Pac-Man Fever (album)

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Pac-Man Fever

Studio album by Buckner & Garcia
Released	1982
Recorded	1981
Genre	Rock / Disco
Length	32:53
Label	Columbia Records (1982); Bucker & Garcia Productions (1999); K-tel Entertainment (2002 version)
Producer(s)	Buckner & Garcia
All Music Guide link
Buckner & Garcia chronology
—	Pac-Man Fever (1982)	Then and Now

Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. It is also the name of the first song on that album. Each song on the album is about a different classic arcade game, and uses sound effects from that game.

1 Track listing
2 Miscellanea
3 Re-release
4 External links

[edit] Track listing

"Pac-Man Fever" (Pac-Man)
"Froggy's Lament" (Frogger)
"Ode to a Centipede" (Centipede)
"Do the Donkey Kong" (Donkey Kong)
"Hyperspace" (Asteroids)
"The Defender" (Defender)
"Mousetrap" (Mouse Trap)
"Goin' Berzerk" (Berzerk)

[edit] Miscellanea

In The Simpsons episode A Tale of Two Springfields, Homer asks The Who to play Pac-Man Fever.

The sound effects from the machines on the 1982 version were recorded from actual arcade machines in various locations. If you listen carefully to the opening of "Pac-Man Fever," you can hear a man ordering a pastrami sandwich (the machine was in a deli).

[edit] Re-release

In 1999 a re-recorded version of the album was released independently by Bucker and Garcia, released commercially through K-Tel in 2002. The re-release was anxiously awaited by fans of the original album. However, Buckner and Garcia could not obtain the rights to the original master from Columbia, so they were forced to recreate a lot of the sound effects either digitally, or musically. The result led to disappointment on the part of many fans, and began a widespread search for the original vinyl, now hard to find (though MP3s of the original songs are, perhaps ironically, easier to find than the remakes). Some of the changes that occurred between the original and the re-recorded version are as follows:

The guitarist who reproduced the guitar solo in "Ode to a Centipede" could not keep up with the pace of the original guitarist, and subsequently "bailed out" of the solo towards the end until it became easier to play.
In the original recording of "Hyperspace", the sound that followed singing of the word "Hyperspace" was a sample of the player shooting taken directly from an Asteroid machine. In the re-release, the sample was replaced with a guitarist sliding his fingers down the neck of the guitar to simulate the sound, and it is not quite as on key with the rest of the song as the original sample was.
The original recording of "Mousetrap" contained samples from the Mouse Trap arcade game. No working Mouse Trap machine could be found in time for the re-recording, so recordings of actual cat, dog, and pigeon noises were used in place of the game samples.
The original electric guitar used in "Goin' Berzerk" was replaced with a synthesizer.