The Big Replay Reversal

Song - The Big Push (1)

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

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1989

Contained on - Sonoton SON 213 (Success Story), Sonoton SCD 019 (Corporate Fanfares/Success Story)
Featured Highlight - Bears @ Packers, 1989

 

It turns out we weren't done with the Sonoton era, after all.  "The Big Push," by the familiar pair of the late John Fiddy (he died in 2017) and Sonoton founder Gerhard Narholz under one of his common aliases, was used twice during the 1989 season of NFL Primetime.  Like a lot of infrequent Primetime songs I've mentioned recently, it's a piece that doesn't quite fit sports highlights.  It sounds more like something scored to fit the shot-by-shot particulars of a war-movie battle sequence or a corporate promo video than something that would work here.  John Colby mitigated this problem somewhat by axing the slow, quiet intro, but it's still apparent why this track wasn't used much.

The Big Push may have only been attached to a grand total of two NFL Primetime highlights, but it did get one of the most memorable games of the 1989 season.  The Green Bay Packers, who had lost 8 straight to Chicago coming in (Chicago's longest winning streak in the history of the rivalry), edged out the Bears at Lambeau after a controversial replay reversal that wiped out an illegal-forward-pass penalty on Packers' QB Don "The Majik Man" Majkowski.  This result, along with several others, led to Green Bay earning the "Cardiac Pack" nickname that would define their 1989 season.

Special thanks to GodzFire for identifying The Big Push.  Also, the video posted below is a whopping 6 minutes and 14 seconds, the third longest I've posted only behind the infamous Points War (Theighs Mon) video and New Order (the actual highlight is longer for The Big Push than New Order, though).  So… enjoy!

NFL Primetime Music?

Song - Veil

Artist(s) - John Colby

Released - 1987

Primetime Usage - 1988

Contained on - Valentino V-CD 23 (Medium Tempo)
Featured Highlight - Patriots @ Dolphins SNF Preview, 1988

I've been aware of this song/clip for a while, but I was reluctant to post it because I'm not sure it really qualifies as NFL Primetime music.  "Veil," one of many Primetime tracks by then-ESPN music director John Colby, was attached to a small segment of the Sunday Night Football preview that aired early in the Week 12 episode.  Despite being housed on an album titled Medium Tempo, the song is actually quite energetic and up tempo.  I wouldn't be surprised if Veil was used for a highlight or perhaps other clips on NFL Primetime, especially since it was composed by Colby, but I haven't seen any evidence of that thus far.  Special thanks to GodzFire for rediscovering the album this track is on (I stumbled on it a long time ago somewhere, but I forgot about it).

I decided to post the entire preview segment with Mike Patrick & Joe Theismann even though the song is only played for about 20 seconds of it.  Hope you enjoy it!

The Motivating Factor

Song - The Motivating Factor

Artist(s) - Greg Wardson

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1988

Contained on - Aircraft ACL001 (Jet Stream)
Featured Highlight - Rams @ Eagles, 1988

It's probably good this one wasn't used much, either.  "The Motivating Factor" isn't a bad song on its own, but it's too filled with solo/bridge segments to really work as a sports highlight track.  It's contained on the first(?) album from the relatively obscure Aircraft Music Library.  The song's composer, Greg Wardson, is literally credited for nothing else on Discogs besides a few songs on this album.  There is (was?) a professor named Greg Wardson at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but I can't be sure he's the same guy.  Anyway, special thanks to GodzFire for getting this track identified.

There were a whopping two highlights to choose from for The Motivating Factor, and only one of those exclusively used that song.  Ironically, the video that used a second song was the best choice.  The Rams/Eagles highlight from Week 10 of 1988 was unusually long (about 3:30), but—compared to the other option—it had better video quality and better audio balancing.  It also showcased a more interesting and more important game, and it played through The Motivating Factor in its entirety before switching to the Fast Man underscore for the final minute.

