Duran Duran Meets Phantasy Star

Song - Roadhog

Artist(s) - Trevor Bastow

Released - 1987

Primetime Usage - 1991-92

Contained on - MusicHouse MHI4 (Telefax)

Featured Highlight - Rams @ Giants, 1991


Just because the '80s were over doesn't mean their sound was dead.  In 1991, NFL Primetime began using perhaps the most heavily "eighties" sounding piece ever made.  This song, called "Roadhog," took punchy synth to a new level and often accompanied longer highlights on the show thanks to its full three-minute duration.  For those that are fans of either Duran Duran (especially their earlier, "Fab Five" era stuff) or Sega's Phantasy Star sci-fi RPG series, the style of Roadhog should be quite refreshing for you.

Roadhog was written by the late Trevor Bastow.  Trevor, along with his late brother Geoff, were two of the top stalwarts for both Bruton & MusicHouse from the 1970s-1990s.  Geoff, a disciple of the great Giorgio Moroder, was also known for being the producer behind the briefly popular synth-disco act known as K.I.D. in the early '80s.  Trevor was never a major figure in popular music, as far as I know, but I personally find his large library of production music to be even better than his brother's.  Unfortunately, Roadhog seems to be the only Primetime track composed by either of the two Bastow brothers.

The featured game highlight for Roadhog isn't the greatest, but it's still fairly entertaining.  The Rams, in John Robinson's final season, went up to the Meadowlands and handed defending Super Bowl champion Jeff Hostetler his first-ever loss as a starting QB.

Race to Midnight

Song - Race to Midnight (underscore)

Artist(s) - Chris Gibbons, Pete Q. Harris

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1990

Contained on - Bruton BR 32/BRG 39 (Golden Vision)

Featured Highlight - Rams @ Falcons, 1990


I don't have much to say about this one, so I'll make it quick.  The underscore of "Race to Midnight" is dark, bass-heavy, and moody, but it's a little too repetitive and lacking in direction to work for anything beyond accompaniment.  It does have one unique quality, however, in that it's (AFAIK) the only NFL Primetime song to only use the underscore and not the base track (there were at least 3 pieces that had both the base & underscore used in 1987).  John Colby made the right choice with that, too, since the base track just has a tinny, low-quality synth trumpet added over the top.  I don't know much about the artists, but at least Pete Harris has a website (linked above).

For some reason, all three highlights I have with Race to Midnight are late-season games involving the Atlanta Falcons.  The Falcons weren't very good in Jerry Glanville's first year, so that makes the featured video options rather meager.  At least you get to see Deion Sanders…

Superdome Soccer

Song - Q X

Artist(s) - Mel Dean, "Jean-Claude Madonne" (John Fiddy), & "Sammy Burdson" (Gerhard Narholz)

Released - 1990

Primetime Usage - 1990

Contained on - Sonoton SCD 48 (Spirit of Enterprise)

Featured Highlight - Steelers @ Saints, 1990


"Q X" is an NFL Primetime track that is as obscure in its usage as it is short in its name.  Only used in 1990, and not very often even within that season, Q X is a difficult song to pin down in terms of mood.  It's kinda standoffish, kinda dramatic, kinda neutral, and kinda tense.  As a result, it's quite ambivalent and doesn't naturally fit a whole lot of football games.  One oddball game it does fit, however, is the one included below.  The Steelers & Saints played an offensively challenged bout in the Superdome in 1990 that ultimately came down to a kicking contest between the eventual top-two scorers in NFL history:  Morten Andersen & Gary Anderson.  Gary did miss one of his field-goal attempts, but he got twice as many tries so his Steelers prevailed.  Have fun!

The Original Buffalo Bills Song

Song - Nucleonics

Artist(s) - "Jean-Claude Madonne" (John Fiddy) & "Sammy Burdson" (Gerhard Narholz)

Released - 1989

Primetime Usage - 1990

Contained on - SON 314 (Frameworks, Vol. 1), Sonoton SCD 26 (Frameworks 1 & 2)

Featured Highlight - Cardinals @ Bills, 1990


Nucleonics, by aliased Sonoton regulars John Fiddy & Gerhard Narholz, is one of the more unusual music offerings from NFL Primetime.  It doesn't sound anything like a football song at first, but it grows on the listener and makes itself fit in subtle ways.  The track slowly rises in tension and works best for games where two teams spend much of the contest feeling each other out.  Nucleonics was also used a disproportionate amount of time for the Buffalo Bills during their initial Super Bowl run in 1990 (a minimum of 6 games, perhaps more).  It didn't get a long-term exclusive "contract" with the Bills like Powersurge, though, as Nucleonics was never used again after the 1990 season.

Like many of Buffalo's 1990 games, this track's featured highlight wasn't real down to the wire.  A weak Cardinals team in Joe Bugel's first season came to Rich Stadium and got whipped.  Still, there were some interesting plays and even more interesting punts.

Lots of Prospects

Song - New Prospect

Artist(s) - Zack Laurence

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - Bruton BRN 13 (New Prospects), Bruton BVA005 (The Zack Laurence Anthology)

Featured Highlight - Chiefs @ Oilers, 1988


If you like heavy brass with a driving bass line, then this track is for you.  Zack Laurence's "New Prospect" is straightforward, loud, in your face, and it gets the job done.  As a result, it's not surprising ESPN featured it prominently during the first two years of NFL Primetime.  New Prospect is one of many songs with the word "Prospect" in the title from Laurence's appropriately titled, variations-on-a-theme album New Prospects.  This LP was never officially converted to digital as far as I know (though amateur uploads are easy to find through the magic of Google & YouTube), but about half of it is contained on Bruton's The Zack Laurence Anthology linked above.  I haven't discovered a whole lot of info about Laurence, but I've found him to be one of the more prolific & talented production music composers of the 1970s & '80s.

Week 6 of 1988 was not kind to quarterbacks.  A disproportionate number of signal callers suffered injuries during that week, and the Houston Oilers were not immune.  With Warren Moon not even dressed, backup "Commander" Cody Carlson dislocated his thumb early in their game against Kansas City.  Former replacement QB (and ex-Montana QB) Brent Pease then came in and "led" his team to a 7-6 victory despite terrible numbers.  Here's the highlight:

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!

Epic, Part III

Song - Olympic Action

Artist(s) - David Reilly

Released - 1988

Primetime Usage - 1989-90

Contained on - Bruton BR 67/BRN 19 (Success)

Featured Highlight - Bills @ Oilers, 1989


My final post of the 2015 NFL Season features the earliest of NFL Primetime's "epic" themes.  "Olympic Action," much like its successors Crush & International Statement, typically accompanied the best and/or most important games during its two-year run on the show.  It's also my personal favorite of the three since it has higher quality instrumentation than the former and is a little more subtle than the latter (it would be hard to be less subtle than International Statement).  Olympic Action is the second of four Primetime tracks from David Reilly's Success album (in an earlier post, I erroneously indicated there were three) that contains most of the new 1989-90 additions that were not attached to the Sonoton label.  The same two links for the album are listed above.

Featuring Olympic Action is an unusually long & entertaining NFL Primetime clip.  The 1988 Buffalo Bills that began Marv Levy's run of success were a defense-first team, but the following year they gained the K-Gun-offense identity that best defines their subsequent Super Bowl years.  Their biggest shootout of 1989 came in the Astrodome against an Oilers squad that oddly hadn't played in their own building for 9 consecutive games including the preseason (I guess their home preseason game against the Dolphins wasn't in the Astrodome).  Lots of big, crazy plays in this one…