Week 29: Percussion music arr. by Scott Director

Unlike the band music from two weeks ago, this arrangement of "Pac-Man Fever" is strictly a "percussion feature" for bells, xylophone, snare drum, timp-toms, bass drums, and cymbals. There's also 3 measures of agogo bells and tambourine.

I am sadly not aware of any recordings of this arrangement. as best I can tell, it consists of a brief percussion intro, the Pac-Man intro music, a single verse and chorus, then the Pac-Man intro again (played twice back-to-back), then a percussion ending.

The copy I have is the only one I've ever seen show up on eBay and it's obviously never been used. If anyone wants to take a crack at recording it, let me know. 

Wednesday cover: "Pac-Man Fever" by Worm Quartet & the Nick Atoms

Hopefully you know who/what Worm Quartet is by now. When he released his 2007 album, Mental Notes, he offered a bonus album, Unreleasable, to those that pre-ordered. One of the tracks on the latter was this performance of "Pac-Man Fever" from MarsCon 2005. The album is out of print and unavailable, but you can hear the song on MadMusic.com.

Off-Topic Tuesday: "Q*bert" by the great Luke Ski

In 2014, the great Luke Ski corrected the grievous oversight of their not being a song about this well-recognized arcade icon. You can see the video I made for it on YouTube or buy the track on Bandcamp.

Album certified gold on April 26, 1982

40 years ago today, the RIAA certified the Pac-Man Fever album as gold, indicating it had shipped over 500,000 copies!

From Radio & Records

From Radio & Records, July 2, 1982

On the charts April 24, 1982

40 years ago today, "Pac-Man Fever" was #35 (down 11) on the Billboard Hot 100 and holding at #14 (down 2) on Cash Box Top 100 Singles. In Canada, the single was #12 (down 3) on the RPM 50 Singles.

Meanwhile the album was #52 (up 6) on Billboard Top LPs & Tape and #32 (up 4) on Cash Box Top 200 Albums.

Week 28: Pac-Man stickers by Fleer

Pac-Man was everywhere, so of course there was something similar to trading cards. And it was pretty obvious that whoever came up with the sayings on these stickers was familiar with the lyrics of "Pac-Man Fever". Cases in point:

There's actually a few different versions of the stickers. On the actual stickers, the main difference is whether Pac-Man has red & blue highlights and eyes, as you can see from the second and third stickers above.

If you want more info about Pac-Man stickers (and also Ms. Pac-Man and Super Pac-Man ones), see The Pac-Star by Kevin Jay North. Also thanks to him for the images above.

Wednesday cover: "Pac-Man Fever" by Jenson Publications (arr. by Paul Jennings)

I'm breaking the pattern of moving back in time on Wednesday covers to let you hear what the marching band arrangement (as covered this week) sounds like. Jenson published an album each year with performances of their latest marching band arrangements. "Pac-Man Fever" appears on side 4 of the Marching Band '82 double record album.