This week's Twitter round-up - Feb 28

Some recent links and notes we posted to Twitter over the past couple of weeks. Check out my live feed here.

1. RT @CanadaCool: Brian Williams of NBC left behind a thank-you note to Canada: http://bit.ly/dCsvPh VIA @smalltownpete
2. Watching CTV, just learned their promo voiceover guy is Lee Marshall, who has a very interesting resume http://bit.ly/b51fri
3. RT @MuppetNewsflash: A Fraggle perspective on curling -- http://bit.ly/ch9ERK
4. Quiet please, we're curling http://bit.ly/cMGC5S
5. Karma pays back the raptor for eating a cheerleader http://bit.ly/dBio46
6. RT @humplik: The BEST video clip you'll see today. I promise. Thanks @kennyhotz. http://ow.ly/1pffM0
7. What's your pick for the top moment is Daniel Alfredsson's career? http://tinyurl.com/ya8h9ww
8. Muk Muk rally for full mascot status at Vancouver 2010 http://bit.ly/aILUXO
9. Article about the new 22,000-seat arena in Louisville Kentucky http://tinyurl.com/yftvkz3
10. Best figure skating routine ever: Chris Farley on SNL. http://bit.ly/aeIMdX "Pump up the jam they will."
11. More mascots eating cheerleaders (SFW) http://bit.ly/95ZAV0
12. Awesome video: Canadian men's hockey team raps http://tinyurl.com/yeq83yg
13. Nicely done. RT @6thSens: Memorable Senators hair. http://bit.ly/bdEo6P
14. RT @CanadaCool: Curling today! Ten Great Songs About the Sport (who knew?) http://bit.ly/aKr2ci VIA @justkarl
15. Zamboni company disavows any connection to Richmond's malfunctioning ice-resurfacing machines http://tinyurl.com/ygze9hq
16. If you enjoy watching mascots eat cheerleaders, here's another video for you http://bit.ly/a0xMx0
17. Not suprisingly that "failed marriage proposal" at the NY Rangers game yesterday was indeed a hoax http://bit.ly/akQ8ed

This week's Twitter round-up

I'm posting less and less to this blog, and using Twitter more and more for short links & comments. Starting this week, each Sunday I'll post some of the "best of" stuff from my Twitter feed. You can check it out (no subscription required) at http://twitter.com/glengower/

• RT @Ottawa67sHockey: Valentine's Day Rose Ceremony for the player's Moms' http://yfrog.com/1dqaulsj (via @pajoho)
  
• Interesting read re: technology at the new Penguins arena in Pittsburgh http://bit.ly/8ZOa4E
  
• More about that 50/50 technology: http://5050central.com/
  
• Video: the future of the 50/50 draw (unlike other videos tweeted tonight, this one is actually serious) http://bit.ly/aazCOz
  
• Covering all your stadium favourites: We Are The Champions (another bizarre video) http://bit.ly/cQ2XfY
  
• How come nobody told me about this before? http://www.yourmascotsucks.com/
  
• Raptor devours cheerleader http://bit.ly/9Z24vh
• Scoreboard will be lowered to 62 feet above the court. http://tinyurl.com/ygyaojz
  
• NBA All-Star game in Dallas: The stadium’s video scoreboard, at 72 feet tall and 160 feet long, is twice as large as the court
  
• Sens TV: Pre-game ceremony featuring Olympics players from both the Sens and the Caps http://tinyurl.com/yfe3zlh
  
• Sens TV: Gordie Howe gets a standing ovation last night at the Sens game: http://tinyurl.com/yf9fchk
  
• NiWoTa, who do a lot of video animation for the Sens, just launched a new web site http://tinyurl.com/ydkjej3
  
• Auditions this Saturday to become a president @ Washington Nationals http://gameops.com/wp/2010/02/11/racing/
  
• http://twitpic.com/12imm3 - Best teaser photo EVER on OttawaSenators.com today (Ruutu)
  
• Song of the Day: "The Power", as covered by The Apples http://bit.ly/3lGPc2
• My Little Pony Glue Factory: http://bit.ly/bJ5nCv This season's hottest gift
  

