Unknown Song #31 Identified (+ additional note)

US #31, the first segment of Oddball Week, has been identified as "Go For It" by Ray Russell.  This is weirdly the second Week 1, 1997, song to come from a late-'80s MusicHouse album.  It's also the third Ray Russell track to be identified as an NFL Primetime track.  Oddly, two of Russell's three pieces were one-offs used for Cardinals @ Bengals games in the first week of their respective seasons (N.Y. Giants was used in Week 1, 1988).  Special thanks to Noah S for discovering this one.

For some reason, Go For It doesn't show up on KPM's album listing for MHE7, so I added the KPM search link instead.  LINK

Also, one additional note:  "Hard Attack," whose Kosinus album was absent from streaming services for some reason, has now been posted on YouTube.  Thanks to Seth Campbell for noticing this.  YT LINK

Unknown Song #45 Identified

Unknown Song #45, best known for its use on the second post-9/11 highlight, has been identified as "Survivors."  Survivors is contained on the Koka Media album called Double Drama, Volume 1 and was written by Daniel Darras & Christian Leroux.  I couldn't find much of anything on Darras beyond his presence on Koka albums, but Christian Leroux—also known as Basile Leroux—is apparently a well regarded French studio guitarist.  Special thanks to Craig-UK for finding this track.

A couple more non-highlight songs have also been identified recently, so look for my posts about those in the near future.

LINK

Non-Highlight Track - Rock Me Pope

Song - Rock Me Pope
Artist(s) - Ruben Ayala
Released - 1998
Primetime Usage - 1998-2000 (Game Balls)
Contained on - Access Music AM003 (Fashion Victims - Death Wish Sports)
Featured Highlight - Game Balls:  Week 17, 1999

The segment known as Game Balls, or officially "Primetime Players," began on NFL Primetime in 1994.  Well, to be technically accurate, there was a "Primetime Players" segment during the 1992 & 1993 seasons, but that one featured highlight clips with radio calls rather than players of the week.  Anyway, three songs were primarily used for Game Balls during the original run of the show (some other songs, such as Old School Radio Bed, were infrequently substituted).  Unknown Song #26 was used from 1994-97 after being used as a highlight track in 1992.  Asphyxia was used for the last five seasons of classic Primetime (2001-05).  And now, the one remaining Game Balls theme has been located.  "Rock Me Pope," by Ruben Ayala, was used for Game Balls from 1998-2000.  Ayala wrote songs for Access Music & FirstCom, but I couldn't find any other meaningful info about him.

Special thanks to Dopethrone (nirvanainstrumental on YouTube) for finding this one.

2001 Trilogy Identified

The missing tracks from 1989 were not the only ones identified on September 22nd.  The "2001 Trilogy," also known as Unknown Songs #48, #49, and #50, were also ID'd through some nice detective work by members of the Primetime Music Discord community.  This isn't quite as momentous as it sounds, however, because we still don't know how to access the original cuts of any of the three (the various mp3 sets (e.g., Polinsky) that have been floating around the past 10-15 years have unofficial, lower-quality versions).

It turns out the placeholder names (which came from at least one of those mp3 sets) were actually the correct names:  US #48 is "Highlights," US #49 is "Pro," and US #50 is "Legends."  All three were composed by Joel Beckerman, the founder of Made Music Studio (formerly Man Made Music), and Lloyd Landesman, the composer of the CBS College Football theme.  All three were made specifically for ESPN, so the official cuts don't exist on a public album or streaming service AFAIK.  Special thanks to Dopethrone, simtek34, RepoManFan4Lyfe, and Josh Ochs for piecing everything together for these three songs, especially Dopethrone because he found these by searching "NFL Primetime" on ASCAP (I really don't know why I didn't think of that).

LINK - Highlights
LINK - Pro
LINK - Legends

Unknown Songs #18, #19, and #20 Identified

I'm lumping these three together because, as it turns out, they're all on the same album!  Or, at least, they were on the same album initially.  US #18 is "Team Purpose," US #19 is "Constructions," and US #20 is "Forcefields."  All three songs were composed by Sonoton regular John Fiddy and Sonoton founder Gerhard Narholz (under the familiar alias "Sammy Burdson"), and they were originally found together on Sonoton LP SON 246 (Industrial Themes & Underscores, Vol. 5).  I never encountered these tracks during my original Sonoton listening run several years ago, though, because they were not ported to CDs or streaming until much later.  Team Purpose & Constructions eventually transitioned to CD on SCD 442 (Corporate Classics) in 2000, while the original version of Forcefields has never—to my knowledge—made an official move to digital.  There is, however, a remix of Forcefields included on Sonoton Vanguards SCDV 510, which was released in 2015.  The remix isn't a whole lot different; the synth rythym ostinato (prominent at the beginning) is louder, and the tempo is a smidge slower.

I don't know of an official source for the original version of Forcefields, though you could probably find an LP rip of SON 246 if you look hard enough.  The other album links (including the Forcefields remix) are included in the original song posts linked below.  Special thanks to Craig-UK for finding all of this.

A mini-milestone was also achieved with these three identifications:  the Sonoton Era of NFL Primetime music (1989-90) has been fully identified!  At least, I think it has.  I haven't seen every single episode of the show from those two seasons, but every song from every highlight I have seen is ID'd.

LINK - Team Purpose
LINK - Constructions
LINK - Forcefields

Unknown Song #51 (New Primetime) - Amped

Song - Amped

Artist(s) - David Robidoux
Released - 2011

Primetime Usage - 2019
Contained on - NFL-0049 (Rush 3)

Featured Highlight - Giants @ Buccaneers, 2019

 

 

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 10/13/22

 

As promised (a long time ago, admittedly), here's the first Unknown Song from the new, ESPN+ version of NFL Primetime.  This version of the show debuted in Week 2 of the 2019 NFL season, but that particular week only used classic Primetime tracks from the last several years of the original show (the same ones they used for pretty much every week in 2020).  Week 3 of 2019 added four new songs, however, and US #51 was the first of those.  It's kind-of an electronic-grunge sounding piece—very mid-to-late-'90s in its instrumentation.  I'm not sure US #51 was used more than once, but I wasn't subscribed to ESPN+ in 2019 so I didn't see a lot of the highlights from that season.

The featured clip for this track (the only clip I know of) is Daniel Jones's debut for the Giants in Tampa in 2019.  Unfortunately, my original post of the video was copyright blocked by Disney.  So, instead, I cut an audio-only version of the highlight.  It's not as interesting this way, of course, but it looks like this is what I'll have to do for anything I post from New Primetime.

Unknown Song #47 Identified

Unknown Song #47, the third song to be identified within the past week, is "Touch & Go," by Colin Willsher.  Willsher's compositions have been used on a lot of TV shows (especially in the UK) and other videos.  You can read more about his work on his website.  Touch & Go is found on the Powermax album from the relatively obscure Stock Music (SMI) library, which is based in Belgium.  Special thanks to both Godzfire & Craig-UK for ID'ing this track, and to Craig-UK for nailing down the release date.

LINK