We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming about thieves on Wall Street, bad weather and that football game to bring you this important announcement about Spencer Potter’s decision to sell his telephone number on eBay, the song that inspired him and the half-life of pop culture fame.Indeed. You know you're tempted.
The phone number is (201) 867-5309. The song is “867-5309/Jenny.” The half-life business you have to figure out on your own.
Our story begins one spring morning in 1981, when a musician named Alex Call was sitting under a plum tree in Marin County, Calif., hoping to write something that sounded like the Kinks or the early Stones.
He came up with four chords (E minor/C/G/A), seven numbers and one name. A friend, Jim Keller, who was in a band called Tommy Tutone, helped him figure out what the song was about and they had fun with it, assuming it would never see the light of day. If you are under 65 and have ever turned on a radio, for better or worse you know the rest.
One day five years ago, Mr. Potter, who was living in Weehawken, N.J., and working as a disc jockey for weddings and parties, needed a phone number for his business. On a lark he asked if 867-5309 was available. To his surprise, it was. It seemed like a great deal for a music-oriented business — the most famous musical phone number (though you might get arguments from fans of Glenn Miller’s “PEnnsylvania 6-5000” or the Marvelettes’ “Beechwood 45789”) as his very own business signature.
Instead, it was something of a disaster. Almost as soon as he plugged the phone in, it began ringing off the wall.
And so it continues. Maybe it’s those Cingular commercials, but the song came out when Ronald Reagan was president. You would think the jokes would get old.
But no, he still gets about 30 calls a day: from drunks at bars, from the guy at the auto body shop in Odessa, Tex.; from Alyssa, 15, and her mom, Janice, on their way back from cheerleading practice in Morris County; from hapless collection agencies unlikely to ever get their money; from Leah, 13, in North Bergen whose friend Tyler told her to call; from bored cold callers who figure, why not?
Give him a call.
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