“In the Year 2525”
Not out of date per se, but the predictions they make about technology and such seem to be greatly under-estimated by today’s standards, is all.
But the idea of exchanges being named (or represented by two letters) is obsolete. When’s the last time phone numbers were listed in a directory this way?
Ironic that though exchanges went by the wayside, we’re now spelling entire phone numbers with letters.
Um, wouldn’t that be PA, not PE?
I wonder if anyone tried to call the number back then. I heard it was Glenn’s phone number when he stayed there!
Hope he wasn’t staying there when the song came out!
Weird aside: while I was typing that last post, PA65000 was playing. Weird.
Not really. The first to letters of the word was used, not the state abbreviation, since the first word wasn’t always a state. Klondike 5 5500, would be 555-5500.
Wow, what radio station do you listen to that plays songs like that???
With this being the 20th anniversary of MTV this year, I was thinking that that stupid first song and video ever played on the station Video Killed the Radio Star is now obsolete. Especially since MTV has a policy against playing videos nowadays (at least it seems that way).
This morning there was some silly oldie on the radio, called “The Game of Love” I think. The chorus goes:
the purpose of a man is to love a woman,
the purpose of a woman is to - love a man
Well not every man and every woman really shares that feeling do they? I suppose that was always true, but I think if a band came out with that lyric today they might get tagged as “intolerant”.
Nope. Phone exchanges were always the first two letters.
It was the hotel switchboard. They probably were happy for the PR.
When Jett recorded the song, it had been years since jukeboxes cost a dime.
Actually, PEnnsylvania 6-5000 still is the phone number to the Hotel Pennsylvania. You can still call to make reservations.
None. It was on my CD player, and it was playing the Glenn Miller CD I have in there. Just thought it was weird that it was on THAT EXACT song, instead of another one, or hell, Tchaikovsky or Doctor Zhivago. Yes, I have strange tastes in music.
Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” about smoking banana peels was obsolete about 30 seconds after it was released in what was it? - 1966?
“eee-lec-trickle banana bound to be the very next phase.”
Nope
You sure about that? I seem to recall jukeboxes that would do a single play on a dime in the early '80s - I also remember well paying a dime for a phone call, and I was born in 1972. There was a jukebox that would do two songs for 25 cents in a pool hall I frequented in the early '90s, as well…
Let’s Get Away:
We’ll travel 'round from town to town,
And visit every state.
I’ll repeat “I love you, sweet”
In all the forty-eight…
I love that tune. Rockapella (the group that does the theme to Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?) did an updated version in which the back-up singers added a “plus two, hey” to that lyric. The second time around, they changed it to
Alaska, and Hawaii too,
Then all the forty-eight…
So there ya go.
Now I’m going to be humming that all day…
[sub]Let’s go again to Niagara/ This time we’ll look at the Fall/ Let’s leave our hut, dear/ Get out of our rut, dear/ Let’s get away from it all…[/sub]
The only one I can think of offhand should be familiar to you as well – GArfield 1-2323.
There was a Liz Taylor film, “Butterfield 8”, which I think was a telephone exchange reference.
Dirty Water by the Standells - The Charles is a lot cleaner than it was 35 years ago.
‘Free Nelson Mandela’ by Specials AKA but I think I’ve heard Jimmy Cliff do it too.
Also wasn’t ‘Fool on the Hill’ written about LBJ, the US president at the time? He was the fool on the hill because of the Vietnam involvement??? That’s obsolete because now we don’t have a fool on…oh wait… 
Just kidding!!!
Travis Tritt’s “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)”
Billy Joel’s “Modern Woman”
“Big Ten Inch (Record)” by Bull Moose Jackson
You just can’t work up the same sort of innuendo over a 3-inch CD.
This thread got me thinking about a now obsolete song that I really wish would have a “sequel” made for it. The song is “Nikita” by Elton John.
“…and if there comes a time
guns and gates no longer hold you in
and if you’re free to make a choice
just look towards the west and find a friend…”
Well the time that “guns and gates no longer hold you in” has come and passed. I would like to hear a follow-up song and it’s story.