The one-off horror-esque song from the 2001 Bucs/Cowboys highlight is now known. It's called "Mortal Combat" (note the lack of a "K"), and it was composed by Atmosphere Library regular Murray Munro. Special thanks to rwinger24 on youtube for ID'ing this track.
LINK - Original Post (has album link)
LINK - Decent Audio Quality Post
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.
This NFL Primetime title theme isn't the first—it's actually the fifth—but it's the one most associated in people's minds as "The NFL Primetime Theme." ESPN started using this theme for NFL Primetime in 1998, and it's been used every year since with the lone exception of the final year of classic Primetime in 2005. It was also used for just about every other ESPN NFL show from the late-'90s to the early 2010s (thanks to simtek34 for reminding me of that). The song isn't an ESPN original, though. It's basically just a re-recording of Edd Kalehoff's "Monday Night Football MIKE Theme" that debuted, I believe, in the 1980s. The Primetime version sounds less bright than the MNF one, and I think it's in a lower key.
I have no idea where to get an official clean cut of this NFL Primetime theme, but a youtube poster by the name of nirvanainstrumental has made an admirable attempt. Not all of the talk-over dialogue has been removed, but this post of the song is much cleaner than just listening to a raw episode of the show. Here's the post: LINK
Here's the link to Kalehoff's MIKE theme: LINK
As for what's coming up on this blog… The next project will to be to post the new Unknown Songs from the current ESPN+ version of NFL Primetime. Most of those tracks aren't up to par with the classic Primetime stuff, but they're still part of the pantheon. Stay tuned!
After searching through the U.S copyright database, the release dates for a few Primetime songs have been clarified. Thanks to skors on the Discord server for finding the database search and for pinning down the release dates for Racing to Victory & Determination. I also added the correct date for Showdown and confirmed the already listed date for Grid Lock.
