Touch-Tone Terrorists


The Touch-Tone Terrorists is a series of prank phone calls comedy CDs.

About

The Touch-Tone Terrorists are actually one man, Pete Dzoghi who also goes by the name of "RePete". He purchased a series of 1-800 numbers, including ones that were one digit different than actual customer service numbers for companies such as UPS, an oil change business, an auto insurance "claims support line", a psychic hotline, a pen manufacturer, a bank, department store, phone company, and others. Using a Gentner SPH-3A telephone hybrid and a Yamaha SPX-90 electronic pitch transposer to alter his voice over the phone, he would take incoming calls from people who had misdialed the number and were under the assumption that they had dialed the right number. He created a series of ridiculous exaggerated characters, all of which were voiced by him.
Several Touch-Tone Terrorists calls were featured on Crank Yankers on Comedy Central and MTV2, most notably the Yankerville Parcel Service calls.
At one point UPS tried to stop the sale of the Touch-Tone Terrorists CDs through a series of letters demanding, among other things, that all inventory of Infestation Records' CDs be "delivered" to UPS lawyers "for destruction", because UPS believed that many of the TTT calls involved customers who thought they were speaking to UPS customer service representatives. Infestation Records refused to comply on the basis that the CDs are a protected parody and the calls were recorded legally. RePete consulted with several attorneys regarding various legal issues to make sure that what he was doing was within legal grounds. All subjects give their permission to have their voices on the CDs, and were "paid well."
Pete Dzoghi was also a frequent guest on Howard Stern's radio show, once in person, but usually called upon to crank call Howard Stern staff and Wack Pack members, such as Crazy Alice, and High Pitch Eric.
When Howard Stern first began airing Touch-Tone Terrorists, the album A Permanent Lapse of Reason peaked as high as #5 on Amazon.com's hot 100 albums.
RePete says he has retired from recording prank calls, as he claims the process of recording and releasing the calls as well as dealing with illegal file sharing of his tracks require over two years of full-time work. When the fifth album, Customer Care Creeps, was released, RePete also recorded an alternative, staged version of the calls in which he himself voiced the caller's voices. Many people thought these fake calls were the actual album, but RePete stated that the staged calls were not the real album but rather those that were propagated on illegal P2P file sharing networks. RePete also says on his website that he can no longer legally record the calls that he used to record due to changes in the law in his home state of California.

Characters