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/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} The ultimate marketing tool for a developer with an expensive condo project is getting a celebrity to buy one of the units in the building. It’s an implicit endorsement of the product, the same kind that stars get paid for, only usually no money changes hands, and sometimes celebrity lease-signings are even kept under wraps. Just look at all the attention it got when Michael Phelps bought his waterfront home in Canton.

So I guess the second-best thing a condo building owner could ask for is a highly-publicized celebrity appearance at his project. That’s just what Baltimore builder Pat Turner got this summer, with the release of R&B singer Mario’s new music video for the song “Break Up,” featuring rappers Gucci Mane and Sean Garrett.

Mario, a Baltimore native who grew up in Pikesville and Randallstown, is a friend of Turner’s it turns out. A spokeswoman from Turner’s PR company said Thursday that Mario was at one point considering buying a unit in Silo Point, and that at some point there was talk of outfitting it for an episode of the MTV series “Cribs,” in which stars show off their houses on camera, but she couldn’t confirm if the singer was still interested.

“He met Mario through a mutual friend, and Mario heard about the building, and is a fan of the building, thinks it’s an interesting project, and that’s how the whole, him deciding to film part of the video in the building came about,” the spokeswoman said. “He’s hosting a private event there this month.”

As for the video, watch it for yourself, but it’s pretty steamy — Mario grinds on the floor and romps on a bed with a foxy-looking model in one of the building’s all-glass, 23rd-story penthouses, which have 270-degree views of the Harbor and of South Baltimore, and which sell for $4.2 million. There are also a few sweeping aerial shots of downtown Baltimore (not clear if they’re from Silo Point) and street scenes from what looks like Fort Ave. in Locust Point. There’s a bit of a narrative in the video, too, to go with the song, which is something of a reconciliation ballad. Mario wakes up to a “Dear John” letter in his fly apartment, and then somehow convinces her to come back home, mostly through provocative dancing (how else do you woo an ambivalent girl?). Oh, and there’s also a pretty obvious, repeated plug for Nuvo, the world’s first sparkling vodka liqueur, apparently, in the video.

In a making-of video, also posted online, Mario says, “Of the things that’s most special about you know, this video shoot, is the love and the camaraderie between cats from Baltimore like myself.” He adds that the video’s director, Chris Robinson, is also a local.

So I guess what we’re meant to take home here is, Silo Point is a place of reconciliation and love. I bet Pat Turner wishes things were all kisses and dancin’ over at his other waterfront mega-project, Westport.

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The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has taken its reputation of “hippest orchestra” to a new level.

For the past two weeks, the BSO has offered vague clues to its followers on Twitter about a secret location where a special gift would be unveiled: two tickets to see Trey Anastasio of Phish perform with the BSO on May 21.

Below is the first tweet sent two weeks ago from the BSO’s Marketing Coordinator Jamie Schneider:

Phishing for the last two Trey Anastasio Tickets? Be the first to arrive at our secret location on May 5 @ 5pm.

Since sending the initial tweet, Schneider said the BSO has picked up an extra 450 followers, a testament not only to the effectiveness of Twitter but also the cultish fan base of Phish.

Yesterday, Schneider sent out a tweet several hours before the scheduled drop-off which revealed clues about the secret location:

“Hop” to our secret location @ 5 for 2 free tickets to the “Resurrection” of Phish tunes. Just a stone’s throw away from the Meyerhoff.

When Schneider arrived at the secret location at 4:30 with a colorful gift bag in hand, there were already two people anxiously waiting at the bar area of The Brewer’s Art drinking one of the clue items, a “Resurrection.”

“The Resurrection is what got me,” said Josh Nay (pictured), who won the 2 VIP tickets along with a complimentary dinner at Brewer’s Art.

He arrived at the Mount Vernon tavern at 3:30 pm, 30 minutes before the bar even opened after a lengthy drive from his job in Rockville.

“Phish fans are pretty crazy,” he said. “They are a very dedicated, fanatic bunch.”

Schneider said that using Twitter to give away tickets is a great way to make the BSO more accessible and more relevant.

“We’re hoping to reach newer and younger audiences with these social networking tools,” she said.

The BSO might be an outlet for traditional music, but it has clearly embraced social media.

