Purgatory Primetime - Shrails

Song - Shrails
Artist(s) - Daniel Holter, Rex Carroll
Released - 2001
Primetime Usage - 2006
Contained on - Velocity VL017Q (Metal v2)
Featured Highlight - "Saints magical season" Segment, 2006 Divisional Round

 

The same sequence celebrating the 2006 Saints' rebound that featured Crash and Burn had a second clip with a unique NFL Primetime track.  Accompanying the "Saints magical season" segment was the song "Shrails." The portion of the clip with music is short, but Shrails tells you all you really need to know about it right away—you're not missing anything crucial by listening to an abbreviated portion.  Shrails was written/performed by the familiar duo of Daniel Holter & Rex Carroll.  If you don't recall those names, they were the same pair responsible for the New Primetime non-highlight track Tracking Heat.  The heavy-metal instrumentation between both songs is quite similar, although Shrails is less melodic and features more shredding.  Both Shrails and Tracking Heat are actually on the same album!  It's a little weird that ESPN would use two different songs from the same album 15 years apart, but whatever…

Special thanks to GodzFire for identifying this one, too.

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…

Forerunner

Song - Forerunner

Artist(s) - Craig Palmer

Released - 1986

Primetime Usage - 1987

Contained on - Network Music NM051 (Corporate Technology (Industrial))
Featured Highlight - Bengals @ Steelers, 1987

The recent acquisition of most every NFL Primetime highlight from the late '80s has unearthed a few interesting one-off songs.  One of these, "Forerunner," is actually pretty good.  It has nice aggressive energy and definitely works well with action highlights.  It would probably work better if some of the excessive bridge sections were edited out, but I'm still surprised it wasn't used more than once on the show.  Even the underscore is good!  Most underscores could be accurately described as "lamer version of main track," but Forerunner's underscore emphasizes the sweet rhythm-guitar part that isn't as audible on the main track.  Forerunner was composed by Craig Palmer.  According to the archive.org snapshot of his now defunct website (linked on the Discogs page that's linked above), Palmer somehow became the music director for The Regis Philbin Show in San Diego when he was only 18.  In later years, he composed many library pieces that were used for movies & TV.  Special thanks to GodzFire for ID'ing this song soon after we acquired the Primetime clip.

NFL Primetime's only use of Forerunner was during Week 6 of 1987 (or Week 7 if you count the canceled week), which was the first week back after the strike ended.  In this highlight, Mark Malone actually leads the Steelers to a close home win over division rival Cincinnati.  You might remember Mark Malone as an ESPN reporter, a professional Tom Selleck lookalike, and the most hated man in the history of Pittsburgh, PA.

Unknown Song #59 Identified

That was fast…  Thanks to Godzfire's sound-editing skills and his use of an audio fingerprinting program, US #59 has already been identified as the underscore version of a song called "Rainwater."  Eric Cunningham & Chris Lang, the composers of "Pure Glam," also feature on this one, as well as some guy named Chris Wright (I couldn't find any info about him).  Rainwater is housed in a different library than Pure Glam, though—the Killer Edge label from Killer Tracks.  It's on EDGE2, titled Rock: Alternative 2.  I listed the year as "1999?" for the release of EDGE2 because the Universal website says it was released in 2000, but Discogs has EDGE13 coming out in 1999.  Universal has the release date for the first umpteen Killer Edge albums as all being January 1, 2000, so I figure they just weren't being too thorough there.

LINK

Purgatory Primetime - Unknown Song #59 - Rainwater (underscore)

Song - Rainwater (underscore)

Artist(s) - Eric Cunningham, Chris Lang, Chris Wright
Released - 1999?

Primetime Usage - 2006

Contained on - Killer Edge EDGE2 (Rock: Alternative 2)
Featured Highlight - NFC Divisional Round Preview (from Wild Card Sunday Episode), 2006

 

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 2/10/24

Two weeks ago, I profiled the use of "Pure Glam" for the AFC Divisional Preview from the 2006 Sunday Wild Card episode.  The NFC Divisional Preview from earlier in that same episode also used a new song.  This song has not been identified, however.  It sounds like a generic grunge instrumental with some loud, punctuating drums.  I'm not sure what more to say about it than that, but please reply or contact me if you know what this track is.

Oh… and enjoy Super Bowl LVIII.

