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Media Music

Captured! By Robots - A Musical/Mechanical Marvel? 192

Posted by Cliff from the rockin'-robots dept.
Duke Boo Boo of Ouch writes: "Last night, I ventured out to the local tavern to catch musical acts Mini Band, and more importantly Captured! By Robots. This act is comprised of one human and seven fully functioning musical robots, which play guitar, bass, horns, drums, and percussion. To ensure the full effect, this must be witnessed live, but there are some videos to spark your curiousity." If you've seen one of these shows, please share your thoughts on the experience.
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Captured! By Robots - A Musical/Mechanical Marvel? More

Captured! By Robots - A Musical/Mechanical Marvel?

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  • Lol Vice City radio (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In the future there will be robots!

  • Dammit... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stile 65 ( 722451 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @10:54PM (#7431908) Homepage Journal
    I knew robots would one day replace humans in jobs, but THIS? I mean, artists are ALREADY so desperate that the RIAA has to sue 12-year-old girls without having to compete with ROBOTS too!

  • Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)

    by miguel_at_menino.com ( 89271 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @10:55PM (#7431912)

    I for one welcome our new Robot Musician Overlords.

  • Chuck-E-Cheese (Score:5, Funny)

    by Goldfinger7400 ( 630228 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @10:56PM (#7431918)
    So this is what happens when Chuck-E-Cheese lays off their entertainment.
    • Robots- putting the "e" in Chuck-e-Cheese!

    • Re:Chuck-E-Cheese (Score:3, Funny)

      by nizo ( 81281 )
      I remember watching some poor slob in a Chuckie Cheese costume get swarmed by a horde of anklebiters. I can only imagine how wonderful it would be to wear a hot-smells-like-pizza-with-no-visibility rat costume as little tykes randomly ram you in the crotch as they mill about and cling to your legs. After the poor slob had been hammered back against the stage for about 10 minutes, one of the other characters appeared and said, "Time for Chuckie to go kids!" He finally managed to pull enough kids off of poo

    • piss off (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      you're the reason that slashdot isn't any fun anymore

  • Chuck -e- cheese? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Saint Stephen ( 19450 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @10:57PM (#7431920) Homepage Journal
    I saw this band at Chuck -e- Cheese. They rock.
    • I saw a similar but much better band (several of them, in fact) at House on the Rock in Wisconsin. That crazy guy (Alex Jordan?) managed to collect several completely mechanical orchestra / music machine thingies before he faked his own death to hide underneath the screwy house. Or, that's my theory. :)

  • this is an awesome show (Score:3, Interesting)

    by squarefish ( 561836 ) * on Sunday November 09, 2003 @10:57PM (#7431923)
    I've seen all his shows that come through chicago for the last few years except for the recent holloween show- forgot about it.

    very cool, the robots are awesome and certain parts of it will definitely remind you of practicing profanities when you were 5....

    my favorite song is call 'I wish I had a pussy I could crawl into': it's about finding 50 ft woman with a six foot pussy he could go into and not have to shower or eat or work or dishes and just live in the pussy...

  • Robot Celebrities (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Beg4Mercy ( 32808 )
    In the future will we have robot celebrities and rock stars? With the ladies chasing them for sex? If so it's time to invest in these sex machines you when searching for porn on a peer to peer network and on other places on the web.

  • In the future, there will be robots (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jim Hall ( 2985 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @10:59PM (#7431934) Homepage

    Captured! By Robots. This act is comprised of one human and seven fully functioning musical robots ...

    Any other Vice City players here immediately think when reading this summary: "In the future, there will be robots"??

    Reality, meet fantasy.

    :-)

  • Wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I saw this guy and his "band" in some TV interview at least a decade ago.

    I guess the "news" here is he's still doing it. I'd have thought the novelty would have worn off by now.

    BTW, the "robots" don't play music in the classical sense that us "non-artistic" folks would appreciate. They're just a bunch of relays and motors that bang drums and make a bunch of noise. It's art like flinging horseshit at a white wall is "art".
    • This has been around for a decade? Really?

      Makes be think: there are lots of futuristic technologies that we could have now except people are not interested or they are too expensive.

      I however do find a robot band interesting as long everyone and their brother doesn't copy it. New ideas often lose their novelty when everyone else copies.
    • Haha that gave me a good laugh.
      With art though, you never know...

