Charles Edward Cheese Band says “Down With Netflix!”

Video stores are truly a dying breed, having been essentially replaced by more “convenient” forms of “content delivery”. But at the cost of choice, community and real life. On October 15th, independent video stores across the continent celebrated the first ever INTERNATIONAL INDEPENDENT VIDEO STORE DAY. Conceived of as an analogue to Free Comic Book Day or Record Store Day, it was a chance for the few tenacious mom ‘n pop video store survivors to raise their voices and remind their local film communities that they are still around, still offering products and services unavailable anywhere else.

In Austin, we are lucky enough to still have TWO excellent video stores, Vulcan Video and I Luv Video. I’m not sure if I Luv knew about the event, but Vulcan threw a big party and hired the Charles Edward Cheese Band to perform. Indisputably the greatest band ever to be comprised of pizza-loving robot animals, the Charles Edward Cheese Band wrote some powerful jams to commemorate the event. One song in particular inspired filmmaking team Martin & Lawrence to put together this video:

Martin & Lawrence say, “Video stores have been our teachers and friends. We’ve worked for them and consider them a huge part of our lives. Places like Scarecrow (Seattle, the biggest and best ever, a miracle), Movie Madness (Portland), Vidiots (LA), Kim’s (NY) and Vulcan have more films and added to conversations of film much more than any dvd dispenser or streaming website. They are pillars in their communities and worthy of our respect and patronage.”

To all video store warriors out there, NEVER DIE.