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.

Non-Highlight Track (New Primetime) - Hardline

Song - Hardline
Artist(s) - Scott Patrick Anderson
Released - 2013
Primetime Usage - 2021
Contained on - NFL Music Library NFL-0061 (Driving Force 5)
Featured Highlight - Anthony "Booger" McFarland NFC Championship Analysis, 2021

 

A couple weeks ago, I noted that Unknown Song #58 (Here We Go) had been identified.  That song was used during Keyshawn Johnson's analysis segment of the 2021 NFC Championship.  Shortly after that, Booger McFarland did his own analysis piece for the same game.  The accompanying clip for that section used a track called "Hardline," composed by Scott Patrick Anderson and contained on the 61st. release (not counting the old NFL LPs) of the NFL Films library.  Hardline was actually identified by Godzfire (using the RecognizeSong bot on reddit) about 6 months ago, but—due to busyness and whatnot—I never got around to posting about it until now.  Godzfire also ID'd another non-highlight track from the same NFL Primetime episode that I'll write about next week.

Unknown Song #54 (New Primetime) - Fire Zone

Song - Fire Zone

Artist(s) - Tom Hedden
Released - 2012

Primetime Usage - 2019

Contained on - NFL-0056 (Driving Force 4)

Featured Highlight - Texans @ Chargers, 2019

 

 

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/10/22

 

Unknown Song #54 was the last new song to debut in Week 3 of 2019 and will hopefully be the last to require an audio-only post.  It's a generic '90s-or-later rock-guitar track with a laid-back tempo.  It doesn't sound like a piece that was intended to stand out; it's just there to accompany and not to offend.  In that vain, I suppose it's basically a simpler & quieter version of Grid Lock.  This is the only use of US #54 I'm aware of, but I haven't seen most of New Primetime's 2019 episodes so I don't for sure that it's the only one.  It was not used in 2020 or 2021.

Non-Highlight Tracks - The News Triplets

Song 1 - Action News

Artist(s) - Jean-Yves Rigo

Released - 1998

Primetime Usage - 1999-2000

Contained on - Kosinus KOS 47 (Very News)

Featured Highlight - Wild Card Preview:  Week 17, 1999

Song 2 - Very News

Artist(s) - Jean-Yves Rigo

Released - 1998

Primetime Usage - 1999-04

Contained on - Kosinus KOS 47 (Very News)
Featured Highlight - Sunday Wild Card Preview:  Wild Card Saturday, 1999

Song 3 - Network News

Artist(s) - Christian Poulet

Released - 1998

Primetime Usage - 2000

Contained on - Kosinus KOS 47 (Very News - original album release only)

Featured Highlight - Inside the Numbers:  Wild Card Saturday, 2000

In addition to Industrial News, there were three other "News" tracks from the same Kosinus album to get non-highlight duty on NFL Primetime.  "Action News" & "Very News," both by Jean-Yves Rigo, were disproportionately used in playoff episodes and, more specifically, for playoff matchup/game-time previews.  "Network News," on the other hand, was only used one time that I'm aware of:  the secondary Inside the Numbers segment that followed the Saints/Rams Wild Card Game in 2000 (NO's first-ever playoff win).  It's a weaker song than the other "News" tracks, though, so that was no big loss.

With four songs used on the show, that puts the album Very News in a tie for second for most Primetime tracks along with David Reilly's Success album from Bruton (Sonoton's Automotion 3 has five).  Action News & Very News are currently available on APM's streaming service (linked above).  Unfortunately, Network News is by Christian Poulet and has therefore been purged from streaming for whatever reason (just as with Industrial News).

Special thanks to Dopethrone for pointing Action News out to me, and to Tom Bombadil for posting the playoff episodes on YouTube that contain the Very News & Network News clips.

Unknown Song #51 (New Primetime) - Amped

Song - Amped

Artist(s) - David Robidoux
Released - 2011

Primetime Usage - 2019
Contained on - NFL-0049 (Rush 3)

Featured Highlight - Giants @ Buccaneers, 2019

 

 

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/13/22

 

As promised (a long time ago, admittedly), here's the first Unknown Song from the new, ESPN+ version of NFL Primetime.  This version of the show debuted in Week 2 of the 2019 NFL season, but that particular week only used classic Primetime tracks from the last several years of the original show (the same ones they used for pretty much every week in 2020).  Week 3 of 2019 added four new songs, however, and US #51 was the first of those.  It's kind-of an electronic-grunge sounding piece—very mid-to-late-'90s in its instrumentation.  I'm not sure US #51 was used more than once, but I wasn't subscribed to ESPN+ in 2019 so I didn't see a lot of the highlights from that season.

The featured clip for this track (the only clip I know of) is Daniel Jones's debut for the Giants in Tampa in 2019.  Unfortunately, my original post of the video was copyright blocked by Disney.  So, instead, I cut an audio-only version of the highlight.  It's not as interesting this way, of course, but it looks like this is what I'll have to do for anything I post from New Primetime.

Unknown Song #32 Identified

Two down, five to go as far as Oddball Week is concerned.  The oboe-rich US #32 has been identified as Neo Dream (b), or as Neo Dream (Partie Rhyhmique) to be more precise.  It's contained on Kosinus 34 (Virtual Nature).  That album is streamable on both APM & Universal's production-music sites, but this particular song has been removed from the streamable version.  It seems that everything involving Christian Poulet has been scrubbed from the online edition of the Kosinus library, and perhaps other libraries.  Special thanks to Retronator on librarymusicthemes.net for identifying this track, and additional thanks to GodzFire for starting the thread on there that got this track ID'd.  Hopefully this won't be the last song to be ID'd there.

