Michael Gross
Telephone Solicitor's Nightmare
Hilarious CD involving "torturing" unsuspecting telemarketers in a creative, non-offensive manner.
Telephone Solicitor's Nightmare is the product of a lifetime of imagination and experience with people. Humor has always been a part of my life, as has the ability to imitate people. I can't remember the first time that I thought of annoying a telemarketer, but I do remember how my family would laugh hysterically when I would "torture my victims" when they called. I began recording the conversations on a cheap, analog recorder. This first CD was entirely recorded on this analog recorder(except for Shakespeare), so I apologize for the inequality of volume on some tracts. despite my best efforts to
correct the sound quality differences, there are some uneven recordings. I included them, though, because they are very funny.
All the voices on the CD, with the exception of the telemarketers themselves, are mine and mine alone. people ask me how I came up with such ideas. They also ask me how much i planned the conversations. Being someone who has always imitated characters and people, I was just waiting to use some of my developed characters. Sometimes I had an idea of which character was going to speak to the telemarketer, but I often didn't have any idea what was going to be said (foreign friend I and II, old man, frenchman, cowboy, meditations, voice over, alien). After all, the input from the telemarketer played a crucial role in what I was going to say next. Other times, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say, nor did I have a character planned in advance (dinner for one, greta garbo, annoying sounds, paranoid). Even when I planned exactly my method of "torture" (sick guy, slow down, computer scientist, songwriter, Shakespeare, jerry), the response and input of the telemarketer always guided my reactions. In other words...improvisation, improvisation, improvisation.
Spoken Word: Prank Calls