Purgatory Primetime - Pure Glam

Song - Pure Glam
Artist(s) - Eric Cunningham, Chris Lang
Released - 1999
Primetime Usage - 2006
Contained on - Chronic Trax CM014 (Chronic Rocks, Vol. 1)
Featured Highlight - AFC Divisional Round Preview (from Wild Card Sunday Episode), 2006

After ESPN traded Sunday Night Football for Monday Night Football following the 2005 season, they lost the exclusive long-form highlight rights to the Sunday NFL day games that led to the launch of the show in the first place.  What followed (until ESPN+ New Primetime began in 2019) was what I like to call the "Purgatory Primetime" era.  During this era (2006-18), almost all of the real NFL Primetime broadcasts aired during the postseason.  There was still a show called "NFL Primetime," but it was a bastardized version that aired Monday afternoons without Chris Berman or Tom Jackson.  The closest thing left for NFL Primetime junkies was The Blitz, a Primetime-like segment hosted by Berman & TJ (& others like Trent Dilfer) during Sunday evening SportsCenter that featured shorter highlights and longer talking segments.  The Blitz was passable—and both it and the Monday NFL Primetime used the classic music everyone reading this blog is more than familiar with—but things still weren't the same compared to the pre-2006 NFL world.

The 2006 postseason marked the first real return of NFL Primetime since the end of ESPN's Sunday Night Football.  Aside from ditching the 2005 title song and returning to the 1998-04 piece, the episodes looked and felt just like the ones from the previous year's playoffs.  One quirk, however, was the addition of several new non-highlight tracks.  The first, the most interesting, and the only one that's been identified as of this post, is "Pure Glam" by Chronic Trax co-founder Eric Cunningham and "Blow the Stack" co-composer Chris Lang (assuming it's the same Chris Lang).  It was used one time for each Wild Card episode and also once in the Conference Championship show.  Below is Pure Glam's accompaniment of the AFC Divisional Round preview late in the Sunday Wild Card episode.  Special thanks to Godzfire for identifying this song.

Non-Highlight Track (New Primetime) - Tracking Heat

Song - Tracking Heat
Artist(s) - Daniel Holter, Rex Carroll
Released - 2001
Primetime Usage - 2021
Contained on - Velocity VL017Q (Metal v2)
Featured Highlight - "Largest Conf Champ Comeback Wins" Segment, 2021

Here, as promised last week, is the last unique non-highlight track from the 2021 Conference Championship episode of NFL Primetime.  It accompanies a graphic showing the largest deficits overcome in conference-championship history (the 2021 Bengals tied the 18-point record set by the 2006 Colts), as well as a couple clips from the Cincinnati bar celebrations that occurred when the AFC Championship ended.  The song is "Tracking Heat," by Daniel Holter & Rex Carroll.  Holter is a producer who has composed/co-composed many songs that have shown up on TV, while Carroll is a songwriter who got his start as the lead guitar player & co-founder of the Christian metal group Whitecross in the 1980s.  Tracking Heat is found on the Velocity production-music album Metal v2.

Again, special thanks to Godzfire for ID'ing this one.

Unknown Song #57 Identified

Jwasc92Wrestling is now 7/7 on identifying New Primetime tracks.  US #57 is "Combat," by Devin Bronson.  Bronson is a guitar player who toured with acts like Kelly Osbourne and The Goo Goo Dolls a while back.  His website doesn't look like it's been updated in several years, though.  Combat is found on the album Throttled from the Slam! label.  I couldn't find info on the Slam! label, unfortunately.  Universal's website houses it, but it's not listed on Discogs as far as I can find.  Again, thanks to Jwasc92Wrestling for ID'ing this one.

LINK

Unknown Song #57 (New Primetime) - Combat

Song - Combat
Artist(s) - Devin Bronson
Released - 2013
Primetime Usage - 2020 (non-highlight)
Contained on - SLAM077 (Throttled)
Featured Highlight - "Pressuring Mahomes" Segment, Super Bowl LV

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 2/26/23

Now we're into the weeds of obscurity.  Unknown Song #57 was only used for one non-highlight piece during the Super Bowl LV broadcast of NFL Primetime.  During this segment, Steve Young & Anthony "Booger" McFarland (the COVID-era replacement for Tom Jackson) discuss how Tampa Bay's defensive front dominated Kansas City's offensive line and made life miserable for Patrick Mahomes.  The included game clips are accompanied by US #57, a loud, industrial track that sounds like it should be in a factory-shootout scene from a modern action movie.  The song isn't especially pleasant or melodic, but it actually works well for this segment.  It's also easy to hear, which is unfortunately not the case for some of the non-highlight tracks from the last couple seasons of Primetime.  If you can identify US #57, don't hesitate to comment here or on YouTube.

