Tommy Tutone - 867-5309/Jenny

FYI, Tommy Tutone was a band; alphabetize under Tommy. Not quite a one-hit wonder, but surely remembered as one. 867-5309 is easily the most popular phone number from my childhood. I was even in a cover band that used to play the song - it's actually a lot of fun to play, too. As far as I know, the 45 and LP are the same, and there was no 12" version.

It took until 1993 for the song to finally appear on CD.

As far as I can tell, its first appearance on CD was on a cheapie Sony collection called Hard Rocking '80s (1993). There were plenty of CDs that all use the same analog transfer as Hard Rocking '80s:

• Sony's Richard Blade's Flashback Favorites Vol. 5 (1993; differently-EQ'd digital clone and tiny amount of compression added)
• Time-Life's 2-CD Rock Dreams (1993; fade is a second or two shorter)
• Razor & Tie's 2-CD Totally '80s (1993; fade is a second or two shorter)
• Sony's 2-CD Read The Hits (1994; differently-EQ'd digital clone)
• Warner Special Products' Eighteen Screamers From The '80s (1995)
• Sony's Living In The '80s (1995; differently-EQ'd digital clone)
• Realm's 3-CD Greatest Hits Of The '80s Vol. 1 (1995; differently-EQ'd digital clone)
• Sony's Rock Almanac Vol. 1 The 1980s (1995; differently-EQ'd digital clone)
• Warner Special Products' 2-CD Punk (1996)

All of the above sound pretty good.

Bill Inglot did a new analog transfer for Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 5 (1994). There are a few discs that use the same analog transfer as Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 5:

• Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 5 1982 (1994; differently-EQ'd digital clone)
• Time-Life's 2-CD Modern Rock Vol. 2 1980-1981 (1999; digitally exactly 1 dB quieter than Sounds Of The Eighties)
• Rhino's 7-CD Like Omigod (2002; too loud and clips a lot - avoid)

All but Like Omigod sound very good. Actually, to my ears, there's really not much difference in sound quality between the first batch and the Rhino batch.

Some outliers to avoid:

• Cema's Greatest Hits Of The 80's Vol. 6 The Decade Of Excess (1994 - too loud, clips a lot)
• swaitek's 50-CD The A List Disc 13 (1994; taken from vinyl and has NR)
• Madacy's Rock On 1982 Vol. 2 (2005 - WAY too loud)

For sound quality, I'm using Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 5 (1994), but I think you'll be pleased with anything in the first two batches that I listed.

Edited by crapfromthepast

Doug - I don't have that one, but I'd bet it's another
clone of Hard Rockin' '80s. If you send me a wav
file of an excerpt from the song, I can check for you.

Thanks Ron!