I happened to capture this subway busker last week, performing at the 34th Street Herald Square subway station. The audio was recorded using a TTY payphone located off the right hand side of the turnstiles. Coming home from a party in Red Hook I was too beered up to remember to catch the performer’s name, as I usually try to do. I intend to add this and similar stuff to Payphone Radio, the Shoutcast stream I’ve published in one form or other since 2010. At present the content at Payphone Radio is entirely me talking, but the playlist should include some music like this as well.

I love the crackly, rugged sound of loud music heard through a landline telephone. I’ve tried making recordings such as this using LinkNYC kiosks which are replacing payphones. There has not been much opportunity, since kiosks are seldom placed near a live music event. But when I was able to connect a kiosk to a live performance the call recording quality was consistently garbage. I would not expect to continue my Payphone Radio when LinkNYC kiosks have finally replaced every single payphone in town.

As a listener to my own content I find that Payphone Radio is at times interesting. But other times it is boring, depressing, and confusing. Welcome to my world, and welcome to the world of relying on public telephones for reliable production of this sort of thing. A lot of my narratives go unresolved because some calls simply do not arrive in the voicemail box, or else it sounded like the call went through but for whatever reason it never did. Other times audio quality of the call is so poor that it’s almost unintelligible.

Payphone Radio is where I spoke openly about my LinkNYC Street Theater shenanigan while it was happening. Listen in and see/hear what you think. The Radionomy player is at the right of the headline on this and every other page at this website.