Buckner & Garcia... cashing in on the video game craze of the early 80s.

When I was about ten years old, video games were all the rage. I had a friend whose father owned a fast food restaurant. He bought a bunch of video games for his patrons, which naturally, my friend got to play for free. Because I was her friend, I got to play, too... sometimes. I grew up playing Frogger, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Crazy Climber, Phoenix, and my personal favorite, Scrambler.  In those days, we thought the video games had great graphics and music.  So did a whole lot of other people.  Pac Man was a phenomenon in the early 80s.

Enter Buckner & Garcia, who had a hit song called "Pac Man Fever".  It used to play on Top 40 radio and at skating rinks.  In 1982, the duo, consisting of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia of Akron, Ohio, released a musical ode to video games.  A couple of days ago, I actually downloaded their album, which along with the hit song, "Pac Man Fever", also includes songs like "Froggy's Lament" (about Frogger), "Do the Donkey Kong", and "Ode to a Centipede".  The album has eight songs in total, each of which are about video games, and each of which include actual sound effects from the games.

I'm listening to "Do the Donkey Kong" as I write this.  I'm actually kind of impressed by the music.  It's pretty solid.  The singing also isn't bad.  The lyrics, on the other hand, are pretty ridiculous.  Also, today's kids have no concept of going to the arcade with a pocket full of quarters and playing for an hour or so.  I guess if you were really good at the games, you could play longer.  Basically, they were worse than one armed bandits, because if you got a high score, you didn't get anything more than "egoboo" and maybe your initials on the "highest scores" list.

You can dance to this while you dodge encounters with Speedy.

Buckner & Garcia were actually around for a long time.  They began writing novelty songs in 1972, the year of my birth, and continued until 2011, when Gary Garcia died.  Jerry Buckner has written many songs for more famous performers such as Anne Murray, Bobby Vinton, and yes, even Bertie Higgins of "Key Largo" fame, although Buckner didn't write that song.  

Buckner & Garcia's 1982 album, which won national distribution thanks to "Pac Man Fever's" success, is heavy on synthesizers, which were all the rage in the 80s...  just like Pac Man was.  Sometimes, I miss the simpler days.  It would be fun to play a couple of rounds Pac Man instead of reading more about the sorry state of the world.

I see I wrote about "Pac Man Fever" in 2017, but I didn't take the time to look into the duo who created these catchy and somewhat inane songs.  Obviously, they had some musical chops, though, given how long they were in the music business.  And, on another note, I'm getting so old!  

   

Pac Man Fever...

South Park led me to write this post.  They played a clip of "Pac Man Fever", a musical homage to the legendary arcade game.  People of my generation loved Pac Man.  Now it's ridiculously primitive.

Buckner & Garcia sing their one hit wonder...  Holy shit!  They were on American Bandstand!

Pac Man had a hell of a run in the 80s.  I remember they marketed everything from breakfast cereal to Saturday morning cartoons with the little yellow guy and his descendants and "wife", Ms. Pac Man.  And, yes, there was even a hit song.  Man, oh man, does this song bring back some painful memories.

I am still hooked on video games, although now I'm playing them online and blowing too much money on them.  I'd kill for a game I could play for a quarter.

Back in my youth, we even had game shows dedicated to video games.  Of course, Pac Man was a big part of that.  This is Starcade, which used to air on TBS.

Yeah, this is one of those songs that came out at the right time and is now mostly faded from memory.  But the guys who made South Park are my age, so sometimes I relate even more to their show than I should.