In the recent Car Crash thread, Townsman dbuskirk revealed that he used have Mick Jagger’s comment about busting a button on his trousers, from Get Yer Ya Yas Out, as his outgoing voicemail message.
At one point, I had Junior Brown’s intro to “Party Lights” as my outgoing message (a cappella “I’m a guy who likes to party”). While living in San Francisco, for about a week after the big earthquake in ’89, my outgoing message was “That’s great, it starts with an earthquake” from R.E.M.‘s “End of the World As We Know It.”
On a blog full of rock nerds, Dan and I can’t be the only ones who have sunk to this level of geekiness. Come on, now is the time to fess up: What did you have? I know at least one of you had to have “Hanging on the Telephone.”
I don’t think I used a song per se, but back in my college days (and the week following Jerry Garcia’s death), my bandmate and I had this to say on our answering machine message:
“We can’t come to the phone as we are covering for Jerry Garcia on the latest leg of the Grateful Dead tour. Leave us a message…blah, blah, blah…”
TB
Mockcarr used to have a great message that employed a 12-string version of the opening to the Easybeats’ “I’ll Make You Happy.” Those of you who know the song will get this. It went something like:
I…
I’m not…
I’m not home…
I’m not home now…
etc. I thought it was quite clever.
When I had a physical answering machine, I used the first twelve seconds of so of Lick My Decals Off:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGbeMCTm0m4
I stopped the song right before the vocal would come in and gave my ‘leave a message after the beep’ salutation. Almost everyone I knew hated it, and messages to me would often begin with ‘You’ve GOT to do something about that answering machine music.’ But I think the music warded off people I didn’t want calling me anyway.
I don’t know why I picked that song, just because it’s close to my heart I guess, not because it has anything to do with the phone. Somehow I just think the Captain is good luck. I use images of him or his paintings as wallpaper on my computers too.
I never had the technical skills or patience to put together a fancy answering machine message, but I’m glad BigSteve broadened this discussion to rock-related computer screen wallpaper. Remember when we used to set our screens to go to sleep and just show a scrolling text message? I’m going back a good dozen year. If I was in a particularly disgruntled mood I’d “strike back” at The Man with a scrolling “People will always be tempted to wipe their feet/on anything with ‘Welcome’ written on it.” That really show ’em!
it was me, not Buskirk.
and it was from Gimmee Shelter, not Ya-Ya’s
Nez Nez
I had the theme from The Rockford Files and ended it with Rockford’s outgoing message (part of the intro) “This is Jim Rockford. At the tone, leave your name and number. I’ll get back to you.”
I stuck it to the man with the screen saver quote “Message of the hour, anger can be power.”
I stand half way corrected, shawnkilroy. I swear that Mick quip is on Ya Yas, which I think was recorded during the same tour.
Sammy, excellent choice. Love the Rockfish.
I used to have the beginning of “Advice to the Graduate” by the Silver Jews as my voicemail message, which is maybe a stupidly obvious pick given the lyrics:
If you got a message
Leave your name and number,
And we’ll get back to you.
In college, my roommies and I had a song that has this lyric, maybe you know it:
Who, who is it?
Who, who is it?
Who, who is it?
Who, who is it?
What is it?
What is it?
What is it?
What is it?
Oh baby it’s you!
(beep)
My work screen saver still betrays my Jersey roots as “What are YOU looking at?” scrolls by.
I think that Easybeats thing was when I was out of work fifteen years ago, with lots of time on my hands. When they fired me, I had the Who’s I’m Free on there for quite a while. I also did one using some Irish drinking song about the man who invented beer, where I just said “Carr” loudly right at the moment where the guy’s last name was.
Years ago we had an office in East Vancouver, the bad part of town. Our hold music was “Doin it Right on the Wrong Side of Town”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkzi4SMMUK4
shawnkilroy and cdm, you’re both technically right. Mick had his trouser problems about every night of the 69 tour.
I’ve always just had the voicemail robot saying whatever he says. The old tape machine I said the same thing he says, “No one is available to take your call. Please leave a message at the tone.” I had a friend that put ELO’s Telephone song on his, and that put me off ever doing it to someone else.
This really has nothing to do with anything, but one time one of my post college roommates stood up a girl on a date. She called, the machine picked up before he could, but he picked up too. The machine then recorded their conversation, her being pissed, him making *extremely* lame excuses. Then, for some reason – and no tampering happened – the machine went haywire and started playing this conversation as the outgoing message! I rushed home that day just to help the guy save some face, but a bunch of people heard it. Anyway…