New York Times article about New Jersey Devils organist

Nice article about Pete Cannarozzi, the arena organist for the New Jersey Devils: Devils’ Organist Remains Part of Arena’s Rhythm. Some highlights from the article:

Hockey was once played to the sole accompaniment of an organ: the mighty Barton, its pipes built into the walls of the old Chicago Stadium; Gladys Gooding playing “Rangers Victory Song” at the old Madison Square Garden; Paul Newman storming into the booth of the Charlestown Chiefs’ arena in the film “Slap Shot” to tear up the sheet music and demand of the organist, “Don’t ever play ‘Lady of Spain’ again!”

...

“I am absolutely a firm believer in what the organ means to hockey,” said Lou Lamoriello, the Devils’ general manager. “It adds so much atmosphere and flavor. Younger fans want rock music, videos, and we accommodate them. But I hope we never lose sight of the traditions of hockey and what organ music adds to the experience.”

...

Once the game starts, the Devils also use plenty of recorded music and scoreboard videos, but Cannarozzi still plays. He exhorts the crowd with a four-note “Let’s go, Devils” chant; accompanies an announcement about snack stands with “Food, Glorious Food,” from the musical “Oliver!”; and fills the time during a video goal review with the theme from “Jeopardy!”

“The main thing about the job is to get the crowd pumped up during the game, and entertain the audience,” said Cannarozzi, a longtime studio musician and musical director for Ashford & Simpson.

Kyle Hankins, the Nashville Predators’ organist, said: “We help underscore the hockey game in real time, just as any composer would do for a Broadway show or jazz pianist would do at the Blue Note. You can’t get that flexibility out of a CD or MPEG. Also, the timbre is comfort food to the ears that carries some nostalgia for young and old alike. Listening works a lot better than trying to shove a hot dog down your ear canal.”

Paul Cartier, an air-traffic controller and the Yankees’ organist, has been the Islanders’ organist off and on since 1979. He has seen a lot of changes.

“It used to be just me and the P.A. announcer, nothing else,” Cartier said of entertaining crowds at Nassau Coliseum during the Islanders’ Stanley Cup dynasty in the early 1980s. “It was awesome. I probably did a full 15 or 20 songs a night, and all the chant stuff. On some stoppages I didn’t even do anything; sometimes I let it just breathe.

“That doesn’t happen anymore. It’s all recorded, no dead space allowed. Now I’ll play two or three songs, tops. The only time I get to play a full song is when someone gets injured.”

The rise of prerecorded music at N.H.L. games dates to the mid-1980s. The Devils announcer Mike Emrick told the story of Mike Keenan, then coach of the Flyers, who signaled the game director in Philadelphia to crank up the rock music to pump up his players during warm-ups.

...

“It all depends on whether your producer likes organ music,” said Larry Olsen, the Carolina Hurricanes’ organist since 2000. Olsen said that his producer, Pete Soto, was a longtime Rangers fan who appreciated the organ’s place in a hockey game.

“The younger ones tend to like sound effects more,” Olsen said. “Some teams have laid off their organists for budgetary reasons, and because they figure the effects will do the job.”

But some organists detect a comeback for their music.

Jeremy Boyer, the Blues’ organist, said: “Here in St. Louis, the team toyed with the idea of changing the goal song to ‘Crowd Chant’ by Joe Satriani and replacing the traditional goal song, ‘When the Blues Go Marching In,’ played on the organ. When the team put the songs to a vote on its Web site, the St. Louis fans voted for the organ playing after goals in a landslide.”

An organist can come in handy in an emergency, as when a bank of lights failed here on Jan. 8, causing a 100-minute delay before the game was postponed.

“We had to wait for the N.H.L. to make a ruling on what to do,” Cannarozzi said. “In the meantime, we had to entertain everyone, so we went round robin: videos, ads, Dave doing a couple of prerecorded songs, me playing a couple of songs. It was a lot to do for an hour and 40 minutes.

“In the meantime, people were coming up to us and asking us what was happening,” he added. “They were almost hostile. So I played ‘We Are Family,’ ‘Thanks for the Memories.’ I tried to keep it light and up."

