Forty years ago today, "Pac-Man Fever" was played for the last time on American Top 40. It was a "Long Distance Dedication".
We are now in the song's 41st anniversary year. If you've been with me since the beginning, the middle, or discovering this blog years later, thank you. I hope you've found it interesting. Pac-Man Fever forever!
This is the international cover version that classic video game fans in general have known about the longest, as photos of the front of the 45's picture sleeve showed up on the early Web.
You can see that, similar to the Finnish and Australian releases, Atari sponsored this version of the song to promote their Atari 2600 version of the game. Nikolaus Esche was hired to translate the lyrics. The B-side is a song Mann co-wrote. (Photos courtesy Discogs.com.)
The final item for 52 Weeks of Pac-Man Fever is Jerry Buckner's "Pac-Man Fever" gold record. As discussed before, the single went gold in March 1982. Back then, that meant selling 1,000,000 copies. (Today, only 500,000 is required.)
Apart from these clippings from Radio & Records, I could not find a photo of the gold record awards. (Yes, the album went gold too.)
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| From Radio & Records, 16 Apr 1982 |
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| From Radio & Records, 2 July 1982 |
This is not actually the end of the 52 Weeks of Pac-Man Fever project! I had planned to end with something special for a grand finale, but it turns out just doing the project took up too much time to do that. So look for that by the album's 41st anniversary in January.
Also, due to me pausing them while looking for files for a particular one, there's still one more Wednesday cover coming this Wednesday. And I missed the events of March 20, 1982, which I'll have to write an entry for.
Finally, my followers over on Twitter have voted to keep Off-Topic Tuesday going. I don't, however, plan to keep cross-posting those to this blog. But look for those other entries I mentioned in the near future.
And here is the third aerobic album with "Pac-Man Fever." This one sadly lacks any credits for the band. And there's no version without the exercise directions.
But it does come with a nifty poster showing some of the moves for each song. Thanks to Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber for playing this on his radio show, Crap From the Past, from which I extracted the audio and uploaded it to YouTube.
I'm not certain, but this may be the last song to date credited to Buckner & Garcia. The subject matter is appropriate and Jones provides lead vocals again. It's sometimes credited to Buckner-Garcia Band (feat. Danny Jones) instead.
Do you remember "Pac-Man Fever Redux" by Jace Hall that we covered in March? It was a rap song that used Gary Garcia's vocals in the chorus. Here's a reminder.
Well, what if you took "Pac-Man Fever", added a modern, driving beat, and used a verse from "Pac-Man Fever Redux" as a rap break in the middle of it? Well, you'd have this song.
But, wait! What if you also got the creators of the viral "Pac-Man: The Movie" trailer to help make a music video for the song? Well, then you'd get this.
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| Scans courtesy Discogs.com. |
