By Christopher Stipp

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The Rock-afire Explosion – DVD Review
I firmly believe that nostalgia is wasted on the old.

Too often times we are quick to dismiss the things that made us feel good as kids. From foods to television shows to movies to all the minutia that delighted us in our youth the common refrain for a lot of those who come back in contact with these memories is that it just doesn’t hold up any more. Holding up is a sticking point for people who reexamine the joys of our childhood.

Growing up in Kansas, I can tell you that there are memories I cherish more than any others: buying wax packs of Garbage Pail Kids when I had enough to get four or eight of those stale gum collectible cards, wasting dollars on Slush Puppies, coveting the freshest G.I. Joe figures, watching Aliens on the big screen, and, one of the most precious experiences, anticipating when I could next go to Showbiz Pizza.

For those who are unfamiliar with this eatery, I can’t express enough the idea that this was a kiddie enclave of bacchanalian proportions. From pizza that was an afterthought to tokens that might as well have been regarded as solid gold it was a place unlike any other. Though it would one day morph into Chuck E. Cheese, Showbiz Pizza had a little more swagger. It wasn’t flooded with klieg lighting, there wasn’t such a stale and sterile atmosphere, and there was most certainly a band at Showbiz that could rock the face off that grotesque mouse of a mascot. That animatronic band was the Rock-afire Explosion.

Featuring a handful of nutty animals, a gorilla, a bear, a dog, a bird, a mouse, and a wolf, these robots played music that didn’t play down to the kids who adored them, they played with the passion to entertain kids at their level. This is what has stuck with me, I think, so many years after seeing my last “performance” of the band that many others enjoyed as well.

The Rock-afire Explosion is a documentary, directed by Brett Whitcomb, that explores what happens when nostalgia isn’t enough to keep a fan sated. What we have is a one fan in particular, Chris Thrash, who goes out and actually puts the band back together. Literally. What is so emotionally stirring about this documentary is the level of quiet passion Thrash displays for these inanimate robots. He would eventually travel to the company that manufactured the original band and found a way to pay for an entire Rock-afire Explosion with devotion being his only driving force as he picked up odd jobs in order to finance it. You listen to the soft soften and doughy framed Thrash and you can’t help but empathize with his plight; he is the original geek who can’t let his childhood go and was willing to sacrifice everything in order to keep a hold on it. The film works because it plays on those subtle cues we all were pelted with when we were younger: the lure of a place strictly for kids, the promise of food that was all but assured to meet every child’s dietary standard, and the advertising that roped all of us into its grand vision. We were all but powerless to resist the siren song of this place and the movie communicates that quite well.

As well, we’re introduced to Aaron Fechter, the mastermind who created Rock-afire so many decades ago. The man seems resigned and delighted in how much people, like Thrash, revere his work as an engineer to the point where you wonder how things all went wrong for a chain that seemed to have all the things going for it. While I will fault the film for not being more critical in dissecting the nature of what went wrong and why I cannot help but feel Fechter’s passion bleed through the screen as he shows off the work that at one time made him so successful and an inspiration to so many.

So inspiring, in fact, that not only did Thrash find a way to set up a full Rock-afire band of his own but he began using the mechanical beasts of the 80’s to lip-synch hits of the aughts and started to post them on YouTube. People went nutty for them. From Britney Spears, Usher, Evanescence, and more Chris rigged the band so that each one of the instrument toting animals played along in sync as well. It is by no means perfect but the film demonstrates how far people like him are willing to go in the pursuit of childhood memories and how you can take those memories and do something with them.

That’s really where this film excels. When you get past the hoarding of old memorabilia, the tattooing some have done to preserve the visage of this once popular eatery, and the slavish devotion these people have to keeping the old days alive you realize that not only are these people harmless but they’re spiritually fulfilled in a way to a greater cause. We may see how Thrash lives with sheets as drapes in his home, how he relentlessly pounds Mountain Dew (he’s a self-admitted addict to the green drink), how his dirty Showbiz Pizza mugs are literally spilling out of his sink, but there’s an innocence to him. He delights in the pleasures that this quest has brought him and even though there is an incongruous life path that he and Rock-afire creator Fetcher are on they both reflect fondly on the one thing that brought them together in the first place.

Thrash really is the star of this film and the movie itself serves as a love letter to those among us who have not let the things that delighted us as small children wither away in adulthood. Some of us still collect comic books, some of us delight in seeing what superhero movie is slated to come out next year in theaters, while even more of us are anxious to expose our children to the positive influences of our own development as kids so they hopefully can have the same experience as we did. The latter is a fallacy, of course. No one ever seems to understand how deep our reverence goes when it comes to things like this. The best thing, as this movie wonderfully shows, is trying to search out others who know what you’re talking about, will share in the positivity, and will help keep the still smoldering embers of our youth stoked. This is the Rock-afire Explosion, after all.

To buy a copy of the film, just visit The Rock-afire Explosion website.

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