Songfacts: So somehow you end up doing these novelty songs.īuckner: Wild Butter lasted about a year and then we broke up. He would have lasted about half an hour with us, we were so horrible. He was living in a barn up there somewhere in Kent, Ohio and I couldn't find him that day and by the time I got back home, another guitar player called. The band was really horrible - I was the only one that had any formal musical education and we weren't that good.īut I went up to meet with him but I couldn't find him. Our guitar player quit and at the time Joe Walsh was playing up with The Measles in Kent, Ohio, and I actually called Joe to join our band. In fact, a funny story: I had a band prior to that called Rogues Incorporated back when the English stuff was big. But, yeah, we were definitely a rock band. A lot of harmony stuff - we had great harmony. Moody Blues, we did cover songs, and then we did original songs. Your band was a rock band, right?īuckner: Yeah, we did a lot of different stuff. Chris Butler was doing it with his act, The Waitresses. Songfacts: The Akron sound was really interesting because it was this raw punk sound, but then you had a lot of this really quirky stuff, which is what Devo was doing. So, yeah, we were a part of a lot of the Akron stuff. But, at that time, the bass player's brother was recording all those Akron industrial groups like Devo, before they made it, and Chi-Pig. You can see it online and hear some of the songs and stuff. We were on UA and had an album out and a single, which many people liked. I was in a band called Wild Butter that I put together with Rick Garen, the drummer, and Gary eventually joined that group with us. Gary had a band at the time – I wasn't in the band – but his band was playing, and everybody in West Akron went out to The Castle and Chrissie Hynde used to come out there and she used to tell us, "I'm going to be a big star one day." And we used to go, "Okay, right." And, of course, she went off and did that. There was a guy there who put together a big teen dance in a redone a barn out by this lake called Crystal Lake, and it was called The Castle. Songfacts: This puts you in that whole scene with Chrissie Hynde and Devo.īuckner: Chrissie Hynde lived in a place called Fairlawn, Ohio, which is a suburb of Akron. Songfacts: If you did, you would have been there during the shootings.īuckner: Yes, we had friends that were there that were caught in the middle of that thing. Songfacts: Did you ever go to Kent State?īuckner: No, I didn't go to Kent State. Songfacts: Did you head off to college at that point?īuckner: No, I was going to go to Kent State and then I was playing in a band at the time, making good money and having a great time, so I said, "Hey, I'm just going to keep doing this." I think Gary went to Akron University for maybe a semester but that was the extent of our education following high school. Jerry Buckner: Gary and I both graduated together in 1966. Carl Wiser (Songfacts): When did you graduate from high school, Jerry? In this talk with Jerry Buckner, he tells the "Pac-Man Fever" story and recounts some of their non-Pac projects, including the WKRP in Cincinnati theme song. When the song took off, their label insisted on a full album of video game songs, and the duo delivered with tracks like "Do The Donkey Kong" and "Froggy's Lament." It put their rock aspirations in a coffin, but gave them the video game niche, which they've owned ever since (a Buckner & Garcia track appears in Wreck-It Ralph). It's a nifty pop tune by the team of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia, rockers from Akron, Ohio (home of Pere Ubu, The Black Keys and Lebron James), who earned a living writing jingles. "Pac-Man Fever" rose to #9 on the Hot 100 in March 1982, the only hit song about a video game ever recorded. You could find Pac-Man at the arcade, the pizza place, the deli or the local dive. There was a time when the most popular video game in America was played with one joystick.
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