Buckner & Garcia - Pac-Man Fever (30th anniversary)

March of 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia's novelty album Pac-Man Fever. The duo scored with a Top-10 hit with the title song in January of 1982 and followed it up a few months later with a ten song album paying tribute to video games that were lighting up the arcades at the time.

For my review of this album, please click here.

Buckner & Garcia - Pac-Man Fever

In the early 80’s, the musical duo of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia started out with a novelty Christmas song about the NFL. But their biggest claim to fame came in 1982 with Pac-Man Fever, the song and album that celebrated the biggest arcade video games at the time. The album was certified Gold and sold over 900,000 copies by the end of that year.

Now, it is no secret that I am a huge geek. And back in early 1982 when I was halfway through my junior year of high school, I was a very much the same way. I often spent my weekend nights down at the Central Avenue arcade, feeding allowance money into the token machine so I could get the right tender to play all of my favorite games. My best friend John and I would spend the entire evening there among the neon glows, blips and bleeps, and then cap things off with some pizza and Pepsi at the snack place next door.

Of course, when Pac-Man Fever hit the record stores that March, I immediately snapped that album up on vinyl. I was in game-geek heaven! Was this record considered cool? Only among us nerds. Was it groundbreaking music? Not so much but it was well composed and performed. Was it fun? I certainly thought so. And did I listen to it a ton? You better believe it!