    • Re:Wow (Score:2)

      by Orne ( 144925 )
      Well, we know that flinging elephant shit at religious effigies is art [thecelebritycafe.com]... And men sticking things up the asses of other men in leather is art... Oglethorpe proved that at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

      I don't really have a problem with a performer using mechanics to generate the audio... I've heard a bunch of techno artists that "make a bunch of noise", except that they're doing it all from a console (Moby) and the sounds are samples. Personally, it makes absolutely no difference to me how the
    • I think you may have C!BR confused with something else. C!BR is a pretty heavy rock band where the robots most definitely DO play the music.

      In fact, the music is pretty good, and in some cases, better than other local bands I've seen.
    • I saw this guy and his "band" in some TV interview at least a decade ago.

      Funny, according to their website, they were formed in 1996.

      Nice try troll. What are the letters again? Oh yeah: YHBT. YHL. HAND.

      -Ab.
  • I can do better with a bass drum strapped to my ass and a harmonica in my mouth. It's one thing to use robots to say something, it's another to say it badly.

  • That sounds like a train wreck. I am sorry, but it does.

  • Interesting thing about these videos... (Score:4, Funny)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:04PM (#7431956) Homepage
    They have a better plot line than Matrix Revolutions.

  • where ya been?! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:07PM (#7431965)
    CBR rocks my socks off!
    I discovered them three years ago when they played a little punk rock record shop in tampa called Sound Idea [soundidead...bution.com]. Back then, I was renting a 4 bedroom house, and only had one roommate, so I graciously offered to let j-bot stay at my house. In the morning me and j-bot went to an IHOP to eat some breakfast, where I interviewed him for a local zine called "Burn Brandon"(brandon is a suburb of tampa). Back then, he only had GTRbot666 and drumbot 0110, with "the ape which hath no name" on backup vocals. Drumbot used to be pneumatically controlled by j-bot. There was a pedal setup where j-bot would stomp on the pedals to control the bass drum, snare, hi-hat, and splash. He also had a keyboard/touchpad deal strapped to him like a guitar, where he would control GTRBot, and do synth work. I saw him last time he came to tampa, when he had assembled this new motley crew of 7 robots, and it was quite the show. The music is alot better than before, and he's quite the showman, just as he used to be.

    It's definitely something to see. If J-bot stops by your town it would be worth the price to check him out, you will not be dissapointed.

  • I seem to have a couple of videos of Fat Bastard rushing the stage at the Enchanted Tiki Room...

  • Captured! By Robots' live show (Score:4, Informative)

    by supertaster ( 596755 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:13PM (#7431990)
    I saw them (him) about a year ago, I think?
    Engineering: Good
    Engineering by doing it for fun standards: Awesome.
    Songwriting: I want to go home now.
    IMHO, overshadowed by opener Reload, who has gone on to form The Punk Group [thepunkgroup.com].
  • I saw CBR a year or two ago at Jay's Upstairs in Montana (now closed, and good riddance). All the college kids ate it up, but it was really a one trick act that got old pretty quickly. The music was typical really bad loud stuff, and I figured "they" were a local trick act. Basically it was a glorified ventriloquism act. Ex-girlfriend loved it, so maybe thats why I don't like them :P

  • cbr - sacramento (Score:3, Informative)

    by chimpo13 ( 471212 ) <slashdot@nokilli.com> on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:15PM (#7432000) Homepage Journal
    I saw a CBR show in Sacramento at Worlds Best Comics in Sacramento. [wbcomics.com]

    It was great, even though I was sober. I believe they played with The 4 Eyes, another great geek rock band. [thefoureyes.com]

    I say that with a straight face, for being a Star Trek punk rock band.
  • Umm so what exactly are they trying to play?!?!?!
    Sounds like all of the robots have their own tracks going at once not in sync with others.. Sorry, but that is NOT music.. sounds like a train wreck to me... now this whole concept is very fascinating, if they were actually playing something useful!

  • Slashdotted! By Robots (Score:3, Funny)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:17PM (#7432013) Homepage Journal
    Looks like they need another robot, to learn how to properly configure Apache. . .
  • I found it disturbing but not quite as disturbing as Britney Spears.
  • One that can either constantly scan slashdot and remove all media at the sign of linkage to their website, or one that goes ballistic when DDoSed, and initiates a jet propelled flight to CmdrTaco's home.
  • That doesn't sound like your average drum machine/ synth/ sampler powered band at all!

