This album, The Fat Man and Team Fat are in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Humongous Entertainment, Tommo Inc. or Billionsoft Ltd.

Buy the games: www.humongous.com/buzzy

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When George was approached by Ron Gilbert to produce a theme tune in 1994 for the Let’s Explore games, they were still called the “Junior Encyclopedias,” a title that described their monolithic ambition, before settling on "Junior Field Trips."

George whipped up a high-energy theme for Humongous that matched the enthusiasm of the games' host, Buzzy the Knowledge Bug. The theme became the basis for the entire soundtrack of each of the Junior Field Trips. Richard Moe, a Humongous programmer and excellent composer in his own right, produced the underscore for the menus and minigames within the Field Trips. The cues he wrote relied on George’s theme, varying the melody to suit wildly different scenarios, for a natural cohesion across moods, subjects, and composers. (Mr. Moe, if you’re reading this, I’m sure the fans would love to hear your tracks too!)

When George told me he’d found a backup of the JE02 master file, I was elated: this was the final piece of the Team Fat Humongous Collection. But it was only ten seconds long! As Sophie got to work on a beautiful new cover, I asked George about the MIDI music that plays in the Let's Explore the Airport waiting area, at the gate.

George had licensed HE to use a few of his compositions from their previous collaborations (Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon and the first Freddi Fish) in Let’s Explore the Airport as lobby music to enhance the ambience of this Humongous-flavored, and extremely detailed, digital simulacrum of the Real World accessible via Windows 95. I wanted to bring those back and include them in this album. That would be a challenge: the original MIDI masters were long lost to time.

But George is a magic-maker, and rose to the occasion like a champion, painstakingly using a Sound Canvas and his old notes to recreate the lost "muzak" versions of his beloved tunes so that the fans could hear them like the rest of his recent rereleases: in crystal clarity, sparkling like new. (We even included a couple photos of the papers he dug out of the archives as bonuses!)

With this album, we’ve released all the music George, Joe, Kevin and Dave composed for Humongous Entertainment. It’s a delight to offer this as a labor of love to the fans who have so kindly and generously supported releasing this music for so long. Thank you guys. Wouldn’t have been possible without you.

—Tim Knox, February 18, 2023


Man, to hear Tim talk, you'd think we weren't ever going to do anything together again. But I sincerely doubt that. The man is a machine, and what a gas it's been to work on this, and alllllll the other Humongous projects he's brought to you guys--and to me. Can't say enough how much I love and respect you, Tim.

To answer some questions about the two oddball tunes that aren't from Humongous games...

Lights in the Mist -- I was in Texas, I think I hadn't started writing for Nintendo yet, so it was pre-Total Recall, Maniac Mansion, Loom, etc. I did have an MT-32, which would later be recognized as a sound card for computers but wasn't yet. I was using it and a 4-track tape machine to produce backing tracks for singers, films, ads, etc. mainly. I produced a kids' album for a musician I'd met, Joe McDermott, who wasn't a friend yet. Of course, he became one, and as he was one of the best songwriters I'd worked with, he naturally later got drafted, you might say, into Team Fat.

A little circle of my friends did a regular "Songwriter Club" challenge, where everybody had to bring two songs and share them, and Lights in the Mist was my shot at a "Jazz Standard" -type torch song. I used the MT-32 to create the track, and there's probably a recording somewhere of me singing it along with the MT-32 for Songwriter Club. And the fact that the lyric sheet (printed on a dot-matrix printer, no less) turned up in my jam songbook from those days means I no doubt have tried it at a jam, too.

In a slightly later era, I wrote The Fat Man's Neighbor because my neighbor, flutist Megan Meisenbach and her harp accompanist Mary Golden noted that I'd been writing for games, and wanted me to write a tune for them. This was well before classical musicians were running around playing game tunes. Again I used my MT-32 sound module to sketch it out so it could be heard--just harp bass/chords and flute melody. Then I printed out sheet music for Meghan and Mary, and they played it at least once in a recital. It was pretty fun to get that "and the composer is in the audience" introduction at a legit classical event.

Fun fact: Meghan's husband Bert Meisenbach, played the wild violin introduction to Short Intro, the opening music to The 7th Guest. Both lovely people and wonderful neighbors to this Fat Man.

My memory of how these two songs got into the Buzzy lineup is not dependable. I've always upheld the idea that more music equals more variety equals less boredom for the player. So, when asked for a playlist of muzak tunes, and having a couple of "smooth"-sounding tunes that likely wouldn't find a large audience otherwise, wouldn't it make sense that I'd throw them into the delivery? But Tim points out that Lights in the Mist was one of the first tunes submitted to Freddi Fish, as a suggested vibe for Grandma Grouper. So who knows? Maybe I'd sent The Fat Man's Neighbor as a sketch as well, and somebody at Humongous found them and added them to the Muzak playlist. Who can say? Some things remain a mystery, and just as well.

My composing software was an old, old version Mark of the Unicorn Performer, version 2 I believe. The files are unplayable, almost unreadable on current computers, and it is doubtful that either of these tunes had been exported to MIDI files until recently. So I was elated when Andrew Harrington (Xeen Music), who produced my recent Wing Commander project, found a way to extract MIDI files from those Performer projects so that we could rescue the music from its ancient digital prison. Hail Andrew the Liberator!

The past being the past, let's look to the future: Can we get a cover version from the fans?
Sing along thus:

Lights in the mist
I'll never more be held close and kissed,
By the one that lighted my days
And lifted me from nights like this

The night's so blue
I'll reminisce and get myself through.
All my memories will flicker and fade,
And never be enough like you.

Happy and gay times will all wash away, I'm
So lonely.
I'm carried away by the things I would say
If you could only phone me

The fog rolls in
And makes my misty world dark and dim
I remember a night like this
Those lights were fading in the mist
On nights like this
Your eyes have been the lights I missed.

Looking forward to hearing from you all!

...and let's just wait and see if Tim the Curator has anything in store for us next.
Time will Tell...

❤️
—The Fat Man, George Alistair Sanger, February 22, 2023