If you were raised in the 80′s, there’s a chance that you visited a place called the ShowBiz Pizza Place to have some fun, eat some food, and enjoy the music played by an animatronic band called the Rock-afire Explosion. I never had the chance to go to this place, but from what I’m seeing, it looks like it would have been a lot of fun. If I had been old enough, I probably would have asked my parents to go here every night because 1) there’s pizza; and 2) there’s animals playing instruments.

Anyway, the place hit its peak sometime in the mid-80′s and eventually most of its restaurants closed while some others turned into Chuck-E-Cheese’s (note the somewhat similar animal mascot).

But in the past year or so, there’s been a bit of a revival of these Rock-afire Explosion animatronic band characters after a video of the band playing to Usher’s “Love In This Club” surfaced on YouTube. Since then, there’s been quite a bit of tributes to popular music using the Rock-afire Explosion band which you can check out at this YouTube channel.

In addition to the fan tribute videos, there’s a documentary out on the creation, closing, and revival of The Rock-afire Explosion band. If you want to find out more info about it, you can head on over to the Rock-afire Explosion documentary website. I’m definitely going to check this out when I get some time. It looks so interesting. Peep the trailer for the film below.

The Rock-afire Explosion Movie Trailer from The Rock-afire Explosion on Vimeo.