The above video is an animatronic version of Montreal-band The Arcade Fire’s song “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”. This is one of a series of popular songs being covered by this fully animatronic group The Rock-aFire Explosion. For some reason (maybe it’s because I went to Chuck E Cheese all the time as a kid in Winnipeg) I got obsessed with who would do this and I uncovered some very interesting stories.
Turns out that long before Chuck E Cheese there was a string of restaurants called Showbiz Pizza and Rock-afire was the house band in each one. The creator of the technology and the band lost everything when the mouse with the big teeth came along but recently he’s been making a come back with these videos. There is a documentary being made on this whole story which I think will be just as good as King of Kong – if not better.
