Each song represents a different coin-op delight and all are peppered with nostalgia-inducing samples from the games. The album's eight tracks are an aural tour of a typical 1982 arcade. Gary Garcia (right) and Jerry Buckner (left) at the height of their fame. Yes it's more a hot tub time machine than a sleek Back to the Future DeLorean but it does the job. If there were such a thing as a pop music map, the duo would live in the same neighbourhood as Black Lace of Agadoo fame/infamy, although not in the same street.īut for the generation of players who earned their spurs trying to get their initials emblazoned on high-score tables, the Pac-Man Fever album is a time machine capable of whisking you back to those early days of primitive pixels and quick-fix action.

Buckner & Garcia's album is processed cheese pop matured the 80s' way, using poly-ensemble synthesizers and grit-free plastic production techniques. It was a novelty record of course Lana Del Rey's Video Games it is not. Their Pac-Man Fever single might not have troubled the UK's Top 40, but in the US it was a top 10 smash and they followed it with an album of the same name that was filled with pop treats inspired by the glaring screens, darkened halls and eldritch sounds of the arcades.

Together they were Buckner & Garcia, the troubadours of the days of Atari, Space Invaders and white noise explosions. On the scale of pop music fame he was more Babylon Zoo than Lady Gaga, but for a few giddy months in 1982 videogames turned him and his musical accomplice Jerry Buckner into stars.

Pacman fever