Florida Panthers host Yoga Night

From The Business of Sport:

The Florida Panthers are getting in on the yoga craze helping to celebrate Yoga Day USA on Jan. 23. Panthers Yoga Day includes a 90-minute yoga instruction session before the Panthers-Toronto Maple Leafs game that night.

Tickets are $20 for the game and the yoga, which starts at 4:30 p.m. Bring your own yoga mat and change of clothes and stay for the game in an upper level seat at BankAtlantic Center. Already have a ticket to the game? It’s just $10 more for the yoga class.

A promo for every day of the week

Here's an interesting gameday promotion from the Trenton Thunder, a minor league baseball team in New Jersey. This season, they have a different theme night for every day of the week, all season long.

• Kids Eat Free Mondays – great for bring families out to the game
• $1 Dog Tuesdays – A favorite marketing tactic for any cost-conscious buyers
• Wacky Wednesdays – Theme nights designed for those that want more than just baseball entertainment when they come to a game
• Thirsty Thursdays – Beer specials and fireworks, who doesn’t enjoy that?
• Family Fun Fridays – Giveaways and fireworks, again geared toward family consumers, but without any discounting involved
• Fireworks Spectacular Saturdays – Another way to generate excitement for the less baseball-obsessive customers (who would come to games anyway)
• Kids Rule Sundays – Giveaways, youth entertainers, opportunity for kids to run the bases, and a free ticket incentive for Kids Club members (which can boost sales of their $15 kids membership club

(via The Business of Sport)

More organ notes

Here's a web page about Dan Wheeler, organist and music director for the Wheeling Nailers, and a guy who infamously for got tossed out of a game for playing "Three Blind Mice" after a bad call from the refs:

In a play-off game in this first season Dan was ejected from a game for taunting the officals with the song "Three blind mice". The game was being televised in Canada and ESPN sports. The ousting from the game made front page news and was picked up by wire services nationwide, making Dan the first organist in professional hockey history to ever be ejected from a game. A letter was directed to him from the commissioner of the league warning him and the team of a $500.00 fine and a bench minor penalty. Couch Doug Sauter commented along with the local papers that Dan was a important part of the team and fired up the crowds with his music.

And here's an article from SLAM! Sports about Horace Lapp, the original organist at Maple Leaf Gardens. (Read more about the original Maple Leaf Gardens organ here.)

In the early 1950s, my dad took me south from New Liskeard to visit family in Mimico. Uncle had tickets for a Leafs-Bruins game, and so, an excited teenager's first streetcar ride was to the Gardens.

The moment we entered the shrine, I could both hear and feel Horace.

Scaling the heights to greys in a corner, I couldn't care less how bad the seats were, the girder in front of us a shared obstruction. Lapp was playing La Golondrina (The Swallow) as the teams warmed up, swooping and gliding over the ice. With the power of the Mighty Wurlitzer organ at his command, his glorious sound resonated through the very wood beneath you, shivering your timbers.

Now and forever, it was the ultimate in piped-in noise.

I recall hearing a few bars of the Skaters Waltz during a protracted brawl, an abbreviated chorus of You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby as a combatant headed to the dressing room trailing blood from a high stick to the chops. Other than that, Horace restricted himself to playing mini-concerts between periods, an early apostle of less-is-more, no surprise that one of his first gigs was accompanying silent films.

Leafs owner Harold Ballard ripped out both the portrait of the Queen and the Mighty Wurlitzer from the end zones to make way for more seats, claiming they weren't paying the freight. Pal Hal ushered in an era of on-the-cheap, amateur organists who couldn't carry Horace Lapp's jockstrap in a bushel basket.

Where once silence was golden -- the game the thing -- we now find ourselves talking about whether the loudmouths who have taken over the airwaves and the sound systems should be further allowed to distort reality, to crank up the volume to unbearable levels.

Speaking for old guys, we have the option of tuning out or turning down the sound on our hearing aids. But even your Billy Bobs from Barrie recognize aural manipulation when they hear it. I recommend as an antidote Horace Lapp's version of Your Cheating Heart between whistles.

