Phone Calls From The Dead

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song name	Phone Calls from the Dead
artist	They Might Be Giants
releases	Unreleased
year	2007
first played	March 10, 2007 (66 known performances)
run time	This unreleased song has only been played live, and therefore has no definitive run time.
sung by	John Flansburgh; John Linnell

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Trivia/Info

• A segment that premiered during The Else's warm-up tour. It begins with a musical introduction, and then Flansburgh heads offstage with a wireless microphone. Linnell then informs the crowd that they've 'run a phone line out to the graveyard', and are taking calls and questions from beyond the grave (possibly an allusion to the classic Twilight Zone episode, "Night Call"). Flansburgh speaks in a high falsetto and pretends to be the dead celebrity for the remainder of the segment. At the segment's premiere, he took on the role of Eleanor Roosevelt.
• The dead celebrity will often mention other dead celebrities, such as Tom Snyder or Andy Warhol.
• At a few specific shows, the voice of the dead caller is represented by a trumpet sound on John Linnell's keyboard, with which John Flansburgh has a conversation. Flansburgh often states that the dead caller in question did the voice of all adults in the Peanuts TV specials.
• List of callers so far:
  • Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Calvin Coolidge
  • Emily Dickinson
  • Bret Eastman Kodak (fictional writer)
  • Sally Hemings
  • James Buchanan
  • Uncle Sam
  • John Lindsay
  • Frank Bogart (fictional dead president of Columbia Records)
  • Molly Pitcher
  • Jerry Orbach
  • Edgar Allan Poe
  • Buddy Ebsen

Videos

• Watch it on  – Recorded live on May 5, 2007 by Vinylboy20; Emily Dickinson.
• Watch it on  – Recorded live on May 11, 2007 by kayakcup; Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Watch it on  – Recorded live on June 16, 2007 by TDK; Uncle Sam.
• Watch it on  – Recorded live on July 18, 2007 by kayakcup; John Lindsay

Current Rating You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today. Phone Calls From The Dead is currently ranked #510 out of 1035. (18 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.28)