“However”, he continued, “the owners of Jacks graciously invited me to watch the game on tv. I could not get that strange coincidence out of my mind”, Bayiokos recalled. And that was just where the championship game would be played. “I was very tempted to join the “Gloria’’ fans in Boston, because, that’s the city where Laura sang the song for the last time. Louis Blues went on to a 4-1 victory, in front of a stunned and unhappy arena of Boston Bruins’ fans, who, you can bet, were not fans of the song “Gloria”.īayiokos, though, decided that there was a more fitting place than TJ Garden for him to watch the game that night, even though his heart was somewhat torn. “And inspire them they did”, Bayiokos added, “The St. Louis to the game, and from face- off at the centerline to the final buzzer they sang “Gloria” to inspire their underdog team. “Fast forward 15 years from the Italian Festival in Boston to the Seventh Game of the NHL Finals in TJ Garden, just a couple of miles away,” recalled Bayiokos. However, it would not be the last time that a large Boston crowd -albeit this one mostly less joyous- would hear that great tune again. But little did I know that it would be the last time that Laura, who died just weeks later, would sing “Gloria” ever again. The crowd stretched out for several long blocks, and they danced and sang along as Laura belted out her great tune, as well as several others of her past hits. Laura and I had flown from New York to Boston to perform at an annual Italian Street Festival. “The city was Boston”, Bayiokos continued, “and the date was July 16, 2004. As Bayiokos, 55, explained to me during a recent phone conversation, “There was an amazing and mostly unreported poetic irony attached to the last time in her life that Laura sang the song “Gloria” and, also attached to the city in which she last performed it, and to a hockey team that used the tune as its inspiration’’. However, there is an eerie and astounding part of the story which has remained almost totally unknown- at least until now.Īnd for learning about it, and possibly making you stay up at night thinking about it, you can thank (or blame) an actor and musician named Tommy Bayiokos, Branigan’s former boyfriend and a drummer in her band. Louis Blues captured that Stanley Cup and continuing to this day. That miraculous come from behind saga and the singer and the song that inspired it has been a favorite topic of conversation for sports writers, hockey fans and so many others from so many other walks of life, beginning almost the moment after the St. The Blues defeated the Flyers the next night, and from there went on a very unlikely, very long winning streak, which culminated on June 12, 2019, in Boston’s TJ Garden, when the once pathetic team defeated the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the championship finals to win the Stanley Cup. While listening to the DJ, a guy named Matt Cella, playing “Gloria” over and over again- sometimes 5 shots in a row- the players decided to make the tune the then sorry team’s “victory song”. The night before a road game against the Philadelphia Flyers, a few of the Blues’ players stopped off at a popular Philadelphia pub called “The Jacks NYB”. The Blues, which had the worst record in the NHL in early January, 2019, had their fortunes change starting late that month. The song was titled “Gloria”, Branigan’s 1982 signature tune, which stayed on the top of the pop charts for 36 weeks and secured her nomination for a coveted Grammy Award. The singer was the late Laura Branigan, the American pop vocalist, songwriter and actress whose award -winning disco style songs played seemingly non-stop over the radio from the early 1980’s into the early 2000’s, and who tragically died in her sleep of a brain aneurysm on August 26, 2004, at the age of 52. Hockey fans and fans of the underdogs of all sports and other walks of life might well recall the improbable true tale of a singer, her song and a then pathetic hockey team which after adopting the melody as their call to arms went on to win a championship.
0 kommentar(er)
