Marathon (Higher Quality!)

Song - Marathon

Artist(s) - Hal Brown, Donald Bradley Kelley (Brad Kelley)

Released - 1985

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - FirstCom UT103 (Lightning)

Featured Highlight - Steelers @ Oilers, 1987

Here's another higher quality clip of a late '80s NFL Primetime track.  "Marathon," by Hal Brown & Brad Kelley, was used seemingly every week in 1987 (I haven't seen Week 2) and most every week in 1988.  Finding a clean cut of this song is difficult.  The original album was released on LP, and Marathon was never put on FirstCom's later CD releases like some of the other Primetime tracks from the Up Tempo series were (e.g., Powersurge).  The Up Tempo albums have never been made streamable online AFAIK, either.  The only way I know of to get a clean cut of Marathon is to find an album rip on a site like Library Music Themes or something.

The new & improved highlight for Marathon is one of the entries in the Chuck Noll/Jerry Glanville rivalry from the late '80s. Noll & especially Glanville were outspoken about their contempt for each other, which is something you'll see a bit of at the end of this Primetime clip.  As for the game itself, the Houston Oilers would clinch their first-ever sweep over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the penultimate week of the season.  This would allow the Oilers to finish the year 9-6 and make the playoffs for the first time since owner Bud Adams fired Bum Phillips following the 1980 season.  The Steelers, meanwhile, would finish 8-7 and miss the playoffs for the 3rd. straight season.

 

Drive Away (Underscore) + Combo Mix Explanation

Song 1 - Drive Away (Underscore)

Artist(s) - Hal Brown, Donald Bradley Kelley (Brad Kelley)

Released - 1985

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - FirstCom UT102 (Wheels of Commerce)
Featured Highlight - Bears @ Eagles, 1987 (Replacement-Game Week 1)

Song 2 - Drive Away (Combo Mix)

Artist(s) - Hal Brown, Donald Bradley Kelley (Brad Kelley) (edited by presumably John Colby)

Released - N.A. (ESPN custom edit)

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - N.A. (ESPN custom edit)
Featured Highlight - Seahawks @ Bears, 1987

 

A month or so ago, GodzFire got in touch with a guy that had most every highlight from NFL Primetime stored on a boatload of DVDs.  Thanks to this guy's generosity, as well as GodzFire's willingness to host them on a convenient Google Drive, I now have way more highlights to choose from than I did before—especially from the late '80s.  I'm nowhere near finished watching all of these videos yet, but several discoveries have been made just from viewing the 1987 & 1988 clips.

Way back in 2016, I profiled the song "Drive Away" from the FirstCom UT102 album.  As with many songs played on Primetime in 1987 and '88, John Colby also used the underscore.  The underscore alone was only used twice that I've found (once in each year), and the Drive Away US had to share its highlight with another song in both cases (Drive Away and its underscore are each only about a minute long).  All other uses of Drive Away were actually a version that Godzfire and I have dubbed the "Combo Mix."  It's a simple, custom edit job (presumably by John Colby) that indefinitely alternates between the main track and the underscore.  My previous post of Drive Away also used the Combo Mix, but I somehow didn't realize it wasn't just looping the main track at the time.

To illustrate the two versions of Drive Away, I'm attaching two(!) videos to this post.  The first, featuring the underscore, shows the Bears thumping the Eagles in a nearly empty Veterans Stadium during the first week of 1987 replacement games.  After the underscore finishes, the rest of the highlight plays Driving Force—a song that happens to be on the same album and by the same composers.  The end of this highlight is cut off, unfortunately, but no more points were scored after what's shown (the Bears won 35-3).  The second highlight, featuring the Combo Mix, shows Walter Payton's final regular-season home game against Seattle late in the same season.  This quality of this clip is much better than the Drive Away video I posted 8 years ago, as you'll see.