Unknown Song #56 (New Primetime) - Field of Courage

Song - Field of Courage
Artist(s) - Ron Klein, Udi Harpaz
Released - 2006
Primetime Usage - 2020-21 (non-highlight)
Contained on - EVO062 (Gridiron Glory)
Featured Highlight - Game Balls: Week 13, 2020

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/10/22

This is technically a post for Unknown Song #56, but you could probably think of it as "Unknown Song #52-B."  It's marcato orchestral style is similar to US #52, and its tempo is only a little slower.  US #56 doesn't sound quite as "piratey" as US #52, but they are still difficult to tell apart.  The fact they were both used for NFL Primetime's Game Balls segment in 2021 doesn't help distinguish them, either.  At any rate, I wouldn't be surprised if US #52 and US #56 were on the same album… assuming either one of them is even on an album.

As an example, here is US #56's lone Game Balls use for 2020:

Unknown Song #55 (New Primetime) - Superior Strength

Song - Superior Strength

Artist(s) - Kavin Hoo
Released - 2014

Primetime Usage - 2019-20 (highlights); 2020-21 (non-highlight)

Contained on - EVO209 (Big Sports Machine 2)

Featured Highlight - Dolphins @ Broncos, 2020

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/10/22

 

Unknown Song #55 is one of those songs that has a solid, punchy core, but comes off incomplete.  In other words, it feels like the composer could have done more with the track than they did.  I suppose it could be an underscore.  NFL Primetime did previously choose the underscore instead of the base track at least a couple other times (Race to Midnight, Take Care), so that wouldn't be surprising.  Anyway, the ESPN sound people put this song on one 2019 highlight (that I know of), and split it between highlights & non-highlight stuff in 2020.  It was used exclusively as a non-highlight track last year.  As an example of US #55's use on NFL Primetime, here's a video of the Denver Broncos inflicting a lot of pain on Tua Tagovailoa.

Unknown Song #53 (New Primetime) - Blow the Stack

Song - Blow the Stack

Artist(s) - Tom Caffey, Eric Cunningham, Chris Lang
Released - 2005

Primetime Usage - 2019-20

Contained on - Killer Edge EDGE80 (Sports: Dramatic 2)

Featured Highlight - Bears @ Packers, 2020 (SNF)

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/10/22

 

There's not much to say about Unknown Song #53.  It's an orchestral song that conveys intensity with its high-pitched strings and loud long notes.  It conveys this intensity in basic, rudimentary fashion, however—there's no subtlety here.  To put it another way, US #53 is a forgettable equivalent to International Statement.

I had two available highlights to choose from here.  The Steelers/49ers game from the same NFL Primetime episode as US #51 and US #52, and the Bears/Packers Sunday Night Football game from 2020.  The first surely would've required another audio-only post, so I tried the second.  Fortunately, the Bears/Packers clip was only flagged by the NFL and not blocked, so my channel now has New Primetime video content for the first time.

Unknown Song #52 (New Primetime) - A Date with Destiny

Song - A Date with Destiny

Artist(s) - Ron Klein, Udi Harpaz
Released - 2006

Primetime Usage - 2019 (highlights), 2020-present (non-highlight only)

Contained on - EVO062 (Gridiron Glory)

Featured Highlight - Dolphins @ Cowboys, 2019

 

 

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/10/22

 

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!

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

Non-Highlight Track - Strength

Song - Strength

Artist(s) - Paul Foss

Released - 1997

Primetime Usage - 2001-05? (infrequent non-highlight track)
Contained on - ATMOS 92 (Virtual Corporation) 

Featured Highlight - Game Balls - Week 2, 2001

 

The last of the four non-highlight tracks I've ID'd thus far, "Strength" is a somewhat somber & moody piece that wasn't used very often on NFL Primetime.  The clip included here, the Game Balls section from Week 2 of 2001 (the first post-9/11 week), is the first use of Strength I know of.  I think it was used periodically until the end of classic Primetime, but I'm not really sure; I don't really want to sift through five seasons worth of NFL Primetime episodes just to log uses of a rare non-highlight song.  If anyone does have better knowledge of Strength's exact usage, don't hesitate to comment.