Launching Coaches into Space

Song - Space Rock

Artist(s) - Adrian Baker

Released - 1983

Primetime Usage - 1988

Contained on - Bruton BRL 12 (Industrial Video)
Featured Highlight - Chiefs @ Chargers, 1988

"Space Rock" was only used once on NFL Primetime.  That's probably a good thing.  The song itself is alright, but it doesn't really work for sports highlights.  This is especially true for the portions that sound like a knockoff of Gary Numan's hit, "Cars."  Space Rock was composed by Adrian Baker.  Baker was the singer for the '80s band Gidea Park, which is probably best known for doing the cover of "California Girls" that accompanied the snowboard-chase sequence from A View to a Kill (thanks Wikipedia!).  The track (Space Rock, I mean) is available for streaming.  Sometime in the recent past, a website called Usample that uses Universal's streaming/website engine put up most every old Bruton album from their LP heyday (I also mentioned Usample when I plugged a new source for Good Morning America! a couple years ago).  Industrial Video, which houses Space Rock, was thankfully no exception.

 

Space Rock's only highlight clip wasn't memorable.  In Week 16 of 1988, the San Diego Chargers hosted the Kansas City Chiefs in a game that figured to be the final game for both head coaches.  The people doing the figuring were correct, as KC's Frank Gansz and SD's Al Saunders—a Brit who somehow ended up serving as an American Football coach for nearly five decades—were both fired following the game.  Gansz and Saunders would be never be head coaches again, either (Gansz died in 2009, Saunders hasn't coached since 2018).  Appropriately enough, the final highlight featuring Al Saunders was narrated by none other than John Saunders (no relation… I assume).

Special thanks to GodzFire for identifying this one a few months ago by posting it privately to YouTube and getting a copyright flag.

Underscores & Nicknames

Song - Solar Winds (underscore)

Artist(s) - Larry Lee Cansler

Released - 1985

Primetime Usage - 1987

Contained on - FirstCom UT103 (Lightning)

Featured Highlight - Chiefs @ Raiders, 1987 (Replacement-Game Week 1)

John Colby apparently loved playing underscores throughout the first year of NFL Primetime.  By my count, there were 7 underscores/submixes/rhythm-only versions of songs used at least once throughout the show's 1987 season.  In fact, the underscore of Powerhouse was used most every week of 1987 while the regular version was seemingly used just once.  The Solar Winds underscore, the only one of those seven that I hadn't posted about yet, was used a couple times during the strike.  It's a pretty standard underscore in that it just removes the solo melody parts from the original and leaves the rhythm and bass stuff intact.  It's not like the bizarro Action Scene submix that sounds like some sort of abstract experiment in minimalism.  The Solar Winds underscore doesn't work with highlights as well as the regular version, but it's passable and not off-putting.

Throughout the 1987 players' strike, NFL fans had a lot of fun coming up with mocking nicknames for the replacement squads.  For example, there were the San Francisco "Phoney-Niners," the Miami "Dol-Finks," and—as you'll see at the end of the highlight below—the Los Angeles "Masque-raiders." (credit to this article for giving me the first two).  The game itself wasn't that interesting, but at least it had some humor attached.

Not Quite a Non-Highlight Track

Song - Northern Lights (specifically Northern Lights (a))

Artist(s) - William (Bill) Soden

Released - 1986

Primetime Usage - 1987-88 (just non-highlight stuff in 1988)

Contained on - NFL 131 (LP) (Front Runner) (track link)
Featured Highlight - Buccaneers @ Cardinals, 1987

The early years of NFL Primetime didn't really have any tracks used exclusively for non-highlight stuff.  Of course, episodic segments like Inside the Numbers, Game Balls, and TJ's Extra Point didn't exist yet either.  The only non-highlight events with music were clips illustrating commentary segments by Chris, Tom, and Pete, and—if you count them as really being NFL Primetime—Sunday Night Football preview segments presented by Mike Patrick & co.  The songs used with those clips were always songs used for highlights, though.  "Northern Lights," composed by William Soden and contained on the final NFL Films LP, was almost an exception.  Northern Lights was used at least a few times for commentary segments, but it was only attached to a highlight once.  The St. Louis Cardinals, playing in their fourth-to-last game at Busch Stadium before moving to Arizona, came back from a 28-3 deficit to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Unfortunately, the directorial organization of this John Saunders clip isn't very good.  Most of the comeback was skipped over, and Saunders's telling of it removed all suspense.  It seems a lot of the John Saunders highlights from this era were short shrift like this.  It's still an entertaining watch, though.

 

*EDIT* - The song is now available for streaming on the new(?) NFL music site linked above.

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.