LINK

Unknown Song #25 Identified

I finally hit another copyright-notice jackpot.  US #25 is "World Cup Shuffle," by Phil Beazley & Phillip John Rigger.  I can't really find any meaningful info on the artists or on the label, Castle Music.  Neither this particular Castle Music, nor Rigger, appear to even be listed on Discogs.  Beazley is listed, but is only given two (non-Castle) album credits.  The Castle library is carried on APM's website, though, as well as iTunes for some reason.


Revised Link

Unknown Song #25 - World Cup Shuffle

Song - World Cup Shuffle

Artist(s) - Phil Beazley, Phillip John Rigger

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1991-93
Contained on - CM-0009 (The Fineline) (also on iTunes)

Featured Highlight - Falcons @ Redskins, 1992


*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 3/21/18

If you like low-quality synth instrumentation, then Unknown Song #25 is for you.  It doesn't really sound like the primitive synths of the 1970s & early-'80s (that's more appropriate for, say, the Sega Genesis), but instead sounds more like the lowest-quality stuff from around the time this track was used on NFL Primetime.  This piece does have decent energy, however, so it's passable for football highlights despite its obvious cheesiness.  Accompanying US #25 is a Deion Sanders focused highlight where his Falcons lost a tough game against the defending-champion Redskins.  Oh, and there's also a George Will sighting, if you're into that sort of thing…

Unknown Song #4 Identified

The only recent unknown song to go more than a week without being identified now has a name.  Unknown Song #4 is "Showcase" by William Soden.  It's actually an NFL Films song, but it unfortunately does not seem to be available in the NFL Films library contained on APM's website.  I guess it may only be on LP and not on CD.  You can easily find it on Dave Volsky's channel on youtube, though.  Special thanks to PYLclark on youtube for letting me know this track's identity.


Revised Link

Showcase

Race to Midnight

Song - Race to Midnight (underscore)

Artist(s) - Chris Gibbons, Pete Q. Harris

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1990

Contained on - Bruton BR 32/BRG 39 (Golden Vision)

Featured Highlight - Rams @ Falcons, 1990


I don't have much to say about this one, so I'll make it quick.  The underscore of "Race to Midnight" is dark, bass-heavy, and moody, but it's a little too repetitive and lacking in direction to work for anything beyond accompaniment.  It does have one unique quality, however, in that it's (AFAIK) the only NFL Primetime song to only use the underscore and not the base track (there were at least 3 pieces that had both the base & underscore used in 1987).  John Colby made the right choice with that, too, since the base track just has a tinny, low-quality synth trumpet added over the top.  I don't know much about the artists, but at least Pete Harris has a website (linked above).

For some reason, all three highlights I have with Race to Midnight are late-season games involving the Atlanta Falcons.  The Falcons weren't very good in Jerry Glanville's first year, so that makes the featured video options rather meager.  At least you get to see Deion Sanders…

Epic, Part III

Song - Olympic Action

Artist(s) - David Reilly

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1989-90

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

Featured Highlight - Bills @ Oilers, 1989


My final post of the 2015 NFL Season features the earliest of NFL Primetime's "epic" themes.  "Olympic Action," much like its successors Crush & International Statement, typically accompanied the best and/or most important games during its two-year run on the show.  It's also my personal favorite of the three since it has higher quality instrumentation than the former and is a little more subtle than the latter (it would be hard to be less subtle than International Statement).  Olympic Action is the second of four Primetime tracks from David Reilly's Success album (in an earlier post, I erroneously indicated there were three) that contains most of the new 1989-90 additions that were not attached to the Sonoton label.  The same two links for the album are listed above.

Featuring Olympic Action is an unusually long & entertaining NFL Primetime clip.  The 1988 Buffalo Bills that began Marv Levy's run of success were a defense-first team, but the following year they gained the K-Gun-offense identity that best defines their subsequent Super Bowl years.  Their biggest shootout of 1989 came in the Astrodome against an Oilers squad that oddly hadn't played in their own building for 9 consecutive games including the preseason (I guess their home preseason game against the Dolphins wasn't in the Astrodome).  Lots of big, crazy plays in this one…

Annoying Delays

Song - The Race is On

Artist(s) - David Reilly

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1989-90

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

Featured Highlight - Bills @ Falcons, 1989


I apologize for the three week delay in posts here.  I ordered three FirstCom "A" discs that are not streamable on their website off eBay and my plan was to wait until I had listened to them before posting again (in case they had Primetime songs on them).  I received two of them a week+ ago (FC-A35 Hip-Hop Pop and FC-A38 House Jams), but neither had any relevant tracks.  Despite the fact that I ordered it from the same seller, the other (FC-A43 Action) has yet to arrive for some reason.  If that has a Primetime track, I'll post it ASAP, but—for now—here's something else…

"The Race is On" is a pretty generic '80s rocker, but it's still catchy and fits football highlights well.  It was composed by David Reilly, the son of famous harmonica player Tommy Reilly, and is contained on the Reilly-only Bruton album Success.  I don't have much else to say about the song, but the album is a top-notch production music entry and two of its other songs were used on NFL Primetime around the same time.  To explain the album numbers listed above, the "BR 67" code is for the CD version while "BRN 19" is for the vinyl version.

I don't have a particularly important highlight with this song, but at least I found one entertaining one.  In 1989, the 6-2 Buffalo Bills visited Fulton County Stadium and the 2-6 perennial doormat Falcons in a potential snoozefest.  Instead, what viewers got was a back-and-forth fist-clencher with a Paul McFadden 50-yard field goal sealing the upset.  Unfortunately for the still-red-helmeted Falcons, though, that would be their final win of the season and Marion Campbell would lose his job 3 weeks later.