Contained on - Classic NFL Orchestral (as well as some other NFL Films albums like Autumn Thunder Vol. 6) Featured Highlight - Packers @ Cowboys, 2023 Wild Card
Sam Spence gets his third-straight post on this blog. "Classic Battle" is another NFL Films classic that most any football fan will recognize. As with "March to the Trenches," Classic Battle was only used for the intro of the attached game highlight. That highlight is the Packers/Cowboys Wild Card game from a couple years ago where Dallas decided to play flag football on defense. Classic Battle accompanies Chris Berman's recaps of the Ice Bowl and the 1995 NFC Championship Game. Also, as with "The Equalizer," I don't know exactly when Spence composed this piece or when it debuted on NFL Films. It's not on any of the old NFL Music LPs, and the earliest album with it I know of is NFL CD 005 Magnificent Eleven from 1996.
Contained on - NFL music compilations like Autumn Thunder (Soundcloud song link) Featured Highlight - Steelers @ Cowboys, 2020 (Intro)
Another Sam Spence classic. Unfortunately, "March to the Trenches" was only used once on NFL Primetime as far as I know, and it was only used for a highlight intro. The 7-0 Steelers visited a Dallas Cowboys team that was having to play their 29th. string quarterback. March to the Trenches accompanied Chris Berman's remembrance of the two franchises' glory years in the 1970s, while the rest of the clip uses Arnold. The Cowboys actually gave Pittsburgh a good game despite being a clear underdog, but they couldn't hold the lead.
March to the Trenches oddly doesn't appear to be on the official NFL music website. I'm pretty sure it isn't on any of the old NFL LPs, either. It is on most of the NFL Films music compilations, though, and it's very easy to find just by searching Google or whatever.
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.
Back to new songs from New Primetime. Unknown Song #52, which I guess could be called the "Pirate Song," was the second piece to debut on the Week 3, 2019, episode. Unlike US #51, however, US #52 would still be used into the current decade… at least as a non-highlight track. It was used as a rare auxiliary track in 2020, and it was the primary Game Balls theme for 2021. US #52 sounds like it could be a Sam Spence composition, but I don't believe it is—it might be a deliberate knock-off.
As with US #51, I had to post the accompanying clip as audio-only because of a Disney/ESPN copyright block. I don't know if this will happen with episodes from 2020 or 2021, but this was the only highlight clip of US #52 I currently possess. Anyway… if you happen to know this song's identity and/or where to find it, don't hesitate to comment here or on YouTube or wherever to let me know. Thanks!
I've finally obtained a clip of the Bucs/Cowboys game with US #46 where you can actually hear what the song sounds like. Special thanks to Seth Campbell for sending this to me.
I'm apologizing right away for the low video & audio quality of this highlight clip. This is the only game with Unknown Song #46, and this clip comes from the only full-episode post of Week 1, 2001, that I could find (there's another, higher quality post that only has the late games). The music track sounds like some sort of cheesy & dramatic Halloween monster-chase thing, at least from what I can make out of it. If anybody knows of a better cut of this highlight (or if you know what the song is), please let me know so I can post it. Thanks!
Barring something unexpected, this will be the last highlight I post from the 1980s (there's actually another Unknown Song from 1988 I tried to post, but the video got copyright blocked by the NFL and I have no other clips with that song). Unknown Song #20 is the only unidentified track from 1989 that I can confirm was used more than once. It's also one of a very few 1989 music debuts that wasn't either from Sonoton or David Reilly's Success album (UPDATE: it turns out it was from Sonoton, but from an LP that wasn't ported to a CD initially). I would really like to find this one, since I think it's one of the best NFL Primetime pieces I haven't identified.
US #20's accompanying highlight wasn't an interesting game on its own merits, but it was an important milestone. In this game in the Superdome, Jimmy Johnson learned very quickly that he had a total tear-down/rebuild on his hands with the Cowboys. It was also the first regular-season game in franchise history not coached by Tom Landry. The Saints, meanwhile, would miss the playoffs with a winning record for the second-straight season (they would ironically go 8-8 and make the playoffs in 1990).
