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After six months of cleverly worded ditties and covers of famous songs, Hannigan’s Hits are in hiatus.
The series of promotional music spoofs designed to highlight upcoming University of Maine hockey games certainly took on a life of its own as more and more listeners of Bangor Black Bear flagship radio station WZON (620 AM) came to eagerly await the next one each week.
“I think we’ve touched a nerve,” said Black Bear hockey radio voice Dan Hannigan, also voice and producer of the spots. “It was very well received and I was very happy to see how people reacted to them.”
Hannigan, along with WZON anouncer Pat Spekhardt, came up with the idea to spoof certain songs in promotional spots advertising upcoming Maine games.
“We call them the Maine hockey musicals,” said Hannigan, who had done musical parodies before, but never for promos. “They were a lot of fun. We had more laughs coming up with this than anything we’ve done.”
An unexpected bonus occurred when listeners began calling the station to either compliment or critique Hannigan’s creations, which ran the gamut from Glenn Miller songs to Tom Petty, Frank Sinatra, and even obscure groups such as the Vapors.
“It was fun to brainstorm. I think we did everything but rap, because I really don’t think I could have pulled that off,” Hannigan said with a chuckle.
Some of Hannigan’s favorites include Subterranean Friar Blues, sung to the tune of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, Wildcat Strut (The Stray Cats’ Stray Cat Strut), and Swing Lowell (for Swing Low Sweet Chariot).
The idea was to feature Maine’s opponent in the parody and insert lyrics about how Maine would be victorious against them.
“We tried to look for a theme or a title of a song that coincided with the upcoming series,” Hannigan explained. “It was just a funny kind of thing and something we could really get creative with.”
Hannigan may have spoofed real songs, but he did all the music and vocals himself. That meant laying down anywhere from four to 13 different tracks and then mixing them together in the studio. Hannigan, a former sports director at Bangor television station WVII, sang lead vocals, backup (along with Spekhardt), and played instruments ranging from guitar and bass to snare drum, cymbals, and piano. The effort to produce a 30-second promo sometimes took as many as four hours.
Hannigan is thankful for a break in the action 21 songs later.
“Freeing up my Monday nights is nice after six months of this. That’s quite enough,” he said.
Some of the songs most popular with listeners were Fleet Calling for the Hockey East Tournament and sung to the tune of Free Falling by Tom Petty; Trouble in Providence (to the Music Man’s Trouble in River City), and for the Harvard series: Crimson, it’s Over (to Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and the Shondelles).
Hannigan isn’t sure whether he’ll revive the clever campaign next season. Fans who’d like to hear his creations again, or listen to some of the extended versions, can do so by logging onto the WZON Web site (Zoneradio.com) and downloading the MP-3 files for the songs right off the site.
Bangor, we have a problem
Fans listening to WZON’s broadcast of Maine’s NCAA championship hockey game against Minnesota were shocked as the broadcast went off the air with 4:02 left in overtime and the score tied.
“The phone line died. It’s a regular land line phone and it went out on us at the most inopportune time,” said Hannigan. “We had a minute break and then came back with ESPN’s audio feed. I think it came back just before the power play started.”
WZON hooked up with ESPN just before the power play leading to the deciding goal and the feed from Hannigan and analyst Blair Marsh was re-established in time for the postgame press conference.
Change of Sox
Due to a conflict with a Boston Bruins home game telecast against Tampa Bay, Tuesday’s Boston Red Sox home game against Kansas City will not be seen on New England Sports Network. Instead, the 6 p.m. Sox game will be produced by NESN, but shown on local cable systems in New England through a special arrangement with NESN.
The Sox telecast will be seen in Bangor on Adelphia Cable public access channel 12, in Waterville on Adelphia channel 9, and in Augusta on Adelphia channel 9.
Andrew Neff’s On the air column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at 990-8205 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net.
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