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Back in December, the Baltimore Opera Company quietly filed for bankruptcy. It was Chapter 7, the kind a company doesn’t come back from, and later this month, the company will begin auctioning off its assets. At the time of the filing, I sort of kicked myself because going to the opera here in Baltimore was always something I had meant to do. You know, put on a thrift-store tuxedo, have a nice dinner with a few cocktails, then go do something civilized. But I never got around to it, and as they say, you don’t miss your water…

Last night The Story, a public radio news magazine based in North Carolina, broadcast a beautifully-produced homage to the Baltimore Opera Company vis-a-vis an extended interview recorded in the Baltimore studios of WYPR with Grant Striegel, a local man who saw his first opera at the Lyric Opera House at age 11, and immediately fell in love with the genre and with the place. Striegel’s manner of speech — straightforward, earnest, unadorned with sentimentalism or emotion — is so touching and honest, that when describing how nice world-famous soprano Rosa Ponsell was to him, or how when he was in grade school, the blaring trumpets on stage during Aida had wowed him, but then the closing death scene had made him weep, it all made me kick myself even more for not taking advantage of the place. Streigel also tells a hilarious story about visiting Ponsell’s villa in the Greenspring Valley, and offered the choice of any gourmet food for lunch he could ever dream of, he was so nervous all he could think to ask for was a tuna fish sandwich.

What’s so powerful about this is that Striegel is such a normal guy. He’s not a wealthy, over-educated or over-cultured aristocrat. He’s a working-class Baltimorean, the son of a machine-shop manager. He played in a Motown cover band called The Flying Circus that gigged in Ocean City in the summertime for tourists.  But on Thursday nights, Striegel would attend the premieres of the opera season at the Lyric. He says:

There’s nothing that moves me like, if I listen to Parsifal by Wagner…That just takes me to a new plane. If it can take you to a new plane and you can be with the angels even for just a few seconds, that to me is the measure of great art.

This piece is the first really involved piece I’ve heard on the Baltimore Opera Co., at least from one of its patrons. I recommend listening to it for anyone who isn’t completely sure of the value of our local cultural institutions, which are rapidly disappearing, and what they mean to regular people.

Listen to the interview and tribute from The Story here.

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The alley next to the Daily Record is usually empty, but today, there’s a brown Prevost tour bus getting rained on. With Montana license plates, it looks a little out of place.

So we decided to do some investigative reporting.

It turns out that the bus with the Montana license plates isn’t nearly as random as the people it belongs to. According to the staff at the Tremont Hotel, the group from the tour bus is Nightwish, a symphonic power metal band from Finland.

Tomorrow night, they’ll be performing down Saratoga Street at Sonar.

The band started in 1996, but it was the release of its 2004 album, Once, that sold more than 1 million copies and led to video clips being broadcast on MTV. That same year, their single “Wish I Had an Angel” made it onto three U.S. film soundtracks.

Last month, Nightwish’s “The Islander” video won a golden “Muuvi” for being the best music video in Finland in 2008. Now you know.

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Towson University’s public radio station is using a friendly competition to boost its membership this spring by hosting a battle of 11 local bands at nearby Recher Theatre.

In its first online fundraiser, WTMD-FM/HD is asking fans to “stand by your band” and pledge for membership to the nonprofit station via their favorite band. Even a $15 contribution can make a difference, the station’s news release says.

WTMD is trying reach 5,000 active members by June 30, the Web site says. Its member count as of Wednesday morning was 3,674.

The band that convinces the most fans to make a membership contribution to WTMD will win an album production package, including recording studio time and a Paul Reed Smith Special Edition guitar (valued at $700). All contributors will receive two tickets to the May 9 Baltimore Band Block Party in Towson, where the winner of the challenge will be announced.

Sounds like a win-win to me…the only question is what happens if the station doesn’t reach its goal?

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As resident music nerd/real estate reporter here at The Daily Record, I sometimes feel the need to highlight examples of real estate and development-related pop music in Maryland. Last year, we alerted readers to a new electronic dance music mash-up act called Smart Growth, which is led by the drummer in a Baltimore band that’s gotten big praise for a song called “Luxury Condos for the Poor.”

Now, even though the record is a few months old, I’m urging readers to check out Merriweather Post Pavilion, the new album by Animal Collective, a band that originated in Baltimore County (Catonsville, I believe) but whose members are now spread out between America and Europe.

In addition to naming their record after the Howard County venue where they grew up seeing rock concerts, the band has recorded a new song, “My Girls,” (see the awesome video above) which is my early pick for Best Single of 2009 and is an eloquent expression of the American Dream, as construed through real estate. Here are the lyrics:

Is it much that I feel I need?
A solid soul and the blood I bleed?
With a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house.

I don’t care for fancy things,
Or to take part in a precious race.
And children cry for the one who has
A real big heart and a father’s grace.

I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status.
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls.

Hmmm. With the housing market in what Reuters is calling “the worst downturn since the Great Depression” and the Case-Shiller index reporting nearly 20 percent drops in home prices over the last year (they’re down 19.2 percent in metro Washington, which includes the real Merriweather Post Pavillion), the guys of Animal Collective may just get what they need, at a bargain.

It can’t hurt that their upcoming U.S. tour has been almost completely sold out for two months now. That is, it can’t hurt them. Anybody have an extra ticket to the DC show?

ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer

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