youth.