by John Bear
Daily Lobo
JBOT, lead singer of Captured! By Robots - and its only human member - said he wouldn't go back to performing with humans, even if robots are mean to him.
"When you're playing with humans, you're always curious if someone's going to be your bro," he said. "You get this two-facedness. You get in a disagreement, and the band breaks up."
JBOT played with humans in the '90s as a member of two ska bands, Skankin' Pickle and the Blue Meanies, but decided to strike out on his own with an all-robot band. He said robot musicians tend to be less ego-driven and don't abuse drugs like their human counterparts. Because they are robots, they are more predictable.
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"In a robot band, I know the robots are going to be mean all the time," he said.
And mean they are. JBOT said his mechanical bandmates - he designed and built them himself and claims they later captured and enslaved him - often berate him onstage.
"They make fun of me, call me gay, say I have a small penis," he said. "Anything you would say to tear someone down."
JBOT said he has no training or schooling in robot building. He did a lot of research and made them from scratch. He first built the guitarist, GTRBOT, and the drummer, DRMBOT. These two, he claims, having founded the Robot Resistance and aspire to dominate the world one day. In the mean time, they will settle for verbally abusing JBOT onstage. He also maintains the robots and the tour van.
At first, Captured! By Robots was rather crude in design and execution, JBOT said. DRMBOT was connected to pedals which JBOT rocked back and forth, creating a simple drum pattern.
"It's progressed exponentially since then," he said.
He and GTRBOT, for example, now perform harmonized solos. GTRBOT plays guitar and bass simultaneously.
In order to offset some of the abuse he suffers under the yoke of GTRBOT and DRMBOT, JBOT built The Ape Which Hath No Name who, in turn, built Son of the Ape Which Hath No Name - both are percussionists. Due to a programming glitch, the two love everybody, even their nasty-mouthed bandmates. JBOT said shortcomings of the two apes notwithstanding, he couldn't be happier with the two.
"It's good to know someone who is all about love," he said. "They support me when we're on the road. They say I am fresh-smelling even when I am not."
Captured! By Robots also includes AUTOMATOM, another drummer, and the Headless Hornsmen which consist of three bow tie-clad robots sans heads who play 25 horns taken off of Mack trucks.
The sound varies from tour to tour. This time around JBOT said it is heavy and rocking, not necessarily brutal metal. He added, hesitantly, black metal, which he feels is a term overused as of late but describes the sound somewhat. He said they will not be playing any reggae or rap or anything else he doesn't listen to.
Tours are always based on a different theme, everything from the Ten Commandments to getting fit.
"The get fit thing came from me being fat, and it worked for that tour," he said. "But I gained it all back."
This time around the theme is "Star Trek: The Next Generation" with all the band members dressing as characters from the show. JBOT will be Captain Jean Luc Prickhard. The headless horn section appears as dead ensigns - an ensign is the fourth guy who beams down with three regular cast members and will not be returning for any future episodes - and so on.
He said people who have seen Captured! By Robots before - or hate Star Trek - should come anyway, because the robots are much more advanced than they were on previous tours.
"We haven't been through Albuquerque in a long time," he said. "Heckle the robots. They will probably say something much worse back to you."
His bandmates advancing at a startling rate, JBOT said he will continue touring with and maintaining them until he dies - because he has, after all, been captured by them - or until the day robots take over the world and, in effect, wipe out humanity. He gives the human-run world about 20 years.
"Once they get an uninterrupted power source, we're dead," he said. "I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing."
