New Primetime - The Equalizer (Sam Spence)

Song - The Equalizer

Artist(s) - Sam Spence

Debut - No later than 1996

Primetime Usage - 2021, 2023-24

Contained on - Classic NFL Orchestral (as well as some other NFL Films albums like The Power and the Glory)
Featured Highlight - Packers @ 49ers, 2021 (SNF)

One of the songs most synonymous with famed NFL Films composer Sam Spence nowadays is "The Equalizer."  When getting ready to make this post, I started to wonder "Why is it so comparatively popular?"  It has nothing to do with the quality of the song.  It's a good song, though I wouldn't say it's my favorite Spence composition or anything.  It's more because I can't figure out when The Equalizer originated or what video it was first used with.  It's not on Autumn Thunder, and it doesn't seem to be on any of the 1970's-'80s NFL Music Library LPs either.  The earliest album I could find with The Equalizer was NFL CD 004 (On to Victory) from 1996, and I have no idea when it debuted on NFL Films' stuff.  Could its modern popularity come from games remembering it from Madden '06?  I don't know…

Anyway, the accompanying highlight is the Packers/49ers Sunday Night Football game from Week 3 of 2021.  Green Bay blew a 17-0 lead only to pull out a 2-point win with a last-second field goal.  This would be a Pyrrhic victory for the Packers, however, as we all remember what happened between these two teams in the Divisional Round later that season.

I linked an official source for the song above (the current NFL Music site), but they only allow 30 second previews if you're not signed up or whatever.  If you want to hear the full version, though, it's easy to find by searching Google or YouTube or whatever.

 

 

Purgatory Primetime - Shrails

Song - Shrails
Artist(s) - Daniel Holter, Rex Carroll
Released - 2001
Primetime Usage - 2006
Contained on - Velocity VL017Q (Metal v2)
Featured Highlight - "Saints magical season" Segment, 2006 Divisional Round

 

The same sequence celebrating the 2006 Saints' rebound that featured Crash and Burn had a second clip with a unique NFL Primetime track.  Accompanying the "Saints magical season" segment was the song "Shrails." The portion of the clip with music is short, but Shrails tells you all you really need to know about it right away—you're not missing anything crucial by listening to an abbreviated portion.  Shrails was written/performed by the familiar duo of Daniel Holter & Rex Carroll.  If you don't recall those names, they were the same pair responsible for the New Primetime non-highlight track Tracking Heat.  The heavy-metal instrumentation between both songs is quite similar, although Shrails is less melodic and features more shredding.  Both Shrails and Tracking Heat are actually on the same album!  It's a little weird that ESPN would use two different songs from the same album 15 years apart, but whatever…

Special thanks to GodzFire for identifying this one, too.

Purgatory Primetime - Crash and Burn

Song - Crash and Burn
Artist(s) - Mark Wood
Released - 1994
Primetime Usage - 2006
Contained on - OmniMusic OMN-0072 (Hard Rock)
Featured Highlight - "Saints Season" segment (from Divisional Round Saturday Ep.), 2006

Having now exhausted all the known songs from the early years of NFL Primetime, it's time to return to 2006 and the Purgatory Primetime era.  The '06 New Orleans Saints were a big story.  After the disaster that was their 2005 Hurricane Katrina season, where the team went 3-13 and was unable to play a single regular-season game at home in the Superdome, the Saints hired Sean Payton and grabbed QB Drew Brees from the Chargers.  The result was a surprising 10-6 record, the third division title in franchise history, and a divisional-round win over the Eagles.  This positive development was seen by many, and reported by many in the media, as a key healing event for the traumatized city of New Orleans.  A brief clip near the end of the Saturday Division Round episode touched on this story, and it was accompanied by a never-before-heard (on Primetime) song called "Crash and Burn."  Crash and Burn primarily features a ton of virtuostic guitar—or maybe electric violin—shredding and was composed by Mark Wood.  Wood is primarily known for being (according to his website, which is linked above) the "Eddie Van Halen of the Violin World" and also played with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra for a time starting in 1999.  He is also an accomplished string arranger and, in that capacity, worked with famous pop artists like Celine Dion.

Special thanks to GodzFire for ID'ing this song.

Supercharged (with video this time!)

Song - Supercharged
Artist(s) - Derek Austin
Released - 1983
Primetime Usage - 1988, 1990
Contained on - Amphonic AVF16 (Supercharged), Amphonic AVF64CD (Hit the Heights)
Featured Highlight - Cowboys @ Redskins, 1990

 

Last year, I posted what was believed to be the only NFL Primetime highlight to use the song "Supercharged" by Derek Austin.  That San Francisco/New Orleans video from Week 1 of 1988 was unfortunately blocked by NFL copyright bots, so I had to go with an audio-only post.  As it turns out, that 1988 clip was NOT the only one with Supercharged attached.  ESPN brought it back in Week 3 of 1990 for the Dallas @ Washington contest.  The highlight itself is relatively uninteresting; the Redskins unimpressively got revenge after giving Dallas their only win of the season in RFK Stadium the previous year.  It's still the only known NFL Primetime clip to use Supercharged that isn't blocked by the NFL, though.  This also marks the only instance of a Primetime song that debuted in 1988 ever being used again after the 1988 season (of course, it was only 1 time each).  So… I hope you get even more enjoyment from listening to this song with actual visuals attached than you did watching a still picture of the original NFL Primetime logo for 5 minutes.