The second well-known John Colby track has an odd name. I have no idea who "Eric D." is or what significance that name has to sports or anything else, but the song nonetheless ended up as one of the top-5 most often used pieces on NFL Primetime. I've also seen the track labeled under the name "Breakdown" on some of those bootleg Primetime music collections floating around the net, and maybe that name would've made more sense. Speaking of those bootlegs, that's the only known way of acquiring the full-length versions of this particular Colby trilogy's songs. The media player on John Colby's website (linked above) has higher-quality audio, but the tracks are incomplete and/or fade out prematurely.
As for the highlight: 1999 saw the start of Philadelphia's rise and the beginning of Dallas's fall. One key moment to this was in Week 5 when Michael Irvin suffered a career-ending neck injury on the turf of always dangerous Veterans Stadium. To add further insult to the Cowboys, they lost on a late TD pass by—of all people—Doug Pederson. This was the first of what would a be a whopping 3 career wins as a starting QB for Pederson, a total he's already exceeded halfway through his first year as an NFL head coach. Enjoy!
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.
One of my posts last week mentioned that a couple songs used in NFL Primetime's first year (1987) eventually returned. One of those was Powersurge, which I already profiled, and the other was the similarly titled "Powerhouse." There's a twist here, though, in that three different versions of Powerhouse were ultimately used on the show. The original, base version and the underscore (no horn section) accompanied highlights in 1987, but then ESPN brought back the song in a cut-and-paste edited form that increased the excitement and removed the quiet bridge section in 1991. Powerhouse, though a simple song in many ways, provides more energy than most NFL Primetime music and is particularly suited toward games with frenetic comeback attempts.
Powerhouse was composed by early FirstCom regulars John Bähler & Mary Therese Matthews, who I've mentioned multiple times on this blog already. This song never officially made it off of vinyl, as far as I know, so it isn't easily accessible. There is an updated remix, titled "Powerhouse 2K" available on FirstCom's website, but it sounds quite a bit different. It wasn't written by the above artists, either, and is instead credited to associated (related?) FirstCom composers James Griffith, Mark Matthews, and Kathryn Matthews. I don't know who was responsible for the custom ESPN edit used in the '90s, but I would guess it was then-ESPN music director John Colby.
In honor of the holidays—or something—this post gets a whopping three(!) highlight videos. Also, in an unintentional oddity, all three have one of the secondary hosts presenting the game instead of Chris Berman. The first, which features the original version of Powerhouse, features Gayle Gardner showing the Cowboys visiting Busch Stadium & the Cardinals in the 1987 opener. The highlights really underplay the craziness of how that game ended; the Cardinals overcame a 13-3 deficit by scoring 3 unanswered touchdowns in the final 2 minutes! This was also their first home opening win in 12 years in what would also be their final home opener in St. Louis. The Powerhouse underscore highlight has John Saunders showing the Bills, in their last bad season for a while, losing a close game to the Jets at home. The final video, profiling the '90s custom edit version of the song, has Robin Roberts accompanying the post-Moon Oilers in their last "Battle of Texas" in Irving against the defending champion Cowboys.
"Crush" could probably count as NFL Primetime's "epic" theme for the first half of the '90s. I like it, though, because it has more synth and is therefore less over-the-top than International Statement. It was composed by Mark Matthews and James Griffith. I couldn't figure out if Mark is any relation to Mary Therese Matthews or if James is related to Sally Anne Griffith, but—since they were all FirstCom composers—I wouldn't be surprised. Unlike with the female Matthews/Griffith set, however, I have not found more than one Primetime song written by Mark or James.
Crush is contained on FirstCom A2 - Intense. Unlike a lot of the Primetime themes on early FirstCom CDs, I don't think this track is on any of the earlier FirstCom Up Tempo LPs. Crush isn't legally streamable or downloadable, as far as I know, but the single-digit FirstCom "A" discs are the most common ones to show up on eBay (that's how I got FC-A2). Fast Drive is also on this album, plus one other Primetime song I haven't yet covered.
Accompanying Crush is an interesting footnote from the 1995 season. The defending champion 49ers, despite being without Steve Young, rolled into Texas Stadium and thumped the eventual champion Dallas Cowboys. Also included in this highlight is Merton Hanks's famous (infamous?) "Pigeon Dance," which was certainly one of the most unique celebration moves in NFL history. Have fun!