Driving Force, Unknown Songs (The Far Turn), & Primetime's 30th. Anniversary

Song 1 - The Far Turn (+ Underscore/Rhythm Only)

Artist(s) - John Colby

Released - 1987

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - Valentino 6162 (Sports Themes), V-CD 13 (Sports Themes), Valentino STVT013 (1980s Vol. 2 - Rock & Pop Vol. 2)

Featured Highlight - Regular version:  Dolphins @ Patriots, 1987 (first part); Underscore/Rhythm Only:  Seahawks @ Broncos, 1987

Song 2 - Driving Force (+ underscore)

Artist(s) - Hal Brown, Donald Bradley Kelley (Brad Kelley)

Released - 1985

Primetime Usage - 1987

Contained on - FirstCom UT102 (Wheels of Commerce)

Featured Highlight - Regular Version:  Dolphins @ Patriots, 1987 (latter part); Underscore:  Falcons @ Buccaneers, 1987


*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 9/22/17

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.

Marathon

Song - Marathon

Artist(s) - Hal Brown, Donald Bradley Kelley (Brad Kelley) (?)

Released - 1985

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - FirstCom UT103 (Lightning)

Featured Highlight - Packers @ Saints, 1987


Perhaps the most used song in the the first two years of NFL Primetime, "Marathon"—though enjoyable—is an unusual one.  It's a track that doesn't seem to fit football highlights at first, but works surprisingly well after a few listens.  I guess Marathon would be classified as fusion, though it's a bit more driving-rockish and edgy than a stereotypical fusion piece like Solar Winds.  Speaking of Solar Winds, Marathon is contained on the same hard-to-find FirstCom Up Tempo album.

As with Communique, I'm not certain I have the artist credits correct.  There is a song named "Marathon" credited to Hal Brown & Donald Bradley Kelley in the ASCAP database, though, and they were frequent FirstCom composers during this era.  They also composed Drive Away, which is similar in many ways to Marathon.

The highlight this time shows the New Orleans Saints coronating their first-ever playoff appearance against the Green Bay Packers.  As you'll see in the video, the Saints would be far more jubilant at the end of this one than they would be a week later after a humiliating loss to the 8-7 Vikings.  This was also Forrest Gregg's final game as an NFL head coach.

Reverse Serendipity

Song - Drive Away

Artist(s) - Hal Brown, Donald Bradley Kelley (Brad Kelley)

Released - 1985

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - FirstCom UT102 (Wheels of Commerce)

Featured Highlight - Jets @ Bengals, 1988


Most of the songs I've identified from NFL Primetime were discovered the expected way:  I was already aware of the song from Primetime episodes, then I stumbled upon the track while scouring production music sites or whatever.  There are few I've found the other way around, though, like "Drive Away."  Drive Away is a song that I was already aware of because it was contained on FirstCom UT102 (another Primetime track I ID'd earlier but haven't yet posted is also on there), but I didn't know until recently that it was used on the show.  Special thanks to Andy Provin for posting Week 11 of 1987 and Week 6 of 1988 with the last several months, both of which used Drive Away as a highlight track.

Drive Away is an unusually short song for NFL Primetime.  It's only about a minute, which actually makes me wonder if FC-UT102 only included a :60 commercial cut of it rather than the whole thing.  I haven't found any evidence of this song's existence elsewhere, however, so probably not.  Drive away was composed by Hal Brown & Donald Bradley Kelley, also known as Brad Kelley.  Kelley's website, which has some nice info, is linked above.  I couldn't find anything on Brown, but a lot of his stuff still exists on the FirstCom website (same for Kelley).

This post's highlight features the then-undefeated 1988 Bengals, arguably the best team in franchise history, facing off against the 3-1-1 Jets.  Cincinnati would pull away late for a comfortable win and then eventually end up in the Super Bowl while the Jets would mark the beginning of the end of the Joe Walton era with a disappointing non-playoff finish.  I also included the postgame analysis from Berman, Jackson, and Pete Axthelm as a bonus.  Have fun!