    For cool music robots and contraptions no one beats these guys [maywadenki.com] from Japan. They are extremely twisted but spookily and well dressed.

  • Mr. Quintron (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here is the link to the Drum Buddy, designed and manufactured by the amazing Mr. Quintron [drumbuddy.com]

    I saw him live in concert and I must say, his act is amazing and his skill with the instrument he designed is fascinating.

    Be sure to see his infomercial.

  • Not quite a dupe (Score:3, Informative)

    by s1r_m1xalot ( 218277 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:26PM (#7432054)
    This isn't a dupe, but a mention of this band has appeared on slashdot before. I thought I remembered hearing about this band over the summer.
    Here's the link to the original comment, with props. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66547&cid=6121 765 [slashdot.org]
  • The robot band members may look freaky but that fact is that this is what band members look like to lead singers every time they take the stage.

    Especially the drummer.

  • Austin, TX show coming up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SethJohnson ( 112166 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:26PM (#7432056) Homepage Journal


    I've seen this band several times. Techincal, comical, and musical marvel. The guy is coming to Austin, TX November 20th. Playing at Emo's. The trick is, wherever he plays, he usually plays first because he's got to spend 4 hours setting up and then takes it all down so the other bands can play on the stage. So what I'm trying to tell you is that wherever you might go to see Captured by Robots, be sure to go early. If you assume he's going on last, and you show up at midnight, you'll probably miss him.

  • *blink* That's HORRIBLE. I was expecting something that didn't SOUND like a bunch of 7th graders who have been practicing in a half an hour music class..

    If that's the future of music.

    Oh gawd. PLEASe invent the time machine BEFORE that gets popular so I can go hurl myself into some large lizards mouth..

    The crunching of my bones will be a welcome relief to that crap..

  • C!BR (Score:5, Informative)

    by GeorgeH ( 5469 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:37PM (#7432094) Homepage Journal
    I saw Captured! By Robots at the Elbow Room [ypsirocks.com] in beautiful downtown Ypsilanti, MI and it rocked my socks off. The concept is cool, and the execution is flawless. JBOT is hilarious and really knows how to work the crowd. This is not something to miss. My buddy posted some pictures from the show [nerdtech.com] that you check out.

    My only regret is missing the 10 Commandments show that he's touring now.
    • I saw Captured! By Robots at the Elbow Room in beautiful downtown Ypsilanti, MI and it rocked my socks off.

      Here is a preview of that show from CURRENT magazine back in May:

      Captured! by Robots [ecurrent.com]. (This was the first tour to feature the Headless Hornsmen.)

  • If you've seen one of these shows, please share your thoughts on the experience.

    What does "seeing the shows" have to do with "sharing our thoughts" ...?

    That sounds like "read the f*cking article".

    I think we know Slashdot better than that by now ....
  • a "rhythm" robot. Never have so many electronics had so little sense of syncopation or timing.

  • Damn good engineer... sucky musician: (Score:5, Informative)

    by SeverianDragon ( 555306 ) <h2owarrior@hotmail.com> on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:48PM (#7432135)
    A year ago, I had the dubious pleasure of running the sound board for CBR. It was fun watching him set up the robots, talking to him about how he built them. Asking him how he programmed their actions etc ad nausuem. Then, the music started. I put my earplugs in and tuned out the show. Most people who showed up for the beginning of the show left after the first song. They were just there for the novelty of watching some dude dance around on stage with a bunch of robots playing backup for him. The music? Well, all I can say is that it was as if Slayer, Metallica, The Ramones, Drop-kick Murphies and Strongbad got stuck in a blender together on high and were poured into funny shaped molds with about a gallon of Jell-O powder. The talkback was raucus, racist, sexist and obnoxious. Partly amusing, but then again, I was paid to be there. After the show I asked the guy why he uses the robots. He told me that he used to be in a band with other people, and decided that he hated it. He couldn't control their actions, he couldn't control the way they played. Can we say control freak? Robots breed consistency. However, during the show one of the robots broke down. On the geek end, he had 2 whole racks of computer equipment, micro-controllers, pneumatic pistons, a pneumatic compressor, keyboards, voice modulator built into a mask. Rather neat stuff all around. Would I ever run sound for him again? Sure, if I had a paid monkey to run the board during the show. Would I love to help him in his shop? Yep, but he would never let anyone near his tools or his robots, they are like his little children. Ahh well... rather entertaining. But I wouldn't pay money to see it.
    • As a musician, and having dabbled more than the average joe into MIDI, I must say that the videos I painfully watched confirm your report.

