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.

Non-Highlight Track (New Primetime) - Hardline

Song - Hardline
Artist(s) - Scott Patrick Anderson
Released - 2013
Primetime Usage - 2021
Contained on - NFL Music Library NFL-0061 (Driving Force 5)
Featured Highlight - Anthony "Booger" McFarland NFC Championship Analysis, 2021

 

A couple weeks ago, I noted that Unknown Song #58 (Here We Go) had been identified.  That song was used during Keyshawn Johnson's analysis segment of the 2021 NFC Championship.  Shortly after that, Booger McFarland did his own analysis piece for the same game.  The accompanying clip for that section used a track called "Hardline," composed by Scott Patrick Anderson and contained on the 61st. release (not counting the old NFL LPs) of the NFL Films library.  Hardline was actually identified by Godzfire (using the RecognizeSong bot on reddit) about 6 months ago, but—due to busyness and whatnot—I never got around to posting about it until now.  Godzfire also ID'd another non-highlight track from the same NFL Primetime episode that I'll write about next week.

Unknown Song #58 Identified

Jwasc92Wrestling comes through again by identifying yet another New Primetime song.  Unknown Song #58, one of the non-highlight pieces from the 2021 conference-championship episode, is "Here We Go" from the West One Music label.  It's contained on WOM 059, and it was composed by Jeff Coates & Billy Handsome.  Aside from West One Music stuff, I couldn't find anything about Coates or Billy Handsome (no idea if that's his real name).

LINK

William Tell Overture

Song - William Tell Overture (Finale)

Artist(s) - Gioachino Rossini

Released - 1995 (HFML version), 1829 (original)

Primetime Usage - 2000

Contained on - Hollywood Film Music HFML 8.4 (Classical, Vol. 1)
Featured Highlight - Chargers @ Rams, 2000

Occasionally, NFL Primetime would—as a novelty—use familiar songs one time only because they were  appropriate for a particular game.  One such instance was the previously posted use of two classic Sam Spence tracks for the 2000 matchup between the Raiders & Steelers.  Another example was the show's use of the recognizable final movement of Rossini's William Tell Overture, also known as the theme of The Lone Ranger, for the St. Louis Rams' beatdown of the San Diego Chargers earlier the same year.  The 2000 Rams had a noticeably worse defense than their championship team from the year before, but their offense was arguably even better (this was also the year the Rams changed their secondary color from yellow to gold).  As a result, allowing 31 points to a San Diego team that would finish 1-15 was completely overshadowed by an unstoppable offensive explosion led by Chris Berman's personal "Lone Ranger," Kurt Warner.

Special thanks to SW561 for posting the original version of this highlight clip, and to Godzfire for identifying the specific album this version of the William Tell Overture was on.  For some reason, the NFL copyright bots really liked this clip, so I had to edit two 10 second portions into audio-only segments.  One of those was oddly the first no-music segment when the Chargers fumbled a snap.  I don't really know why the NFL was focused so hard on that moment, but whatever…

 

Unknown Song #58 (New Primetime) - Here We Go

Song - Here We Go
Artist(s) - Jeff Coates, Billy Handsome
Released - 2005
Primetime Usage - 2021
Contained on - West One Music WOM 059 (Free-Running)
Featured Highlight - Keyshawn Johnson NFC Championship Analysis, 2021

*SONG IDENTIFIED* - 11/10/23

Unknown Song #58 is a one-off piece used for a highlight clip that accompanied Keyshawn Johnson's analysis of the Rams/49ers NFC Championship game from 2021.  It sounds like a generic & repetitive grunge-guitar track, so it's probably no loss that the highlight clip is only 20 seconds long.  Anyway, this is the last Unknown Song post I can make at the moment.  The only unknown stuff that I haven't posted are non-highlight songs from 2022, but nobody (to my knowledge) has posted 2022 episodes of NFL Primetime online anywhere so I can't cut any videos from them.  There are at least a few more known songs that I haven't posted yet, however, so stay tuned for those.

NFL Primetime Music - Supercharged

Song - Supercharged
Artist(s) - Derek Austin
Released - 1983
Primetime Usage - 1988, 1990
Contained on - Amphonic AVF16 (Supercharged), Amphonic AVF64CD (Hit the Heights)
Featured Highlight - 49ers @ Saints, 1988 (audio-only)

Early in the Unknown Song run in 2017, I tried to post the first NFL Primetime highlight of 1988 because it used a then-new track that I hadn't identified.  The game featured San Francisco and New Orleans, the two best regular-season teams from 1987 (both were upset by the 8-7 Vikings in the playoffs), in a tight and entertaining contest.  Unfortunately, the NFL copyright blocked the entire video when I had no other clips with the song.  As a result, the song from this video was unofficially known among the Primetime Music community as either "Unknown Song #0" or "Unknown Song A."  Thanks to Godzfire's use of an Audio Fingerprinting program, we now know the song is "Supercharged" by Derek Austin.  It's housed on an Amphonic library album that is hosted by Nichion in the above link (EDIT - Nichion is down, so I replaced it with a YouTube post of the original Amphonic LP).

The NFL is still blocking the video, so I had to go audio-only with this one.  I guess I could've done that back then, but I was holding out hope the copyright block would expire or something.  Anyway, special thanks also goes to Godzfire for cleaning up the sound and making it louder.