Songoftheday 10/19/20 - "Let's get ready to RUMBBBBBLLLLLEEE!!!!!!"
"The Jock Jam" - ESPN Presents
from the album Jock Jams, Volume 3 (1997)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14
Today's "song" of the day is unlike any other single I've done in the over two thousand SOTD's i've done in the eight years I've been doing this. You see, it's not really a song, per se, but a medley of seventeen club hits, mostly from the early 1990s, along with cheerleading chants and snippets of sportcasters from the cable channel ESPN. The network, riding a high in popularity at the time, started to branch out into the merch business, which included the first in a series of Jock Jams albums in 1995. Like a club DJ mix on steroids, the seamless album proved popular, landing in the top-40 on the Billboard 200 albums chart at #30. The second volume in 1996 did even better, reaching #10 on the albums chart. So before the third edition came in 1997, this mini-mix of songs from the first two albums came out as a single, and radio loved it for it's attention-deficit-pleasing pace. Besides ESPN's Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Chris Berman, and wrestling announcer Michael Buffer, as well as the "cheerleaders", here's a run-down of the songs and where they originally landed on the pop and dance chart in America...
1. "Get Ready For This" - 2 Unlimited (#38, #14 Club Play, 1992)
2. "Whoomp There It Is" - Tag Team (#2, 1993)
3. "Pump Up The Jam" - Technotronic (#2, #1 Club Play, 1989)
4. "This Is Your Night" - Amber (#24, #10 Club Play, 1997)
5. "Be Aggressive" - Faith No More (album cut on Angel Dust, 1992)
6. "It Takes Two" - Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock (#36, #3 Club Play, 1988)
7. "I Like To Move It" - Reel 2 Real featuring the Mad Stuntman (#89 pop, #8 Club Play, 1994)
8. "Give It Up" - The Goodmen (#71, #1 Club Play, 1993)
9. "Boom Boom Boom" - Outhere Brothers (#65, #31 Club Play, 1995)
10. "Tootsee Roll" - 69 Boyz (#8, 1994)
11. "Twilight Zone" - 2 Unlimited (#49, #5 Club Play, 1992)
12. "The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)" - The Bucketheads (#49, #1 Club Play, 1995)
13. "Strike It Up" - Black Box (#8, #1 Club Play, 1991)
14. "Rock and Roll, Part 2" - Gary Glitter (#7, 1972)
15. "Y.M.C.A." - Village People (#2, #2 Disco, 1979)
16. "Everybody Everybody" - Black Box (#8, #1 Club Play, 1990)
17. "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" - C+C Music Factory (#1, #1 Club Play, 1990)
The "Jock Jam" single became a top-40 pop hit in August of 1997. It was included on the Jock Jams, Volume 3 album, which went to #23 on the Billboard 200 sales chart. A fourth Jock Jams album went to #20, while Volume 5, which even lost the ESPN titling, peaked at #51. There were also three "Jock Rock" mix albums that made the charts as well. All of this petered out though by the next decade, but it's a true feat of marketing how popular these were, and for a mashup song to bring quite a few underground club hits to national attention, it's not a bad thing.
Up tomorrow: Record mogul-turned-rapper mourns his friend.
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