      I suppose I'm getting old, but the noise I heard was nothing resembling music.

      Speaking of MIDI, there are ways - I'm sure - to redirect SysEx commands and subsequent note-on/off (etc) commands to do almost all of the things this guy does with his "robots", and actually use quality sounds to achieve melodic results. I could be dreaming, but then again, my band opened fo

  • About 4 years ago (Score:3, Informative)

    by nate nice ( 672391 ) on Sunday November 09, 2003 @11:48PM (#7432137) Journal
    I saw him about 4 years ago when I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. His show is pretty popular around here and has been for awhile. He has 3 "robots"; one that is "string bot", "percussion bot" and the ape. The guitar or string bot is more of a harp and it has mechanical picks, one for each string that is triggered by him (the human who is captured) He is in bondage, center stage and has a keyboard controller thing and has all these foot pedals that he controls drum bot with. Each peddle triggers a drum. You can imagine it's pretty intense on the stage. The whole show is he's in bondage (captured) and the robots make demands from him, he tries to disobey but they torture him into playing. As for the music, it's loud and fast. All in all, it's a great show and generally costs about $5.00 for admission. I saw him play with the "Lonesome Organist", a man with an old organ playing hockey game like music with a twist. Great stuff. I still wear my "Capture! By Robots" t-shirt. Oh, and for the ape? He's a robot in a gorilla suit that has a tambourine on his head and has sympathy for capture man. It's a great alter-ego.
  • I'm waiting for Crow, Tom Servo, R2D2 and Bender to form a robot Supergroup, The Shiny Metal Ass Experience. THAT I'll go see. I mean, how do we know if any of the robots here are any good if we haven't seen them in previous groups or solo projects? (Not to mention Alan Parsons Projects.)



    Some more good names for Robot Bands:

    1. Three Laws

    2. Optimus Prime and the Malfunctions

    3. 11 Doors Down

    4. The What

    5. Flee in Terror, Puny Humans!

    6. Gortastic

    7. IF Ready THEN Rock ELSE Next

    8. Chrome Fetish

    9. Kryten's Khaosium

    10. Al Gore

  • this is far from being a new thing [pierrebastien.com].
  • Dude, did I just use bandwidth for that? Granted, the concept is cool, but dude, what is up with his outfit. I guess it could be worse. I could have just downloaded another security hole, I mean patch, for windows 2k.
  • Good thing they were robots, cuase it was the worst music ever, and i really mean...EVER :-p
  • I saw CBR's halloween show in Chicago, and it's one of the most interesting things I've seen onstage in a long time.

    The current tour is inspired by The Ten Commandments (you know, that old Heston movie), with 10 songs that follow the storyline of the music. Our hero, the one human onstage plays Moses. GTRBOT plays Ramses. DRMBOT plays Nefertiti. TAWHNN plays God, and Jesus was written into the script just to give SOTAWHNN a part to play.

    The music isn't as good as his normal stuff, but how can you resi
  • Does anyone from the Portland area remember the Organ Grinder restaurant? They had a pipe organ and a wide assortment of mechanically controlled instruments that could be played by the organist.
    • I saw this in Toronto, back when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I think it burned down in '79? Well it's gone now, anyway. :(

      I take your point was that these kinds of mechanical music things have been around since forever. You could almost classify an old player piano as a robot, right? And they've been around since the Cowboys, or even before, I'm sure.
    • I remember it. I lived a few blocks away. They ruined it by putting the arcade upstairs. That ruined the experiance and it turned into a tiny Chuck-E-Cheeze joint that didn't play kids music. Adults that enjoy a good theatre organ show quit going and the arcade wasn't big enough to support the place on quarters. They were out of business a couple years later. Think about it. Would you go to a Phantom of the Opera show with a kids arcade in the room?

      They should have kept the original format that worked
  • The last time I saw 'CBR' I was dating a new girl and I wanted to test her tolerance for random entertainment. So I brought her to a Captured by Robots show at a transvestite bar in San Francisco (Kimo's).

    She seemed to be able to hang. So I kept her.

    After you get over the initial technical marvel gimmick you'll find that CBR's music is kind of mediocre. That's why you need drunk 40 something transvestites for back-up entertainment.

  • Love it (Score:1)

    by Dop ( 123 )
    I've seen Captured by Robots twice when they've come through Champaign, IL.

