US #31, the first segment of Oddball Week, has been identified as "Go For It" by Ray Russell. This is weirdly the second Week 1, 1997, song to come from a late-'80s MusicHouse album. It's also the third Ray Russell track to be identified as an NFL Primetime track. Oddly, two of Russell's three pieces were one-offs used for Cardinals @ Bengals games in the first week of their respective seasons (N.Y. Giants was used in Week 1, 1988). Special thanks to Noah S for discovering this one.
For some reason, Go For It doesn't show up on KPM's album listing for MHE7, so I added the KPM search link instead. LINK
Also, one additional note: "Hard Attack," whose Kosinus album was absent from streaming services for some reason, has now been posted on YouTube. Thanks to Seth Campbell for noticing this. YT LINK
Contained on - MusicHouse MHE7 - Jingles, Bumpers and Donuts (KPM search link) Featured Highlight - Cardinals @ Bengals, 1997
*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 12/17/21
1997 was the last year where the NFL Primetime producers attempted to do a large-scale overhaul of the show's music. I say "attempted," though, because most of these new tracks didn't stick. Week 1 of '97 was particularly bizarre. There were 13 highlights that week (not counting the SNF recap on the non-live broadcasts); more than half of them used songs that were, to my knowledge, never used any other time on the show. Most of these tracks just didn't work, so kudos to the producers for both realizing that early and for replacing them with better new songs later (like Total News).
The very first Primetime highlight of 1997, featuring two teams that would not end up winning a lot of games, sadly includes one of the better oddball songs of Week 1. I apologize for the video quality of these Oddball Week clips in advance. Fortunately, the audio quality does not suffer nearly as much.
At this point, the 1988 NFL Primetime season has easily the highest number of unidentified songs. Unfortunately, I only have one clip of many of these songs. As a result, combined with the fact the highlights are relatively old, the audio/visual quality of these clips will tend to suffer. I apologize in advance.
The most notable thing about Unknown Song #5 is that it sounds like an intentional knockoff of "Birdland," the 1977 jazz-fusion hit by Weather Report. It's a bit more synthy, as one would expect from a 1980s production song, but the similarities are still obvious. Accompanying this track is a season-opening matchup between the Seahawks & Broncos that was played in the middle of a ticker-tape parade for some reason.
I've already covered the previous epic-sounding songs from NFL Primetime—Olympic Action (1989-90), Crush (1991-95), and International Statement (1997-05)—as well as the "epic track that wasn't"—Performance (1990). Now comes the original. "Raw Energy," composed by the supergroup-esque combination of John Devereaux & David Reilly, sounds exactly like how one would expect a dramatic rock/orchestral fusion piece from the late '80s to sound. That means it's a perfect accompaniment to high-profile football highlights. Unfortunately, despite this truth, ESPN didn't really use the song that way. It was played frequently in 1987 and especially in 1988, but it often accented games that just weren't that interesting or important. In other words: Raw Energy could've been a true "epic track," but its questionable implementation prevented it from quite getting to that level.
This week's highlight doesn't need much setup. It's just the 1988 Bills winning one of many low-scoring games on their way to a surprisingly easy division title. You will get to see the long-dead Seattle Kingdome, though.
Since this is the final week of the NFL season, my Primetime Music posts will get less frequent for a while. One interesting note, however, is that I only have a handful of fully documented tracks left to post. That means that, sometime during the offseason, I will begin posting unidentified songs (starting with the songs that have some sort of partial identification or unofficial names). Keep an eye out for that, and feel free to let me and/or the public know a song's ID if you happen to know it. Thanks for reading!
"The 'epic track that wasn't," is probably what you could call "Performance." It definitely does have the feel of the other epic-type songs on NFL Primetime (International Statement, Olympic Action, Crush), but it was only used briefly (perhaps just once) and not for a game that anyone would've considered crucial or memorable. It is a little more boring & repetitive than those other tracks, so maybe that was a factor. Or it could just be that Performance got lost in the shuffle. Whatever the reason, I don't think it's a big deal that the song didn't last. It was written by prolific KPM composer John Devereaux. There's surprisingly little info about Devereaux online, but he has a lot of good stuff on KPM. He also composed the song, "The Nightmare Begins," which was apparently used multiple times on Spongebob Squarepants.
Speaking of being lost in the shuffle, there were the 1990s Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams. We all recall the cinderella Kurt Warner 1999 season, but what many don't remember is that the Rams had the worst record of any NFL franchise over the first 9 years of the decade (the Bengals ended up winning that honor). They also tried to fix languish fan interest by moving the team to Missouri, a move that fits the definition of "mixed results" given that the Rams are now back in L.A. just 21 years later. Anyway… this decline started in 1990, when a team that had gone to the NFC Championship the year before went an unceremonious 5-11. The only clip I have with "Performance" features them blowing a lead at home against a middling Saints team.
