Doorbells-a-Plenty

When I was much younger, my family lived across the street from this crazy alcoholic neighbor woman who used to walk into our house unannouced every morning to visit with my mother (this was back when people didn't lock doors). My siblings and I used to find this action quite rude (I don't remember my mother's feelings on the matter), and one day, as this neighborhood looney entered our house, my brother shouted out to her in a loud sing-song voice: "Ding, dong! We have a doorbell!" All of us kids had a good laugh over my brother's outburst, although I seem to recall he probably received a whipping from my mother for his behavior. I relive this memory whenever I pass the wide selection of doorbells in certain well-known, unnamed home improvement chain stores (they don't need any free advertising from me), usually trying out every one of the doorbells on display just to hear the different sounds. Sometimes I will compose little on-the-spot melodies by alternating the different tones and timbres of each doorbell, making crude attempts at creating an instrumental chorus or verse by repeating certain doorbell figures over and over. My guess is that this track, No One At Home, by Doktor Kosmos could have been composed by this same method. This amusing ditty is available on the Pop Tics compilation, released by the wonderful Bungalow label in Germany. I bought mine (used) at Amazon. If you yourself should ever decide to compose doorbell melodies in certain well-known, unnamed home improvement chain stores, be on the lookout for employees coming to scold you, because they have to hear these doorbells being rung all day long and the last thing they want is a pop obsessive attempting to write a Top 40 hit song in their department.