Untitled Track 13: Gloria Leaves a Message

Discover the mystery behind Gloria's voicemail in Untitled Track 13 on Miscellaneous T by They Might Be Giants. A deep dive into Dial-A-Song lore.

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Uncovering the Hidden Track

Last week, I wrote an entire screenplay for a short sci-film based on track 12 from the Miscellaneous T album by They Might Be Giants. This week, according to the track listing on the cassette cover above, the next song for me to cover in this series would be ‘The Famous Polka” (I wrote about Hotel Detective a while back already.) However, there is a recording of something very odd that takes place after ‘For Science.’ Something that was not listed as a track until this album was published on CD and even then, it was referred to only as Untitled, Track 13, just 13, or what the Johns refer to as ‘The Lady.’

I felt the best way to talk about this would be through an answering machine message that you can listen to. If you’d rather use your eyes, you can check out the voice to text transcript below. Finally, we’ll listen to the original hidden track. A mysterious voicemail left for the band. . .

Transcript:

Oh, yeah. Taking a sip of coffee because this is loose. We're doing this this is oa cuff.

So what what this track is, we're gonna back up a little bit and talk about the dial song service. Dial a song isn't answering machine that lived in and that still exists today lived in John Flansburg's kitchen and you know, uh back in the days of the answe machines, you would call somebody there are people who read this that I know for a fact live in a post answering machine world, voicemail only.

So if you're a voicemail only generation, you used to call somebody's house and a little machine with a cassette tape in it would kick in after so many unanswered rings, and it would play a recording that you left, an outgoing message that usually said, uh, hey, you've reached Chase and his dumb answering machine. uh, leave me a message.

I'll call you back. And then it would beep. Most people would say, and leave a message after the beep. uh, but those people were dumb. everyone knew that you left a message after the beep so that was the waste of your time to say how loud.

Instead of that outgoing, hey, leader message, uh, the band had a song play that wasn't released anywhere. So dial a song was literally, you would call, 3876962, and with whichever area code at the time, uh, maybe seven eight, And uh, here a song. And I I did this pretty often.

I don't I don't remember if I found the number in the liner notes of one of the early albums I had, um or if I got it from a newsletter, because my best friend and I were um were subscribed to the band's newsletter that would come on the mail little little band newspaper.

But uh once I had that phone number, I would call it because it updated daily, so I would try to call it every day. And what was interesting is you would get a busy signal and it didn't occur to me until way later, that it was the busy signal was because somebody else was listening to the song.

It could only take a one call at a time, so it was this very like personal it felt like this very personal, like, inside thing. You knew this number. And I guarantee you that besides my best friend, nobody else that lived in my city went to my school for sure, knew one who this band was unless they knew me, or knew about this phone number.

So you'd call the number, get it busy signal. Try calling again, listen to the song. This would repeat, I don't know the number I don't remember the dollar amount, but I frequently racked up our phone bill because it was a Longiston' phone call.

And in those days, this post is making me feel so old. This post is making this is making me feel like an old, old person. In those days, long along distance call, and this was before you could call like, one 800 call ATT for a a better long distance rate, you just paid whatever the long distanceance charges were from your phone carrier.

So there' usually be like a minimum uh, let's just say a one dollar for the first minute and then $15 cents every minute after that per minute, something like that. So minimum it was a dollar. And if the phone was busy, it was aempting to connect you, and that counted as that dollar, so it placed the call.

So every time I tried to call it, so let's say it took me five times to get through this, five dollars that day. So there were some conversations from uh either my mom and my dad, probably probably my dad. He was the hammer and the family. if there was one. and I had to stop doing that.

So then uh my my my best friend and I would just make the calls from his house. um and listen to it or he would or he would we we could do like a three way call and call the number. So that's what uh that's what the machine is. That's what the dial song service is and it still exists.

You can still call that number today. So why? Why was there a dial song service?

a few weeks ago, I wrote about the song, um the biggest one, and I mentioned in there that that the inspiration from that song was um, John Plansberg had moved into a new apartment and was immediately robbed the same day that he moved in. and was feeling like a piece of crap about it and wrote this like self pitying, sad sack song, um being the biggest like loser. um the the what - Fosse! what are you doing? What's what does my cats's doing something crazy, getting into in and out of the closets. Cats.

So Flancy's robbed. all his worldly possessions are gone, including all of his instrument stuff. and at that around the same time, John Linnell got in a bicycle accident, broke his wrist. So they couldn't perform live. They didn't have any uh, you know, record deals.

They had, I think in an interview Flansburg said that he had they were they were concerned that the 30 or so people that were into what they were doing in New York would miss their life performances and then they would fizzle out and be forgotten about.