Also, the Amphonic album(s) with this track only seem to be streamable on YouTube at the moment.  The later CD release was on Nichion, but—again—Nichion has now been down for some time.

Hopeless Quest for the Best

Song - Quest for the Best 2

Artist(s) - David Reilly

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1989

Contained on - Bruton BR 67/BRN 19 (Success)

Featured Highlight - Lions @ Buccaneers, 1989

 

It's the weekend before the biggest election in human history, and I know what everyone's looking for!  What?  New swing-state polls?  No, I don't have, uhhh… that… I do have classic NFL Primetime highlights, though!  After adding another Sonoton song last week, it also turns out we weren't done with David Reilly's Success album.  "Quest for the Best 2"  ("2" in this case means underscore) is the fifth song from that album to be used on Primetime.  It was only used 4 times that I'm aware of, putting it fourth among the five tracks (Inter Conference was used only twice).  It's a good piece, but its obvious similarities to Title Holder make it unsurprising that it was infrequent.  I think it was also a good call by John Colby to go with the underscore and not the base track.  Quest for the Best 1 marginalizes the bass too much, and that caused the song to lose the power it has in the underscore version.  Special thanks to GodzFire for ID'ing this track.

Some bad news about the Success album, however.  It seems the Universal Production Music site is no longer hosting the album.  The only streaming source I can find now is a YouTube post of the entire album linked above, though Quest for the Best 1 is posted all over that site thanks to its apparent use in Spongebob Squarepants.

And now for the highlight… In Week 6 of the 1989 season, a Bears' loss to the Oilers opened the door for the somehow 3-2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers to actually tie Chicago & Minnesota for first place in the NFC Central.  And all they had to do was beat an 0-5 Detroit Lions squad (with then-rookie Barry Sanders out) in the Big Sombrero, too!  Would they accomplish their seemingly simple quest!?  If you're familiar with the Bucs' "success" in that era, you can probably guess how that went…

The Big Replay Reversal

Song - The Big Push (1)

Artist(s) - John Fiddy & "Sammy Burdson" (Gerhard Narholz)

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1989

Contained on - Sonoton SON 213 (Success Story), Sonoton SCD 019 (Corporate Fanfares/Success Story)
Featured Highlight - Bears @ Packers, 1989

 

It turns out we weren't done with the Sonoton era, after all.  "The Big Push," by the familiar pair of the late John Fiddy (he died in 2017) and Sonoton founder Gerhard Narholz under one of his common aliases, was used twice during the 1989 season of NFL Primetime.  Like a lot of infrequent Primetime songs I've mentioned recently, it's a piece that doesn't quite fit sports highlights.  It sounds more like something scored to fit the shot-by-shot particulars of a war-movie battle sequence or a corporate promo video than something that would work here.  John Colby mitigated this problem somewhat by axing the slow, quiet intro, but it's still apparent why this track wasn't used much.

The Big Push may have only been attached to a grand total of two NFL Primetime highlights, but it did get one of the most memorable games of the 1989 season.  The Green Bay Packers, who had lost 8 straight to Chicago coming in (Chicago's longest winning streak in the history of the rivalry), edged out the Bears at Lambeau after a controversial replay reversal that wiped out an illegal-forward-pass penalty on Packers' QB Don "The Majik Man" Majkowski.  This result, along with several others, led to Green Bay earning the "Cardiac Pack" nickname that would define their 1989 season.

Special thanks to GodzFire for identifying The Big Push.  Also, the video posted below is a whopping 6 minutes and 14 seconds, the third longest I've posted only behind the infamous Points War (Theighs Mon) video and New Order (the actual highlight is longer for The Big Push than New Order, though).  So… enjoy!

NFL Primetime Music?

Song - Veil

Artist(s) - John Colby

Released - 1987

Primetime Usage - 1988

Contained on - Valentino V-CD 23 (Medium Tempo)
Featured Highlight - Patriots @ Dolphins SNF Preview, 1988

I've been aware of this song/clip for a while, but I was reluctant to post it because I'm not sure it really qualifies as NFL Primetime music.  "Veil," one of many Primetime tracks by then-ESPN music director John Colby, was attached to a small segment of the Sunday Night Football preview that aired early in the Week 12 episode.  Despite being housed on an album titled Medium Tempo, the song is actually quite energetic and up tempo.  I wouldn't be surprised if Veil was used for a highlight or perhaps other clips on NFL Primetime, especially since it was composed by Colby, but I haven't seen any evidence of that thus far.  Special thanks to GodzFire for rediscovering the album this track is on (I stumbled on it a long time ago somewhere, but I forgot about it).

I decided to post the entire preview segment with Mike Patrick & Joe Theismann even though the song is only played for about 20 seconds of it.  Hope you enjoy it!