Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/06/britney-spears-toxic-as-hold.html
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The 90’s were a weird time.
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Toxic indeed
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It’s currently “Renegades of Funk” by Rage Against the Machine.
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A nice sculpture perhaps?
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Yikes!
I can’t decide though if this is worse than my personal favorite hold music which is a short “jazz” riff that lasts about 15 seconds then repeats. I mean, at least that doesn’t scream at me from the pits of hell…
Someone in the comments pointed out that it’s probably using this variation:
so VOIP isn’t fully responsible for the degradation
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Some palette cleanser for those who may need it
I find this version more soothing than the original. Though the original has its place too.
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Cool…are they a real band?
I ask because recently i’ve become aware of the phenomenon of Oldies/novelty bands that have a “theme”…and really there is no single “band” but rotating groups of musicians that sub in and out, or tour simultaneously. They are interchangable because the “look” of the band is what’s important (and they hire good musicians, too). There is of course a behind-the-scenes “owner”/promoter of the band’s name who controls appearances and tour dates, etc.
The bands I saw of this ilk were popular and very entertaining, and some people there said they were their favorite bands, and I don’t think they knew they weren’t really a band in the way most people would define a real band.
As far as I can tell via Google the Surfragettes are a single entity and their own creation. Nothing wrong with “theme” bands assembled by a svengali, but it’s even cooler when the members did it themselves.
I am pretty sure this is intentional. Customer service costs money, if you make most people hang up before they get connected to a rep you don’t need that many support reps in the first place. And this “music” sounds like a perfect way to get people to hang up ASAP in fear of damaging their hearing.
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As far as I can tell they are who they say they are.
This cover is their biggest hit because surf music on its own isn’t a lucrative business. But this cover got me interested in the rest of their stuff.
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I was all set to do a rambling muse about formant synthesis and the interesting alternate history of audio compression for telephony, but I think this disappointing explanation is probably the right one.
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yeah I knew it sounded just a little bit too awful to be the real version. I wonder what the copyright ramifications are of taking a derivative work that clearly includes elements of the original, and using that as your company’s hold music? Probably not legal at all I’d guess.
Cool. I didn’t think to look on Spotify. And they aren’t big enough to have a wikipedia page but I did find an article about their L.A. gigs. They needed sponsorship to be able to tour but they are their own group!
fyi The Spazmatics are an example of the bands I was referring to. The “characters”/“band members” are all “nerds” and have a pseudo-Devo costume theme and play 80s music. They do it well, I will admit, and put on a good show. At least the incarnation I saw did.
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I fried the dvd single on my dash …it didn’t like a certain chemical drop of alien juice
Sound alst that the signal was heavily amplifed and clipped, so the idea was to get an awful sound.
Besides number station sometimes are using bad quality tunes (somo of the off tune effect is due to the SSB demodulation and the fading of ionospheric propagation)
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It sure didn’t seem like it. Coincidentally, I just saw this (apparently deliberately horrific hold music intended to get people to hang up as quickly as possible is a thing):
Also:
Postmodern Jukebox is one of those rotating member bands (minus at least one core guy who does the arranging), but only tour with one lineup at a time. Those oldie bands that have split into multiple, simultaneously touring bands tend to have to do with fights over the name rights, with multiple original band members (or whoever it was who owned the band in the first place) either sharing them or coming up with seemingly identical variations. (Plus, the band names are valuable IP that sometimes outlive all the original members/owners, too.)
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To be fair, I wanted to replace the default hold music on my 3CX PBX and it took a few goes to understand what sub-set of my royality-free collection survived the compression. This could just as easily have been done by someone shoving their favourite tracks into the hold music and never having time to listen to what it sounds like. (Combined with a lack of process to move customer complaints through to somewhere they will be acted on.)
But such systems have a moral spectrum of their own, in which you cannot be simply dispatched or hung up on. The decision to end the call must be yours.
Not at all true. I’ve waited for 45 minutes or more on hold, only to have the system essentially say “We’re sorry, nobody is going to pick up. Goodbye.” and just hang up on me with no further explanation or opportunity to leave a message.
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Not really a prude, but THANK YOU for showing us this angle of the sculpture only.
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