This was a strange, almost chaotic sounding recording. My intention was to capture the sound of Street Mule, a subway musician, as heard through a nearby payphone at the Times Square subway station. I caught Street Mule all right but for the first couple of minutes after the call connected there was a chaotic blender of sound from a phone call gone wrong. The call connected but for some reason it was intruded upon by what is called The Howler. The Howler is the harsh sound a landline phone makes when it has been off the hook too long. This phone was indeed off the hook but with the call connected it should not have been interrupted by The Howler.
This glitch might have signaled the death throes of this payphone, which I’ve used countless times to capture the sounds of nearby subway buskers and general sounds from the Times Square subway station. This recording was made about three months ago. The payphone has not worked since. There appear to be no working payphones inside the station. One phone that still had a dial tone but a coin jam made it impossible to make a coin-paid call.
The largest collection of payphones under one roof in New York today is probably at Penn Station, the beleaguered transit hub currently undergoing extensive renovations. The Long Island Railroad waiting area is particularly rife with payphones, and from what I could tell recently most of them at least had dial tone. A dial tone does not always mean you will be able to make a call but it’s a good sign.
It was at Penn Station on Sunday where I caught more audio of Street Mule. I had not seen or heard him at Penn Station before. I had the intention of purchasing one of his CDs but with absolutely no cash on me I could not follow through. Next time. I think he sounds good in this take, free of The Howler.
This picture shows the highly sophisticated sound system setup for making this recording. The nearby payphone hangs in the air as the musician performs (he happened to be in between songs at this moment).
The number for the payphone on the right is (212) 502-5725, a number listed on this page of the Payphone Project’s mostly historical listings of payphone numbers and their locations.
Needless to say a payphone handset is not a high performance audio capture device. Still, I’ve been surprised at how well some of these things capture nuances of ambient sounds and music. I will be using payphones to capture sounds like this until there are no payphones left.
Until a couple of years ago the dubious distinction of having the most payphones under one roof in NYC probably belonged to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which as recently as February of last year housed an astonishing quantity of about 100 working (albeit unused) payphones. Today at the Port Authority you will find zero payphones.