The word “body” is said 52 times in a little over five minutes, by a man, talking about his own or other men’s, which, again, was and is a tremendous rarity in the Jock Jam lexicon. But it was also a stadium song about how alluring the male body can be. It was, in fact, just another stadium song. It’s historically inaccurate to say that “Macho Man”’s widespread acceptance, blasting in America’s stadiums as dads pumped their fists enthusiastically, was a landmark moment for the gay rights movement. Marquee Music (1-5): How likely is the song to be played when they show someone’s name in lights, either when they’ve just come through on a clutch play or run out of the tunnel? Stadium Allure (1-10): Does this song feel at home over the loudspeakers? Would you be OK with hearing this song every time you go to a sporting event for the next 20 years? Pump-up-ability (1-20): Does this get you pumped? If you were the head point-getting person and your team was down by one with seconds to go in the big game, would this song elevate you to the level where your performance would increase and you’d lead your team to victory? Songs were ranked on the following criteria: We removed the many announcer clips, cheerleader chants, and various other garbage they peppered into them to make the sticker price seem at Sam Goody worthwhile. Recently, Noisey’s Dan Ozzi sat down with Vice Sports’ Aaron Gordon to listen to every single Jock Jam in an attempt to provide the definitive order. Some make you say, “Oh, yeah… I think I remember this song?” And some flat-out couldn’t pump up a pair of fresh Reebok Pumps if they were the only sneakers left at Foot Locker.
"I thought it was really stupid.Across five volumes-yes, there were five of these things, plus an All-Star edition if we’re being technical- Jock Jams provided us with over 100 tracks harnessing the raw, explosive musical power of the day-glo 1990s. "I thought it was the worst idea," Tommy Boy director of sales Steve Knutson remembered. Tommy Boy managed to convince ESPN enough to move forward with the project, but even a few people at the record label believed it to be a strange idea. Although the channel had an interest in branching out into other forms of media, such as video games, a magazine, and the internet, it hesitated to put its name on a music album. "It sounded like a cool idea but we were a little skeptical," ESPN's Sharyn Taymor recalled. Unfortunately, ESPN initially expressed doubt over the proposal. "Our idea was to brand it around baseball, football, basketball and hockey and make it a dance record," Silverman said, "but when you put it in the of a game and tie it in with ESPN it made sense." In order to make the Jock Jams idea work, Tommy Boy partnered with ESPN to give the album more credibility and marketing power. Jock Jams was not the first compilation album Tommy Boy put together, having previously collaborated with MTV to make MTV Party to Go as a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. To complete the arena experience, producers added organ music, crowd noises, and even Michael Buffer's memorable "Let's get ready to rumble!" call between songs.
"We have all these songs we play at the games from a wide variety of genres but they all seem to work together in the context of making people crazy at sporting events. "It's an idea that had been going around in my head," he recalled. Like Silverman, Castoldi thought the album idea was brilliant. Lynch presented her idea to Tom Silverman, and he got on board after realizing that "songs you heard at basketball games were becoming legendary with a different audience." Lynch also contacted Ray Castoldi, the music director of Madison Square Garden, and asked if he'd like to contribute organ music to the album.
"I would hear the same music being played at the games, all these classic rock and R&B tracks with these organ bits in between, so I thought this stuff would probably be pretty easy to license." "To tell you the truth it was just like one of those very simple, very obvious ideas," Lynch remembered. She noticed how the music played at the event pumped up the players and crowd, and she wondered if she could capture that feeling on an album. In the early 1990s, Monica Lynch attended many Knicks games to make use of the company's shared box suite at Madison Square Garden.