"Heavy Action" is a piece of music composed by Johnny Pearson. It is best known in the UK as the theme for Superstars, and in North America as the theme music for ABC and ESPN's Monday Night Football.
Contents |
The BBC commissioned Pearson to write the piece to be used as the theme for their version of the TV show Superstars. The show had first aired in 1973 as a one-off special, but became a full-fledged series subsequently, and Pearson's theme was created for it in 1974.
In 1978, ABC, who had developed the original Superstars show in the US, acquired the rights to use "Heavy Action" as the opening theme music to Monday Night Football, although it would not become the official theme until 1989. In 1989, Edd Kalehoff arranged an entirely new recording of "Heavy Action"[1] for the final years of Monday Night Football on ABC. It was also used as the background music during a halftime segment as Howard Cosell narrated highlights of the previous Sunday's games.
In 2006, a team of composers comprising Robert Anthony Navarro, Cris Velasco, Sven Spieker, Sascha Dikiciyan and Chris Rickwood were hired by Associated Production Music (APM) to arrange yet another entirely new recording of "Heavy Action" for the rebirth of Monday Night Football on ESPN.
In 2010, Cris Velasco, Robert Anthony Navarro, Rod Abernathy, and Joachim Svare were hired by Associated Production Music (APM) to do several arrangements of "Heavy Action" in various musical styles including Rock, Hip-Hop and Holiday for Monday Night Football on ESPN.
Three years after its arrival on Monday Night Football, this same music was used as the theme for the now defunct syndicated SFM Holiday Network monthly offering of family feature films.
The music was also used as the theme for the American television show Ten Who Dared (1976), which was a reworking of the BBC series The Explorers (1975).
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||