Six More 1988 Tracks Identified

Shortly after Musikos Sports 2 was put up online, a hard copy of Musikos Sports 1 was located.  Sports 1 contains all six of the remaining 1988 Unknown Songs that I've previously posted about (there's another still-unidentified one that I wasn't able to post because of a copyright block).  That sets a new record for number of NFL Primetime songs from the same album, surpassing the five tracks housed on Sonoton SCD 16 (Automotion 3).  Here's the list:

US #8 - At the Buzzer
US #9 - Peak Performance
US #10 - Break Away
US #13 - Grand Prix
US #14 - Going for the Gold
US #17 - Power Play

As mentioned on my previous posts about Musikos, the artists for these songs aren't exactly known.  It's probably safe to say that Power Play was written by William Soden since it's so similar to his NFL Music Library track titled "Pedal to the Metal."  The other five could be Soden, they could be Neal Davenport, or they could be someone else.

Special to thanks to Godzfire for discovering that Sports 1 was housed at the library of Slippery Rock University, and to Josh Ochs for actually picking it up.

Unknown Songs #7 and #16 Identified

The Musikos Sports 2 CD has finally surfaced, and—thanks to Retromatic posting it on librarymusicthemes—two more NFL Primetime tracks from 1988 have been identified.  Unknown Song #7 is "Play Ball!" and Unknown Song #16 is "Grid Iron Great."  Oddly enough, neither of these were among the samples on the Musikos promo disc I mentioned a while back.  Musikos's albums do not have artist credits for any of their songs, so it's not presently clear which composer is responsible for either piece.  According to info posted by Godzfire, there are four known composers attached to Musikos: Neal Davenport, William Soden, Steve Diamond (Dimond?), and Jamie Hoover.  Play Ball! could probably be any of those four, but Grid Iron Great really doesn't sound like Soden's work.

The question as to how ESPN acquired these Musikos songs hasn't been solved yet, either.  NFL Primetime was using them in 1988, but these Musikos CDs weren't released until the early '90s.  Either John Colby directly licensed them from their composer(s), or there's some mystery music library out there that's even more obscure than Musikos.

Special thanks to Retromatic for acquiring & posting Sports 2, and to Godzfire for informing me that Retromatic had obtained it.

LINK - Play Ball!
LINK - Grid Iron Great

Unknown Song #11 Identified

I know I promised that the next posts on this blog would be the Unknown Songs from New Primetime, but there's been a new development.  Literally minutes after I made the NFL Primetime Title Song post last night, I was told on the Primetime Music discord that some of the albums from the elusive Musikos music library had been procured.  We've only managed to find Album 3 from the Sports set (there are 4 albums in that set total), but there is one NFL Primetime song on there:  "Spring Training."  No artist credits came with the album downloads, unfortunately, and info on the Musikos library is scarce.  As a result, I don't know who composed Spring Training.  I do know that William Soden & Neal Davenport (founder of Davenport Music) were heavily involved in Musikos's compositions, but Spring Training doesn't really sound like Soden and I don't believe those two were the only composers.  Anyway, special thanks to Josh Ochs for locating these Musikos albums.

Thanks to a Musikos promotional album (with a bunch of short clips) I received in October, I know there are at least 3 other Primetime songs on the other 3 Musikos Sports albums.  If anyone has any info on the whereabouts of other Musikos albums, don't hesitate to comment or email or post on the discord or whatever.  Also, since Musikos started in 1990 and these songs were used on NFL Primetime in 1988, these songs must've been composed well before they ended up on Musikos albums.  So don't hesitate to contact me if you might know about other libraries where these tracks may have been released first.

LINK