Traditions
The Blues have a tradition of live organ music. Jeremy Boyer, the Blues organist, plays a Glenn Miller arrangement of W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" before games in its entirety and a short version at the end of every period followed by "When the Saints Go Marching In." Boyer also plays a rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In" on the organ after Blues goals, although most longtime fans replace the word 'Saints' with 'Blues'. Boyer is the only organist in the NHL to play the teams goal song live after each goal. The Blues were one of the last teams to add a goal horn, during the 1992-93 season at the St. Louis Arena. All of these traditions carried over to the Kiel Center (currently known as Scottrade Center) in 1994. After each goal, a bell is rung and each of the goals are counted by the crowd. Since 1990, Ron Baechle, a graphic artist, also known as the Towel Man, Towel Guy or Towel Boy) has celebrated each goal by counting with the bell and throwing a towel into the crowd.
The team also has a long tradition of fan-produced programs, sold outside the arena and providing an often biting, sarcastic, humor filled alternative to team/league produced periodicals. The longest-running fan publication, Game Night Revue, was created by a group of fans in the mold of the Chicago Blackhawks' Blue Line Magazine. It operated for over 10 years, from 1994 to 2005, when its owner decided not to resume the magazine after the 2004–05 NHL lockout (one final oversized "goodbye" issue was distributed the first two home games of the 2005-2006 season). After hockey resumed in 2005, a few months after GNR's final issue, a new publication, St. Louis Game Time, was formed by several former GNR staffers.
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Famous quotes containing the word traditions:
“I think a Person who is thus terrifyed [sic] with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“... the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Napoleon never wished to be justified. He killed his enemy according to Corsican traditions [le droit corse] and if he sometimes regretted his mistake, he never understood that it had been a crime.”
—Guillaume-Prosper, Baron De Barante (1782–1866)