TEAM LAST CALL

Meet JBOT, a musician who, tired of dealing with egomaniacal bandmates, decided to start a rock band with robots as backing musicians. He built the robots himself with tender, loving care, giving one a guitar, another drums, until the band was completed. On the seventh day, he rested.

Then tragedy struck. JBOT’s beloved robots turned evil, captured their creator and yanked out his intestines and eyes. Now JBOT lives a tortured existence under the cold, watchful eyes of the robots, who delight in nothing more than humiliating their creator during their nightly concerts.

Team Last Call interviewed poor JBOT in anticipation of Captured! By Robots’ October 26 concert at the Chameleon to see how long we have before the robots take over the entire world.

Team Last Call: Why did you build the robots in the first place?

JBOT: Just all the stuff you have to deal with when you’re in a band, everything from drunk band members to girlfriends to “Oh, I can’t tour because I have a baby now.” So I decided to build some robots to take the place of human band members and see if they would do what I wanted – and they didn’t.

TLC: When did you first know that things went terribly wrong?

JBOT: It was pretty early. I had a horrible coffee-spilling accident with the CPUs when I was making the first two, Drum Bot and Guitar Bot. I don’t know if that’s what made them go against me and be evil, but it was something. As soon as I plugged them in, they captured me. They put a chip in my head and activated this chip as sort of a method of control. It’s called a Biocerebral Chip. It’s almost like being hit with a cattle prod. Not that I’ve been hit with a cattle prod, but that’s what I would imagine it’s like.

TLC: You’ve been captured for almost 13 years now. Are things better or worse overall?

JBOT: In the beginning, it was all torture and bullshit, just constant abuse. The first couple of tours we did, it was just me and the Drum Bot and Guitar Bot. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the situation where you’re lonely and tired and working really hard, and all you get is people yelling at you all the time, but it gets old fucking fast. But their hatred of me has gotten less over time. I think we sort of have a functionally dysfunctional relationship these days. We’re like an old married couple because we’ve been together for so long.

TLC: Why do you think Guitar Bot in particular is so damn mean?

JBOT: I think part of it just goes down to the instrument. I don’t know if you’ve met many guitar players, but generally – no offense – guitar players are pretty much dicks.

TLC: Do the bots tell you what kind of music to play?

JBOT: They don’t really care what we play. Basically, they rock hard and they’ll rock with whatever we play. And if the music I choose is bad, they just use it as another excuse to rip on me.

TLC: As far as you can tell, is there any way to avoid the imminent robot apocalypse?

JBOT: I think it’s only a matter of time. I think the human race is on borrowed time as it is. It’s not going to be global warming that kills us. I think it’s a tossup between two: either asteroids or robots taking over. The most likely is going to be robots taking over.

TLC: I would think so.

JBOT: Yeah, I’m pretty good with trying to analyze situations with percentages and statistics. I’ve run the numbers.

TLC: If people come out to the show, aren’t we in a way financially supporting this plan for them to take over?

JBOT: I don’t think so. I’m a bad robot builder. That new Japanese humanoid robot – my god, that’s what we need to worry about. That’s the scary part. I think we’re safe for the next five, 10 years. But if you know you’re going go die tomorrow, are you going to cry today or are you going to go out and party?

TLC: I’m going to party with robots.

JBOT: Totally!

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine