The Rock-afire Explosion
The Rock-afire Explosion was an animatronic robot band that played in Showbiz_Pizza_Place restaurants from 1980 to 1994. The show was created and manufactured exclusively for Showbiz by Creative Engineering in Orlando, Florida. In later years, the show was sold to other restaurants and entertainment centers.
The characters in The Rock-afire Explosion were various animals ranging from a dog to a gorilla. They would perform medleys of classic rock songs,pop songs, country songs, state songs, popular current songs, as well as original material.
The stage was designed to be life-sized. Unlike many small novelty animatronic shows, the Rock-afire was designed to take up the entire length of the showroom. The stage was split into three sections, with the band in the center section and other characters on the two side sections each with separate curtains. Differing from their main competitor (Chuck E. Cheese's), the characters could mimic playing real instruments and had realistic facial expressions due to the use of latex masks (as used in Disney animatronics) as opposed to fabric and foam. The show also used a large amount of props and stage lighting effects which heightened the amount of perceived movement on the stage.
The Band
| The following voice actors portrayed the characters of the The Rock-Afire Explosion. | |
| |
Billy Bob Brockali - Bass Guitar. Located on stage left. He was the mascot for ShowBiz Pizza Place throughout its existence, and his image was on most of the merchandise. Billy Bob is a bear who wears a red and yellow-striped pair of overalls.
Looney Bird - Vocals. Looney Bird shares Billy Bob's stage. His head is the only thing ever seen, the rest of him supposedly hiding in an oil drum. Some shows featured a segment where Looney Bird would answer fan mail; for this, the robot was retrofitted to include a pair of hands which popped up holding a piece of paper for him to read.
Dook LaRue - Drums / Vocals. Dook is a dog who wore a silver space suit. The character is unique in that when setup properly, he has the ablility to actually play a 4 piece drum kit in time with the music.
Fatz Geronimo - Keyboard / Vocals. Fatz is a giant gorilla who wears a gold tuxedo. He is a parody of real-life entertainer Fats Domino.
Beach Bear - Electric Guitar / Vocals. Beach Bear is a "surfer" polar bear who wears beach shorts.
Mitzi Mozzarella - Vocals. Mitzi was a mouse and a cheerleader. Wears a white and green cheerleader uniform.
Rolfe deWolfe - Located on stage right. Rolfe is a wolf, but less of a musician, and more of a stand up comedian and ventriloquist (providing Earl's voice), although he did sing and had a cymbal. Replaced temporarily by Uncle Klunk.
Earl Schemerle - Earl is Rolfe's hand puppet, although he has a personality of his own.
Uncle Klunk - This character was only placed in around 30 stores for a limited period of time, and would replace Rolfe & Earl on stage right. Uncle Klunk was the only human character ever placed in the show. He performed talk show type skits along with his bird "Click" (Later renamed to "Murray D. Bird"). A signature phrase of his was, "Kids, don't smoke Crayolas!" He would also be retrofitted with a Santa Claus costume and stage set for the holidays.
Others - The show also has several smaller prop characters. These characters have only one or two movements and do not usually have speaking roles. All of these characters are located on the center portion of the stage. The "Sun" located behind the trees on the left, the "Moon" located behind the trees on the right, "Antioch" the spider, who drops from the ceiling and "Choo-Choo" the baby bear who hides in a small tree stump.
Production of the Show
Production of the programming and audio for the show was done in-house by Creative Engineering in Orlando, Florida. Not only did they provide the voices, but they also wrote, recorded and produced the shows as well. Several of the voice/musical talents for the show have gone on to later fame. Shalisa James is currently a member of the a cappella group Toxic Audio, while Burt Wilson is now better know as Bubba "Whoop-Ass" Wilson, a member of the "Monsters in the Morning" radio show - which is now syndicated as well as being available on XM satellite radio. Both Rick Bailey and Jeff Howell are still active as musicians in the Orlando area.
The "Break-up"
ShowBiz Pizza Place was similar to (and competed with) Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre, another restaurant chain that was popular in other parts of the United States. When "Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre" filed for bankruptcy in 1984, ShowBiz Pizza bought the company.
The corporation maintained the two restaurant chains simultaneously for a few years. Each continued their own stage shows and merchandise. However, relations between the company that owned and programmed The Rock-afire Explosion, Creative Engineering, and ShowBiz soon began to take a dive. In fact, ShowBiz began toying with the idea of replacing The Rock-afire Explosion with licensed characters, such as Spider-Man or Garfield, and three locations actually retrofitted the robots at stage left into Yogi Bear and Boo Boo [1] (it is unknown what, if anything, was done to the other two stages at the aforementioned locations).
![[1]](http://rock_afire.tripod.com/info/history/history_yogi.jpg){kind=link}
The company ultimately retrofitted the Rock-afire Explosion robots into a new show called Munch’s Make Believe Band (featuring the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre characters), and reverse-engineered the programming of the robots themselves. Eventually, the ShowBiz restaurants themselves were converted to Chuck E. Cheese's locations, in a process called "Concept Unification". The company had decided to shift its focus away from animatronics and more towards video games, food, and quality of service.
Current Status
The removal of the show from Showbiz Pizza was not completely the end for The Rock-afire Explosion. Today, the animatronic band still exists in a few locations across the country. Billy Bob's Super Wonderland in Barboursville, West Virginia has a complete Rock-afire Explosion band which received a renovation as recently as 2004. There is also Rock-afire Pizza operating in Southern California, in the desert city of Indio. This venue is in no way connected to Showbiz or Chuck E Cheese restaurant but does boast having The Rock-afire Band and regalia. There are also a few known restaurants operating in Dubai and Lebanon that feature them as well.
Recently, the popularity of video sharing site YouTube has introduced the band to a huge new audience. Enterprising programmers have posted videos of the Rock-afire Explosion covering a number of modern hits outside well outside the genres of their original repertoire, including Bubba Sparxxx' Ms. New Booty [2] and Fergie's London Bridge [3]
The band also maintains a small cult following; Rock-afire records and merchandise originally sold at ShowBiz periodically show up on EBay.
Technical Information
The original show as designed in 1979, was run from 10.5" Reel to Reel audio tapes with 4 tracks of audio. Two tracks would be of the actual show music, and two tracks contained the data that controlled the characters movements. The reel would play entirely through unattended, pausing at breaks specified by the show data. At the end of a reel, the system would rewind itself to start the process again.
In 1986, a device called Interactive Animation was installed in several Showbiz restaurants that allowed an employee to control the Billy Bob character with the use of a joystick type interface. The operator would be watching from the back of the showroom in a mirrored booth. This allowed them to speak and interact with patrons as if the character were real.
The show as it could be found in the 1990s at locations other than Showbiz Pizza, would use a system called the "Show Selector" which added a modified Apple II to the control system. This allowed patrons to press one of several buttons located on a panel near the stage, and select the exact song they wanted to see performed.
In the few current installations of the show, the system is controlled using a modified TiVo DVR unit.
Parody
An episode of the Disney Channel series "Kim Possible" featured a locale called "J. P. Bearymore's Pizza Party-torium", which many identified with Chuck E. Cheese's. However, the mascot of "J. P. Bearymore's" was a bear in striped overalls with a banjo, similar to the character Billy Bob.