Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 32

entertainment DETROIT FREE PRESSWEDNESDAY, MARCH 3, 1982 4E Now the Pac can dance to Man lovers the beeps She's mid-American and Broadway-bound JL -7 'wiwii 4 lfe'i'. David-James Carroll and Debby Boone star in the musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." The show opens Thursday at the Fisher Theatre. By MARK FARIS Knlght-Rldder Newspapers Until recently, Pac-Man fever has been an ailment that's been confined primarily to arcades, bars and assorted other game rooms that feature the addicting quarter-a-throw video game. Now, however, thanks to Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia, you can experience a new strain of the malady in the privacy of your own home. It comes in the form of an LP entitled "Pac-Man Fever" that weaves the blips and beeps of the audio portion of the phenomenally popular game into a synthesized disco beat to which you can dance, if so inclined.

The album includes six similar tunes based on the sound effects of other popular video games, such as Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Froggy, Defender, Berzerk and Mousetrap. And at the rate it's been selling, it may eventually challenge the popularity of the games from which it's derived. At last count, Buckner and Garcia, who live in Atlanta, estimate some 800,000 copies of the album have been sold, and they've projected sales through next Christmas at $32 million. THINGS, HOWEVER, weren't always so lucrative for Buckner and Garcia. The road to success has been a long one one that started back in the '60s, back when they were junior high and high school classmates in Akron, Ohio.

Even then, Buckner and Garcia coveted a career in music, hoping to be percent of her earnings to the church. WHEN BOONE PERFORMS on the road, Gabri Ferrer and their son, Jordan Alexander, stay together. Ferrer's main job is handling their business affairs. And Jordan "makes sure there's never a dull moment," says Boone. "I don't know many that have his (Ferrer's) strength inside and it's a good thing because people have been cruel.

He could care less. I worried about it a lot before we got married. He gets checks from my corporation. My name is on the marquee but he works as hard as I do. I do what the public sees and he does what makes it possible for me to do it.

Just because my name is on the papers for our house, it's still just as much his." then and now is that if we had given in to our sexual urges before marriage, we would have planted seeds destructive to the life of that marriage." Boone encourages young girls to take a similar view. "You win in the long run," she says. "I get teased about it, and in fact was even described as America's No. 1 virgin in some magazine. I felt violated in a way, because this very private part of my life had become so public.

Yet, if it can help ome young girls, I'm glad." She also travels with Bible teaching cassettes, which she and Gabri listen to together. Deeply religious, with a strong commitment to the church, they also read a couple of chapters from the Bible every day. "I base most of my decisions on prayer," she says. And she gives 10 Jane Powell's in the movie. It's a fine vehicle for telling the world that she can go beyond "You Light Up My Life," and her albums, and her Grammies and her dramatic acting start in TVs "Gift of the Magi" in 1979.

"One of the reasons I decided to go into theater," added Boone, "is to get experience and gain credibility. I sing in the show, but for the first time I'm dancing and acting." "Once I heard the music, I was sold. I just had to do it." Another thing that makes her special is her recent autobiography at age 25. "Debby Boone So Far" with Dennis Baker is about her life and faith. But it was a battle.

"My first collaborator wanted to write about my exciting accomplishments and adventures, and I wanted to write honestly about my life," she said. "He was always putting in things like, 'Then the paparazzi met me at the I never use a word like that." SHE READ THE FIRST manuscript on the way to the airport one day and started to cry. "I felt I could never go on a talk show and say, 'Read this So I started over. I hired a guy and he gave me homework assignments. He would say go write about this." Writing a book was like analysis for her.

"Everyone should do it. Even if it's not for Because of her hectic schedule, she said, she is not much of a reader. "Reading is a discipline I find difficult. My life is fast paced and when I have free time, I fall asleep. (My husband) Gabri is reading five books at a time but if I sit down, I nod off.

I fall asleep behind the wheel, too. I've had several accidents that way." Boone is frank, defenselessly so. Without hesitation, she talks about dissatisfactions with professional colleagues, family problems, and what she considers her shortcomings. When asked, Boone will explain that she is opposed to abortion feel it's the Equal Rights Amendment not real up on and in favor of school prayer all for and teaching the biblical story of the creation in public schools should all be "Virginity is not outdated," she insists. She is glad she waited until she and her husband married 2 years ago before consummating their relationship.

THERE WERE COUNTLESS times she wanted to give in to her physical desires for Gabri, she says, but the two decided against it. "The way we saw it Chlctgo Son-Times and New York Dally News She is a wife, a homeowner and the mother of an 18-month-old son. She intends to be a strict parent. At 25, she is trying to balance career and family just like countless other young women. But" no matter how sincerely she believes she is an average woman, Pat Boone's daughter Debby is different.

She recalls childhood friends trying to break a $50 bill at the ice cream truck. Her grandpa was country music great Red Foley. Her mother-in-law is Rosemary Clooney, and Jose Ferrer is her father-in-law. Still, Debby Boone maintains she has carved out a typical life for herself. Just like What she calls "out there in middle America." Boone, who jokes that she was the loudest voice in the Boone sisters back- up chorus, burst into the foreground in 1977 with "You Light Up My Life," a single that sold 3'2 million copies.

It may have been the only blockbuster approved by the singer's mother and Like other ambitious middle Americans, she believes in God and respect and chastity and sticking to your guns. And being famous and successful. It's just; that, with nine years of show business under her belt and parents who know everything there is to know about Hollywood's pitfalls and people, she is further along than most of her contemporaries. All that is especially evident as she talks about her first big stage musical, Brides for Seven Brothers," opening officially Thursday (there's a benefit performance Wednesday at 8 p.m.) at the Fisher Theatre. "I'm kind of spontaneous, the type that gets bored easily.

I thought, 'may- be I'm not cut out for "But I find nightclubs and concerts are much more monotonous. "Every performance of this show is a different experience. Not one perfor-: mance is dull. All the different people (onstage)! So many ways to do the lines!" WHEN BOONE WAS in Las Vegas as a singing solo, she'd see performers come offstage wringing wet. "And I was cool as a cucumber after a concert!" she confessed.

"I thought, 'I'd love to come offstage wringing wet, and now I "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," bound for Broadway, is a big, happy, athletic, rambunctious revival about seven young pioneer brothers in Ore- gon who decide they need wives. Boone plays Millie, the big sister role that was 9 GOOD REASONS NOT TO MISS FREE ARM SEWING MACHINE MODEL 6104 NOW ONLY 199" SAVE $50 OFF REG. PRICE come like millions of other teenagers rock 'n' roll stars. So, in the '60s and early 70s they sang with bands in northeast Ohio and scored some success with regional hits called "Shake Sherry," "Gotta Hear the Beat" and "Roxanna." But those tunes didn't do much outside Ohio and by 1973, Buckner had had enough and set course for Atlanta. Three years later he persuaded Garcia to join him there.

Atlanta was also a struggle. Playing rock 'n' roll in local bars at night, they spent their days creating and recording demonstration tapes of radio ads and peddling them at local ad agencies. "THE IDEA," says Garcia, "was to establish ourselves in radio commmer-cials so we'd have the time and money to spend on producing records." In '79 they finally accomplished their goal with a one-minute spot for a local restaurant called Joe Rigatoni's. It became and remains one of the most successful commercials in the Atlanta area and had ad agencies beating a path to Buckner-Garcia Productions. The concept for their new LP came to them during one of their, frequent sessions as Pac-Man players.

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