The most upbeat & energetic of the post-millennium NFL Primetime additions, Unknown Song #48 is one of the best tracks from the show yet to be identified. It, just like the two songs that will follow this one, was used nearly every week from October, 2001 on. Being a fun song, it generally accompanied games that were themselves fun & usually high scoring. Speaking of high scoring, the video to go along with US #48 features the third-highest-scoring tie game since regular-season overtime was implemented in 1974. One does not generally associate tie games with excitement, but this Falcons/Steelers classic was a definite exception.
Unknown Song #40 is probably my favorite song yet to be identified on Primetime. It's energetic, edgy, and fun, and works well with sports highlights. It's likely not a well remembered track, however, since it was used sparingly during its mere 3 years of service. US #40's most memorable use was probably its last: the 1999 NFC Championship game where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers nearly upset the St. Louis Rams 6-5 before giving up a late TD catch to Ricky Proehl. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that NFL Primetime highlight anywhere, so here's a different one from US #40's first season of use.
It doesn't quite fit, but the second Oddball Week track is the best one. I mean, I guess it does fit if you associate football with the oboe, but that proclivity probably isn't common. This song would fit well in a JRPG, though. It sounds especially like some of Noriyuki Iwadare's stuff from the Lunar & Growlanser series. I really doubt Iwadare wrote this particular piece, however, since all the Primetime tracks I've ID'd to this point have been by American or European composers.
US #32's highlight is quite appropriate for Oddball Week. A full minute is spent showing the same punt over & over again.
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…
Contained on - Musikos MS1 (Sports 1) Featured Highlight - Falcons @ Raiders, 1988
*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 5/3/23
Here's another 1988 special. Unknown Song #13 is a little moody, a little repetitive, and a bit edgy. In other words, it's a perfect fit with all the other 1987-88 NFL Primetime tracks. To go with this song, here are the Raiders hosting the Falcons. Los Angeles was going through the tumultuous tenure of head coach Mike Shanahan, while the 1988 Falcons were a team that probably overachieved to end up 5-11. Enjoy!
Even though this was 1988, Unknown Song #6 sounds very 1970s-ish. I guess that's true for some of the other '80s tracks (e.g., Solar Winds), as well, but I don't have much else to say to describe this one. Unfortunately, I have only one low-quality Primetime clip of this track. It's an unusually short clip, too, and it features two teams that both sucked throughout the entire 1980s.
Welcome to the 2017 NFL season! This post will be more convoluted than most on here, so bear with me.
As I mentioned on the previous post, the last song I've fully identified shares a highlight with a song I haven't identified. The first track on this clip (the Dolphins/Patriots one) is the unknown song. It's good for accompaniment, but it could've used another instrument or two. I refer to it as "Unknown Song #2" because US#1—identified a couple months ago as Powergate—was posted in January '16. The other piece is one I found a while ago. "Driving Force," by Hal Brown & Brad Kelley—the artists behind Drive Away and (probably) Marathon—is a sleepy song by NFL Primetime standards, but I suppose it's great if you like simple solo trumpet. The underscore doesn't have the trumpet, however, so that version is just repetitive.
There are three highlight videos posted below, tying the primetimemusic.net record along with the Powerhouse writeup. NFL Primetime debuted 30 years ago next Wednesday (9/13), so the fact that all three of these clips happen to come from the very first episode makes the timing of this blog entry perfect. The regular versions of Unknown Song #2 and Driving Force share the Dolphins/Patriots highlight, the very first highlight in NFL Primetime history. It's also one of the oddest highlights in the show's history because of both the weather and Miami backup quarterback Don Strock having to fill in at both QB & punter! He did a pretty damn good job, too. The other two highlights feature the respective underscores. The video for the US#2 underscore shows the Broncos blowing out the Seahawks, while the Driving Force underscore clip displays the Bucs & Falcons debuting new head coaches that wouldn't accomplish much. Enjoy these, and make sure to comment here or on youtube if you can identify any of the Unknown Songs I post.
If you've been following this blog or are otherwise familiar with NFL Primetime music, you've probably noticed there's another song from the mid-'90s that sounds a lot like Power Cutter but isn't Power Cutter. Hit Drive is a little darker & edgier, but it still has the same repetitiveness and lack of real melody. It's often difficult to tell them apart if the Primetime clip you're watching has weak sound quality, too. It turns out this similarity is not a coincidence. Not only is Hit Drive on the same album as Power Cutter, it's actually the very next track!
A couple months ago, around the time I was doing the New Day post, I stumbled upon a website called "musiqneed.com". It seemed like it was at least partially foreign and also legally dubious, but it did have nearly every album from the FirstCom Action series available for streaming (along with a lot more music of all kinds). Most importantly, though, it had the FirstCom A-series albums that are missing from the FirstCom website. I was finally able to listen to these (except FC-A19, which was also missing on musiqneed) after searching for them for years. Unfortunately, Hit Drive is the only NFL Primetime song contained on the missing albums that I hadn't already identified. Double unfortunately, the musiqneed site has been down since early April. So the rest of you are out of luck as to listening to Hit Drive yourselves, at least for now.
This track has a lot of mid-'90s highlights to choose from, most of them lame. You could probably call Hit Drive "The Bill Pidto Special." Anyway, here are the Falcons (temporarily) choking away a playoff spot against the expansion Panthers.
For my final entry before it's time to start the 2016 NFL season (I'm hoping to post one song per week then), here's the other NFL Primetime track from Sonoton SCD 15. "Dominant Factor" is a song that probably would've worked better for something like "Inside the Numbers" or "Game Balls" than actual highlights—it's just too neutral and lacking in edge & emotion. Still, it does have some synthy charm & ESPN saw fit to use it at least a few times during the 1989 season. Unfortunately, none of the games I have with Dominant Factor are real interesting. In fact, the most interesting one I've got is another Rams/Falcons game from the period where Deion Sanders was literally the only worthwhile thing to watch in Fulton County Stadium.
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…
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.
When two awful football teams get together, the result—however lacking in polish—can be quite entertaining. "Neck and Neck" is a song that symbolizes that ambivalence perfectly. It's up tempo and electronic, but it also gives off much more anguish and unhappiness than most NFL Primetime tracks. If your team was struggling, you wouldn't be surprised to hear Neck and Neck playing in the background. This seemed especially true if your team played on astroturf and/or in a dome such as historically mediocre franchises like the Lions, Saints, or Falcons. The song provided a kind of therapy for football sadness.
Neck and Neck was composed by production music legend Alan "The Hawk" Hawkshaw, who has been active in composition & pop music for more than 50 years. I won't go through all his awards, group memberships, & accomplishments here, mainly because it would take forever, but you can check them out on his website (linked above) or on his wikipedia page. Outside of production music, he might be best known for putting together the disco group Love De-Luxe that produced the #1 disco hit, "Here Comes that Sound Again," in 1979. Hawkshaw's daughter, Kirsty, is also a prolific electronic composer/artist and was the lead singer for Opus III in the '90s.
Neck and Neck is streamable on EMI's production music site, which is linked above. Unfortunately, it appears to be the only Primetime song that was composed by Alan Hawkshaw.
A fitting clip for this song (and the post title) is this "epic" 1996 matchup in the Georgia Dome between doomed June Jones's 1-9 Falcons and interim coach Rick Venturi's Saints. Enjoy!
