LOS ANGELES - In
1971, APM's (www.apmmusic.com) song
"Heavy Action", composed by Johnny Pearson, was chosen by ABC to serve as the
theme song for Monday Night Football.
Years later, in 1987, APM and ABC asked Edd Kalehoff to arrange an entirely new
and updated recording of the song. Today, Monday Night Football on ESPN features a further refresh to the "Heavy
Action" track.
"'Heavy Action' is an iconic piece of sports music and is
possibly the most well-known piece of sports music in the United States," says
Adam Taylor, president of APM. "The creation of three exciting new versions of
the track ties in with the enormous expansion of the Monday Night Football franchise that ESPN has commenced."
APM's Erin Collins, Robert Navarro and Dale Suss
collaborated with ESPN to determine the new creative direction for the
arrangements and worked with a team of composers and arrangers brought on for
the project, including videogame composers Cris Velasco, Chris Rickwood, Sven
Spieker, Sascha Dikiciyan and Navarro himself.
The new arrangements feature bold guitar riffs, modern
percussion and lush orchestral scores combined to create three modern takes on
the classic theme — one pure orchestral and the other two with different rock
grooves.The rock elements were recorded in Los Angeles. The score
was recorded with a 60-piece orchestra in Seattle, with Velasco conducting.
Final mixing and mastering was done by film trailer mixer Rob Beaton.