Strength is the third NFL Primetime track I've found to be composed by Paul Foss.  It's actually contained on the same album as New Order, which was used for the second-&-final time on the show in the same episode as the clip below.  It's also the eighth song I've ID'd to come from the Atmosphere library, which I believe puts that library third behind FirstCom & Sonoton.

Non-Highlight Track - Mayhem

Song - Mayhem

Artist(s) - David Rogers, Paul Shaw

Released - 1997

Primetime Usage - 1998-03 (primary Inside the Numbers theme)
Contained on - ATMOS 95 (Shockwaves 2)

Featured Highlight - Inside the Numbers - Week 1, 1999

You'll be forgiven if you have trouble distinguishing "Mayhem" from Asphyxia.  They both have a similarly heavy '90s techno-rock sound, they were both used for non-highlight music on NFL Primetime, and they were both composed by David Rogers & Paul Shaw.  Even I've occasionally second-guessed which one I was listening to when sifting through Primetime clips.  My advice for distinguishing them:  Asphyxia was mainly used for Game Balls, while Mayhem was mainly used for Inside the Numbers.  To help illustrate, here's the ItN segment from the first week of the 1999 season.

Non-Highlight Track - Asphyxia

Song - Asphyxia

Artist(s) - David Rogers, Paul Shaw

Released - 1998

Primetime Usage - 2001-05 (regular Game Balls, secondary Inside the Numbers)
Contained on - ATMOS 111 (Impact)

Featured Highlight - Game Balls - Week 10, 2001

In addition to Industrial News, I've found three more non-highlight tracks that were used on NFL Primetime.  The first, "Asphyxia," was the primary Game Balls theme for the final five seasons of classic NFL Primetime.  It was also occasionally used for Inside the Numbers during this period.  The track is found on Atmosphere's Impact album and is available on the web at the Universal site (linked above).  Unfortunately, info about Asphyxia's composers is scarce.  David Rogers & Paul Shaw both wrote a bit for the Atmosphere & Carlin libraries, but I wasn't able to find anything else about them.

I will post the remaining two discovered non-highlight tracks in the near future.

Unknown Song #32 Identified

Two down, five to go as far as Oddball Week is concerned.  The oboe-rich US #32 has been identified as Neo Dream (b), or as Neo Dream (Partie Rhyhmique) to be more precise.  It's contained on Kosinus 34 (Virtual Nature).  That album is streamable on both APM & Universal's production-music sites, but this particular song has been removed from the streamable version.  It seems that everything involving Christian Poulet has been scrubbed from the online edition of the Kosinus library, and perhaps other libraries.  Special thanks to Retronator on librarymusicthemes.net for identifying this track, and additional thanks to GodzFire for starting the thread on there that got this track ID'd.  Hopefully this won't be the last song to be ID'd there.

LINK

Unknown Song #46 - Mortal Combat

Song - Mortal Combat

Artist(s) - Murray Munro

Released - 2001

Primetime Usage - 2001

Contained on - Atmosphere ATMOS144 (Total Movie 2)

Featured Highlight - Buccaneers @ Cowboys, 2001


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!

Unknown Song #45 - Survivors

Song - Survivors

Artist(s) - Daniel Darras & Christian Leroux (a.k.a. Basile Leroux)

Released - 1998

Primetime Usage - 2001

Contained on - Koka KOK2152 (Double Drama, Vol. 1)
Featured Highlight - Vikings @ Bears, 2001

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 12/15/21

Unknown Song #45 isn't real memorable, but it's a good mood piece for certain games.  Not that we got to truly find out, of course, since the upcoming clip was US #45's only use on NFL Primetime (AFAIK).  This clip was the second post-9/11 highlight (immediately following the one from last week's post) and fit pretty well with the Vikings that year.  Not only was 2001 a tumultuous year for the U.S and the world, it was a tumultuous year for the Minnesota Vikings.  Pro Bowl offensive lineman Korey Stringer died of heat stroke during training camp, the team missed the playoffs for the first time in 6 years & suffered double-digit losses for the first time in 11 years, 10-year head-coach Dennis Green was fired just before the end of the season, Cris Carter left following the season, and—as you'll see in the video—players & coaches were often seen bickering with each other on the sidelines.