New Prospect (Higher Quality!)

Song - New Prospect

Artist(s) - Zack Laurence

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - Bruton BRN 13 (New Prospects)

Featured Highlight - Dolphins @ Eagles, 1987

I'm not done writing about new NFL Primetime songs, but pretty much everything left to post that's new or unidentified is from New Primetime (i.e., the 2019-present ESPN+ edition of the show).  Unfortunately, my YouTube posts of New Primetime stuff don't get a lot of views.  The videos with highlights from the '80s and '90s—the classic era of NFL Primetime—definitely seem to get more action.  Some of those clips, however, were not the best quality (especially the ones from 1988).  GodzFire's acquisition of that huge lot of early NFL Primetime episodes last spring created an opportunity to post better quality videos with some of the songs from that era.  I was originally planning on posting those after posting (most) everything from New Primetime, but I kinda feel a need to try and rejuice my channel first—getting closer to the views I was getting last spring-to-summer at least.  As an experiment, I'm going to post a few "Higher Quality" clips of older tracks before getting back to New Primetime stuff.  I plan on going back-and-forth between the two post types (or something like that) afterward.  I hope you enjoy it!

The first-HQ-post belong to Zack Laurence's "New Prospect." New Prospect was one of the staples of the first two years of NFL Primetime.  It was used seemingly every regular-season week from Week 5 of 1987 (or Week 6 if you count the cancelled Week 3) up through the end of 1988.  This time, the included game highlight is the Dolphins' visit to Veterans Stadium to play the Eagles in '87.  The contest featured two star quarterbacks, Dan Marino & Randall Cunningham, albeit playing for middling teams that would not make the playoffs that year.  There's also a nice production blooper at the beginning of the video.  Have fun watching!

Original New Prospect Link

 

 

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…

Launching Coaches into Space

Song - Space Rock

Artist(s) - Adrian Baker

Released - 1983

Primetime Usage - 1988

Contained on - Bruton BRL 12 (Industrial Video)
Featured Highlight - Chiefs @ Chargers, 1988

"Space Rock" was only used once on NFL Primetime.  That's probably a good thing.  The song itself is alright, but it doesn't really work for sports highlights.  This is especially true for the portions that sound like a knockoff of Gary Numan's hit, "Cars."  Space Rock was composed by Adrian Baker.  Baker was the singer for the '80s band Gidea Park, which is probably best known for doing the cover of "California Girls" that accompanied the snowboard-chase sequence from A View to a Kill (thanks Wikipedia!).  The track (Space Rock, I mean) is available for streaming.  Sometime in the recent past, a website called Usample that uses Universal's streaming/website engine put up most every old Bruton album from their LP heyday (I also mentioned Usample when I plugged a new source for Good Morning America! a couple years ago).  Industrial Video, which houses Space Rock, was thankfully no exception.

 

Space Rock's only highlight clip wasn't memorable.  In Week 16 of 1988, the San Diego Chargers hosted the Kansas City Chiefs in a game that figured to be the final game for both head coaches.  The people doing the figuring were correct, as KC's Frank Gansz and SD's Al Saunders—a Brit who somehow ended up serving as an American Football coach for nearly five decades—were both fired following the game.  Gansz and Saunders would be never be head coaches again, either (Gansz died in 2009, Saunders hasn't coached since 2018).  Appropriately enough, the final highlight featuring Al Saunders was narrated by none other than John Saunders (no relation… I assume).

Special thanks to GodzFire for identifying this one a few months ago by posting it privately to YouTube and getting a copyright flag.

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.

Good Morning America! Now Streamable Redux

The old Bruton album Good Morning America!, which wasn't streamable at all until 2020, is now available at two locations.  Universal's website has been digitizing a lot of the old Bruton LPs through their Usample service, so you can now find it there.  It's still hosted on archive.org, too.  The N.Y. Giants & Spearhead posts have been updated to add the new source.  Special thanks to Godzfire for noticing this.

LINK

Good Morning America! Now Streamable

The classic Bruton LP Good Morning America!, which contains briefly used NFL Primetime tracks NY Giants and Spearhead, is now streamable at archive.org.  Special thanks to Godzfire for discovering this.

LINK

Title Holder

Song - Title Holder

Artist(s) - David Reilly

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1989

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

Featured Highlight - Packers @ Rams, 1989


The AFC Championship is this Sunday, and whoever wins that contest between the Steelers and the Patriots will set a new record for all-time Super Bowl appearances.   New England & Pittsburgh—along with Denver & Dallas—are currently tied with 8 trips to the big game, so the victor will be the lone NFL team with 9.  With that info in mind, it seems appropriate to post a song with the name "Title Holder."  Title Holder is the fourth & final NFL Primetime piece from David Reilly's Success album.  It has a more laid-back tempo than most, but that doesn't cause its intensity to suffer.  Also, like several tracks from this period, the slow intro & bridge sections were edited out by ESPN.  It fits well for games that involve good teams doing what they do best.