So he brought back this idea that he'd been already talking about to do a dial song. so he launched a dialus song, and they replaced advertisements for it in the classified ads in the village voice newspaper. So not saying who they were or what it was for, just to advertising the number and you would call it, and then you'd hear a song.

And maybe the name of the band, maybe. But I think it was I think in those d pre me calling, uh, you just got a you just got a song and like the band's name was in theillage voice ad. So it was very innovative.

It was a way to be able to start be able to continue putting out things that people weren't hearing that you would have done live in this very like gu gorilla marketing grassroots, very in the way that did not exist. It did not there's nothing like this was existing. Except for the dial of prayer phone line that I think Flansburg had said kind of gave him the idea.

You'd call in and get inspirational things from this fucking pay for dial a prayer thing. And he did like a dial a song. So there we have that. um the machine wasn't answering machine, so you could leave a message when the song concluded, which was the outgoing message, it was still set to allow the caller to leave a message.

So there were some occurrences of people leaving a message intentionally after the call in the song that I wrote about called I’ll Sink Manhattan from the same album, miscellaneous t. There's a there's a message played in reverse to start the song off, which was actually someone calling from the Brooklyn Police Department leaving a little we appreciate you guys.

Like it was a - they were a fan and but you know, acab, but they were a fan and they left a message saying hey thanks. The there's also a song called I'm deaf, where they take a little sample from one of those messages and do some stuff to it and and use it in a song.

That brings us to this track, this untitled track 13, which, as I stated and print above, on a cassette wasn't listed as a track at all. It just existed in between the single mix of she was a hotel detective and for science, which was last week's post.

So here in this little void, we have a what is a snippet of what was a 25 minute long conversation between a New York woman named Gloria and her friend that she conference called in threeway call to call this number that she found on the back of that village voice.

And listening to this snippet that they the band included in this album. I remember hearing it and it was it was the first time I can remember experiencing what somebody else's point of view of this band I love is.

And they and she was bewildered and confused and she didn't even tell you'd had no idea what the song was that she had just listened to.

She didn't talk about that. She was just having a conversation with her friend about the wacky shit she finds in this in the village voice classifies. And how does this group that she called their there must be giants?

There may be giants, she thinks it's called. How are they making money? She mentions something about the the recording says something about um every time the song is played a child is born in India, some something like that, which she's just like, what are they even talking about?

Which was just a little fact away they'd shout out and like to intro the song, like a silly made up thing. And it just threw her concept of reality. It's like upside down.

Well, what is this? Who is it? She's shouting back and forth with her French is on her stand with this thing is all about.

And it was it it made me feel like I was even more in the in crowd with this thing. And you're like, oh my gosh, that is ridiculous to think that she called this and this was her experience. And that it but Flansberg has said an interviews at the at the actual message goes on for like 25 minutes and it's mostly just mundane nonsense. uh, but you get this you get the sense that this woman Gloria, who they've never found um that that she had this like obsession with, just looking at and calling all the things in this village voice classified.

And they were this thing. So there's a documentary called uh gigantic, a tale of Two Johns that came out in the very early 2000s and they covered this voice message in theirs in that documentary I remember seeing a an animated version of this conversation and this recording.

um I'm I'm I know it's on YouTube and you can watch it for free on YouTube. I'm not going to post a whole documentary in the link below, but you can go look at up if you want to check it out.

Um but the but the glory of voice message, you know sh uh place uh intellectuals go to meet other intellectuals to speak another language. Like it's just these are things that are built into my mind because I've heard this boy I'm sure it's the only voicemail message that I have heard more than five times in my life and there's nothing musical about it.

but you turn it on and I can just recite it with this with it playing and uh I played it for my wife recently and um she was baffled that I had not already revealed this little little voicemail message and what it was. her her reaction to that voicemail message was the same as Gloria's reaction to of calling that number listening to song. So if you want to call dial a song, I don't have the area code with me off top my head.

It's different now. but the phone number is 3876962. check it out.

untitled track. a voicemail message.

Those are my thoughts.

Beep.

Gloria’s voicemail captures something quintessentially TMBG: a blend of humor, curiosity, and the unexpected. Much like the band’s music, it leaves you feeling like you are in on the “bit”—and also a little puzzled.

Have you ever stumbled upon something so odd it made you question reality? Share your story in the comments.

Let’s listen to the original recording inadvertently left by Gloria when she called the They Might Be Giants Dial-A-Song number:

OK, so I decided to share that documentary afterall.

Don’t let the “fun” stop here!

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