    The Ape Which Hath No Name he ain't not goddamned bear!!
  • "We are the Robots" indeed! These German pioneers of electronic music are still awesome to listen to, and I only wish there were videos of their performances.

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • Having been up close and personal with the band, I must say it's pretty damn incredible. JBOT really has something going there. Be sure to check out his newly produced DVD!

    Jory

    P.S. My favorite part of the band are the Headless Hornsmen, a 3-piece airhorn section that looks as if it was decapitated!
  • In the future, there will be robots...

    (Sorry...)
  • First of all, SF Weekly ran a front-cover page on this band Here [sfweekly.com], a couple years back.

    To my mind, it's a better read than listen. The robots are definitely cool, much better than Chuck E. Cheese - the instruments are actually being played by the robots, after all. Maybe you won't be blown away by their quality, you wouldn't see it in a sci-fi movie or Rocky III, but the man definitely has put a lot of time into it.

    The stage show isn't the greatest - the songs are pretty generic rockers. Also, given the

  • a bit similar product, while being only a computer.

    but it sings too itself.. :) (fm synthesis musics, singing is done via some text-to-speech synth)

    http://www.easylife.org/386dx/ [easylife.org] is the homepage.

    how is it different from playing some mp3 on faster machine, or playing just wavs? well, the user experience might be the same for some(but it has taken some work to make it sing like that :).
  • The King and I
  • "We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon, but there aint no whales so we tell tall tales and sing a whaling tune"
    .. Brought to you by the monsanto corporation ..

  • Seen em. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alernon ( 91859 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @09:35AM (#7433773) Homepage
    I saw them at our local musical Mecca, Ralph's Corner about a year ago. He's a great entertainer. The robots have pre-programmed phrases to say through the show, but he can also switch his mic to talk through the robots to heckle the crowd.

    The basic plot of the show is that the human built some robots to be his friends and play with him, but the robots rebelled and took him prisoner, and rip his guts out for fun. The take the human around the nation on tour so they can ridicule him in front of other humans to show their superiority. There is also two stuffed monkeys involved... The-ape-that-hath-no-name, and another one who's name escapes me.

    Great show. If you go, check out the merchandise table, they have hilarious stuff for sale, including Captured By Robots cock rings.
  • Okay, so I'll say Captured By Robots is a great and entertaining show. But my problem is that what I want out of my enslaving machine musical masters is a little more up-front politics of destruction. I mean, I don't remember the Robots threatening to capture me. Or charging the humans for the privilege of liberating their automobiles via bumper sticker.

    I believe the true pinnacle of the genre is the now-defunct Servotron [archive.org]. (Forgive the archive.org link, it's sad to realize how much disappears over time
  • Says it all. I am your only friend, J-Bot!
    • By the way, I know that's not the actually way the Ape name goes, but last I saw J-bot and the crew I was head full of shrooms, so give me a break.

      But seriously, I saw this guy in 1997 when a local band here in Knoxville picked him up because they felt sorry for them. The band was A Band Called L.I.F.E., which was the best funk outfit from these parts (Don't go back to Greeneville, baby) -- ever. Fuck you, Grand Torino, you fuckers still owe me money. Anyhow, L.I.F.E. picked him up for an opening act on th
  • I saw them at the SF Eagle the night Wil Wheaton was fighting Barney for EFF around the corner at DNA Lounge. I was supposed to leave for the EFF beatdown but I was mesmerized by C!BR and stayed.

    Truth be told it is mostly covers. I think the appeal for me is the theatrics. From a performace art perspective it's pretty cool with some old rockin' tunes in there too. More like a one man musical with robots.

    I saw them again at Bottom of the Hill when they were shooting the DVD. I should be the guy who ta
  • I sent the link to their site to a friend right after this was posted, he wrote back "are we going?"

    I had no clue that they were playing here Wednesday. SWEET!

    It will probably be too late, but I will reply to this comment Wednesday night or Thursday.
    • This is the most beautiful insanity I have ever seen on stage. This year's show is the story of Moses (Jbot)and the escape from evil Egyptian rulers (the GTRBot and the drummer robot) and how the Jews (the audience) were led across the desert and given the Law by God (the big stuffed bear/gorilla?), with a special appearance by Jesus (the small white gorilla). A lot of the time, JBot was singing and playing along with the band, but sometimes he was in the audience singing while the bots played the song wi

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