This week's highlight features the 1989 "Cardiac Pack" doing what they did best:  falling behind big and then surging back to make things close.  This clip also has what might be the worst line of Tom Jackson's stellar analyst career.  When describing notorious bust Tony Mandarich playing his first NFL game, Jackson says "He looks to be everything that's been advertised."  Even TJ can't get it right all the time.

Week 17

Song - Automotive Industry

Artist(s) - Warren Bennett

Released - 1989

Primetime Usage - 1990

Contained on - Bruton BR 61/BRL 22 (Industrial Forum)

Featured Highlight - Dolphins @ Patriots, 1990


Ah, Week 17… the most awkward time of the NFL season.  It's a week where 2/3 to 3/4 of the teams have nothing concrete to play for, either because they're out of the playoff hunt or because their playoff seeding is already secure, while the rest often have convoluted tiebreaker scenarios to worry about.  The radical difference in motivation makes for some intriguing matchups, like mediocre teams being favored against dominant teams because the better ones might be resting their starters.  There are some interesting contests in this year's edition of Week 17, too, but the recent intradivision-only mandate has honestly taken a lot of the fun out of this annual holiday event.  I mean, who can forget the famous Packers/Panthers "points war" from 1999?  There's almost no chance something like that would happen today.

I figure the best way to commemorate the weirdness of Week 17 would be to post one of the most obscure songs in the NFL Primetime arsenal.  "Automotive Industry" was only used on the show one time that I'm aware of.  That time wasn't Week 17, unfortunately, but it was in 1990—the first year to have a Week 17.  1990 was also the worst year in the history of the New England Patriots, their only season under head coach Rod Rust.  For all of you familiar with classic video games, this season is why the Patriots are the most laughable team in the original NES version of Tecmo Super Bowl.  Also video-game related is that Automotive Industry contains a similar feel & instrumentation to many of the songs from the Growlanser strategy-RPG series.

Automotive Industry's composer, Warren Bennett, is—like many of the artists featured on this blog—a highly prolific production-music writer.  He's also associated with longtime British rock stalwarts Cliff Richard and the Shadows, the band that made his father, Brian Bennett, famous.  Sadly, Automotive Industry is the only known Primetime track composed by either Bennett, and it was only used one time at that.

Intra Conference

Song - Inter Conference

Artist(s) - David Reilly

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1989

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

Featured Highlight - Cardinals @ Lions, 1989


My third post from David Reilly's Success album is the one that was used least on NFL Primetime.  That's a shame, though, because "Inter Conference" is a punchy & fun track that effectively fits highlight videos.  At the beginning of 1989, both the Phoenix Cardinals & Detroit Lions were beginning major transitions.  The Cards were adjusting to life without longtime QB Neil Lomax (Lomax was still on the roster, but would never again suit up in a game that counted), while the Lions were beginning Wayne Fontes's & Mouse Davis's NFL experiment with the run & shoot offense.  The run & shoot wouldn't last more than a few years in Pontiac, but another major addition would pay long-term dividends.  This opening-week contest against Phoenix, the only highlight I've seen with Inter Conference, was also the first time Barry Sanders ever played in an NFL uniform (he sat out the preseason).  Sanders played pretty well, too, averaging nearly 8 yards-per-carry and scoring Detroit's only touchdown.  It wasn't quite enough for the Lions to win, but it was a great sign of things to come for Sanders and the franchise.  Enjoy the clip.

What Used to Be

Song - Spearhead

Artist(s) - "Zoë de Souza" (Zoë Kronberger)

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1988

Contained on - Bruton BRH 20 (Good Morning America!), Archive.org Link

Featured Highlight - Cowboys @ Steelers, 1988


The second NFL Primetime track from Good Morning America! (that I know of) is also one that I have just one clip of.  "Spearhead," by Zoë Kronberger under the alias Zoë de Souza, provides a well-balanced mix of synth, trumpet, and electric guitar.  It actually sounds like it could be the battle music for some sort of sci-fi RPG, and that genre's standard of energetic determination also fits well for sports highlights.  Kronberger's career has been a bit back & forth.  According to her website (linked above): she trained as a graphic artist, then switched to music during the '70s & '80s, then gradually focused more on visual art from the '90s on.  Good Morning America! also contains several more solid tracks by de Souza/Kronberger, including the rather trippy "Steel Breeze."  Unfortunately, as I mentioned on my previous post, finding anything beyond a bootleg vinyl rip of this album is a difficult proposition.