A bit about the evolution of PA announcing in sports

The Toronto Argonauts of the CFL hired a new PA Announcer last year. The Toronto Star had a short article that touched a bit on how the job of stadium/arena PA announcer has evolved:

When the Argos began their search for a new announcer, Nathan Downer was at the top of their shortlist. The professionally trained voice that can go from deep and authoritative to booming and excited? Check. Toronto sports (and especially Argo-centric) background? He counts the team's 1982 return to the Grey Cup as a cherished sporting memory. Add experience as sports director for the Flow 93.5, and his present position, and there's some recognition factor there.

That, and, of course, a personal style, deepens the longer Downer, or anyone for that matter, stays in these kind of positions. Andy Frost, who replaced the legendary Paul Morris as the Leafs' house voice a decade ago, can't open his mouth without the potential for one of those "Hey, aren't you...?" moments.

"It happens constantly – I'm in a store and I say something and people recognize the voice," said Frost, who was among upwards of 100 (some say as many as 300) to be considered to fill Morris's estimable vocal cords. "Sometimes it's, `Hey Andy, call a Sundin goal for us!' That's usually young kids."

There's more to it than uttering "last minute of play in the period." Accompanying Downer on his dress rehearsal night – a pre-season game – was a huge file of sponsors' announcements, timing notes and lineups. A spotter sits at his side, because, as he says, "you're going through this page by page – then you look up and there's the game going on. You can't lose track of that."

For the generation around when the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup, Morris's deadpan delivery was the gold standard. In a pro sports environment where glitzy packaging and "Make Some Noise" messages on the Jumbotron are the norm, the Morris model is emulated nowadays in fewer and fewer spots.

"A lot of teams are looking for people to be a little bit more of a cheerleader in some ways – guys like John Mason in Detroit (with the Pistons)," said Jon Cudo of gameops.com. "It's part of the NBA's entertainment model going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, which other sports have picked up on."

...

It is not quite anything-goes, though. This remains very much a boys' club, the San Francisco Giants' Renel Brooks-Moon the only woman working as a PA announcer in big-time North American sports.

Promotions round-up #287

• GameOps.com handed out its Best of 2009 Promotion Award to two winners this year: The Cleveland Cavaliers "Lebron's Powder Toss Night" and the Bowling Green Hot Rods' "What Could Have Been Night"
  
  Lebron Powder Toss Night: "Masters of marketing their athletes, Nike partnered with the Cavaliers to help them promote the debut of the LeBron XI shoes for the Christmas Day Game. As LeBron James performed his pregame routine of tossing hand chalk into the air, the sellout crowd threw packets of white confetti aloft with him, creating a blizzard-like effect inside Quicken Loans Arena. The theatrical stunt was to promote James’ new Nike “Chalk” shoe, one of several variations he has worn this season."
  
  What Could Have Been Night: ..."The fledgling Bowling Green Baseball Club held a name-the-team contest to determine what moniker it would employ during its inaugural 2009 campaign. Hot Rods emerged victorious, but "Cave Shrimp" proved to be a surprisingly popular choice (Mammoth Cave, in close proximity to Bowling Green, is home to a sightless albino species known as Kentucky Cave Shrimp). The unexpected popularity of the "Cave Shrimp" name led to "What Could've Been Night." On this evening of alternate reality, the club wondered "What Could've Been" had Cave Shrimp been the team's nickname"
  
  
• Cameron "Superfan" Hughes, who got his start dancing & throwing t-shirts back at the Civic Centre for the Ottawa Senators, was hired by Pepsi to promote their "Eh! O Canada! Go!" chant at the World Juniors. Puck Daddy has an interview...
  
  
• Partnership Activation has a great idea started: The 100 Hottest Promotional Items in Sports
  

Dallas Mavericks host a Baby Race

Hey look, the Dallas Mavericks did a Baby Race promotion earlier this year. One of these days I`ll get around to adding our old Ottawa 67`s Baby Race footage to YouTube...

Better late than never: Fun NHL Christmas videos

• San Jose Sharks Christmas card video
• Boston Bruins gift giving video