Pac-Man Fever (album)
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| Pac-Man Fever | |||||
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| Studio album by Buckner & Garcia | |||||
| Released | 1981 | ||||
| Recorded | 1981 | ||||
| Genre | Rock / Disco | ||||
| Length | 32:53 | ||||
| Label | Columbia Records (1982); Buckner & Garcia Productions (1999); K-tel Entertainment (2002 version) | ||||
| Producer | Buckner & Garcia | ||||
| Professional reviews | |||||
| Buckner & Garcia chronology | |||||
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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. The album was released both as an LP and as an 8-track tape.
The title song was released as a single in December of 1981 and became a top ten hit, reaching number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning a gold record. "Do the Donkey Kong" was the second single released from the album, but failed to chart.
Contents |
[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] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
In The Simpsons episode "A Tale of Two Springfields," Homer asks The Who to play "Pac-Man Fever".
"Pac-Man Fever" uses sound recordings of the game played at various locations. The introduction to the 1982 LP version uses a clip recorded at a delicatessen, and the sound of a man ordering a pastrami sandwich is faintly audible. The clip was replaced for the CD rerelease.[1]
[edit] Re-release
In 1998 the duo were asked to record an "unplugged" version of the song exclusively for the syndicated radio show, Retro Rewind. In 1999 a re-recorded version of the album was released independently by Buckner 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Imberi, Jonathan. Pac-Man's Notes - Pac-Man Fever CD (English). Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
