The Old School Answering Machine Greeting

Before social media became a part of our everyday lives, there was something that can be attributed to the original Facebook profile:  The answering machine greeting.

Remember that ish?  For those born in the 90s and with cell phones in their hands, will never understand the cool factor the answering machine greeting played.  You also will never ever understand emergency breakthroughs or being on 3 way with a close friends that's a girl and her friend -- the girl you like -- and you quietly listening in like a ninja, unbeknownst to the girl, as your friend talks about how awesome you are at life and if she likes you.  Instead, you'll text the girl you like. Boo.

First things first, you needed to get your own phone line.  There is no way you can have that little hotty in home eck calling you for the first time, only to have Mom answer the phone.  FOH wit that shit.  Once you started getting hair in weird places, you needed your own phone line. Period. (pun intended) 

Once you got your sweet new cordless phone that most likely had a long metal antenna that would break every 2 months, you needed an answering machine.  This would be a large clunky device that took up way too much space for simple recording and playing messages.  The machine would most likely have a mini cassette and make very loud noises whenver it operated.  Regardless, once you got both you were good to go. 

Here is how it worked: 

1)  The song:  Pick an epic song.  Fast forward the cassette or CD to your favorite part.  This is the most important part. Ya couldn't just start your greeting with a song playing in a rando area.  Pleaaaase.  So once you found your perfect spot, you push play and then wait.   This is the part where the listener is like ohhhhh shit i love this song, OR is like what the fuck is this old played out shit.  This is why its sooooo important that you got this part right.  People will hang up. You don't want to be that guy.  After approximately 15-30 seconds of true music bliss, the mic is yours.

2) The greeting:  Just as Vanilla Ice finishes his first verse of Ice Ice Baby and breaks into chorus, you start to speak.  I would usually say something like this:

Yo, What's up this is Danny.  Leave a message and I'll get back to you.

in like a super suave, cool -- but not toooo cool -- kinda way.  (Like think R. Kelly smooth with Cisqo crazy)  I don't even say Yo but when it comes to the answering machine greeting, like Facebook, you could be whoever the hell you want!  That's the beauty of it.  Sometimes i would even throw in a 'Peace' at the end of my greeting because that's just how i roll.

 

3) The closing:  After the crowd pleasing greeting, you let that music play the fuck outta here until the greeting allowed time is up.  Shit if there is no max greeting time, then you let that mutha play for at least another minute if its good.

This is it.  Its that simple. 

You would know if you struck gold by a) people commenting on your greeting in their message  or people waiting through the entire greeting and then hanging up when it beeps. You'll know its awful if nobody is calling you anymore.

Those who knew me back in the day would know that this was my original youtube channel as I would use the greeting for my funny shtick by singing songs and doing funny shit.  This is another one of my Al Bundy moments of my childhood.  Dam it sucks being old.

Yo. This is Danny. Im outta here..  Peace

beeeeeeep..