Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand

Primitive Radio Gods is essentially Chris O'Connor, who wrote, produced, sang, and played all the instruments on "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand." The song is rather mysterious, as is Chris. Most of what's known about him comes from a 2015 Songfacts interview, where he told his story. When asked what the song is about, he replied: "A light that never goes out."

The hook samples the line, "I've been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met" from a live performance of B.B. King singing "How Blue Can You Get?," which can be heard on his 1971 album Live in Cook County Jail. That song was written by a British songwriter/music journalist named Leonard Feather, along with his wife Jane. They each shared composer credits on "Phone Booth" as a result of the sample.

This song was written and first recorded in 1991 by Chris O'Connor. His band The I-Rails spent the back half of the '80s playing gigs around Santa Monica, California, releasing four independent albums along the way. When they broke up in 1991, O'Connor used his friend's garage studio to record the Rocket album, which cost about $1,000 to make and was filled with songs dealing with his disaffection. Predictably, he got no takers and the album sat on the shelf. O'Connor abandoned his music career and took a job as an air traffic controller at Los Angeles International Airport. In 1994, his passion for music returned, so he pressed 500 CDs of the album and sent them to independent record labels college radio stations. These unsolicited discs rarely found the ears of a decision-maker, but Jonathan Daniel, an A&R man at Fiction Records, popped it in and gave it a listen. "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth" jumped out at him - "It's got tons of atmosphere" he recalled. Daniel played the CD for some other executives, and O'Connor got a deal with the Ergo division of Columbia Records, which released the album as Primitive Radio Gods - a far more exotic moniker than "Chris O'Connor." Released in 1996, "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth" went to #1 on the Modern Rock charts and got considerable airplay on Top 40 radio. Needing a band to tour in support of the record, O'Connor enlisted his I-Rails bandmates, guitarist Jeff Sparks and drummer Tim Lauterio, to become the Primitive Radio Gods along with lead guitarist Luke McAuliffe. Sparks quit his day job - driving a beer truck - to join the band.