The aforementioned clip with Spearhead features the Cowboys & Steelers long past their 1970s prime.  In fact, 1988 was the last ever meeting between hall-of-fame coaches Tom Landry & Chuck Noll.  From watching Primetime episodes from the late '80s, I gather the football media was often asking whether the game of football had passed both Landry & Noll by.  Noll would prove that false just one year later when he won his only NFL Coach of the Year award by taking a bunch of raw rookies & unheralded veterans to the Divisional Round.  Unfortunately for Landry, he never got the same chance as he was unceremoniously & infamously fired by new Cowboys owner Jerry Jones following the 1988 season.  He never coached again.  Anyway, here's the last go 'round between these Super Bowl arch-nemeses.

What Coulda Been

Song - N.Y. Giants

Artist(s) - Ray Russell

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1988

Contained on - Bruton BRH 20 (Good Morning America!), Archive.org Link

Featured Highlight - Cardinals @ Bengals, 1988


The next couple weeks will feature two songs from the same album that may have been used as little as one time on NFL Primetime.  The only highlight I have of "N.Y. Giants," by Grid Lock guitarist/composer Ray Russell, was for a game that ironically had nothing to do with the New York Giants.  In 1988, the Cardinals had just uprooted themselves from tepid fan support in St. Louis and had to get ready for nearly 20 years of similarly apathetic support in Phoenix.  Despite this, and the franchise's historically underwhelming win/loss record, expectations were high for the 1988 Phoenix Cardinals.  The still had Neil "The Grand Cannon" Lomax who, though not on the level of a Joe Montana, was still one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL.  They also had star WR Roy Green and a decent chunk of other talented players.  An 0-2 start that included a loss to an ultimately terrible Cowboys squad in the Cardinals' first ever game at Sun Devil Stadium probably dinged their egos a bit, but they won 7 of their next 9 games (including a 23-point comeback over eventual Super Bowl champ San Francisco) and were actually leading the NFC East after Week 11.  Unfortunately, 1988 then became the ultimate "what coulda been" season for the Cardinals franchise.  Lomax suffered a leg injury in that last win over the Giants and, though he would eventually return, the team wasn't the same and they lost 5 straight to end the year.  Even worse, Lomax never played a regular-season down again following 1988 due to a chronic hip condition and the Cardinals wouldn't see anything resembling consistent QB play again until 2007.  The franchise's near misses in the late '80s (they also choked away a postseason spot in their final year in St. Louis) combined with the sudden post-Lomax loss of offense led to just one playoff appearance for the franchise from 1983-2007 and largely terrible home attendance over that span.  It's easy to speculate how things could've been different if only Lomax hadn't been hurt or if he hadn't had to retire or even if the team had been able to rally once he returned with 3 weeks to go in the '88 season.  Things are finally going well for the Cardinals now, but it really seems like it shouldn't have taken anywhere near that long.

Anyway…  the aforementioned highlight showcasing N.Y. Giants was the first-ever regular-season game for the Phoenix Cardinals.  Against the Cincinnati Bengals, who would surprise everyone by dominating the AFC that year, Phoenix would kinda foreshadow the tail end of their season by blowing a perfect chance to win the game late.  Oh, as for the song itself:  nothing from the Good Morning America! album was ever released beyond vinyl, as far as I know, so trying to find a bootleg rip online is probably your only option.

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…

Lots of Prospects

Song - New Prospect

Artist(s) - Zack Laurence

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - Bruton BRN 13 (New Prospects), Bruton BVA005 (The Zack Laurence Anthology)

Featured Highlight - Chiefs @ Oilers, 1988


If you like heavy brass with a driving bass line, then this track is for you.  Zack Laurence's "New Prospect" is straightforward, loud, in your face, and it gets the job done.  As a result, it's not surprising ESPN featured it prominently during the first two years of NFL Primetime.  New Prospect is one of many songs with the word "Prospect" in the title from Laurence's appropriately titled, variations-on-a-theme album New Prospects.  This LP was never officially converted to digital as far as I know (though amateur uploads are easy to find through the magic of Google & YouTube), but about half of it is contained on Bruton's The Zack Laurence Anthology linked above.  I haven't discovered a whole lot of info about Laurence, but I've found him to be one of the more prolific & talented production music composers of the 1970s & '80s.

Week 6 of 1988 was not kind to quarterbacks.  A disproportionate number of signal callers suffered injuries during that week, and the Houston Oilers were not immune.  With Warren Moon not even dressed, backup "Commander" Cody Carlson dislocated his thumb early in their game against Kansas City.  Former replacement QB (and ex-Montana QB) Brent Pease then came in and "led" his team to a 7-6 victory despite terrible numbers.  Here's the highlight:

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.