Then came a tambourine playing gorilla. That made three bots – GTRBOT666, DRMBOT 0110 and The Ape Which Hath No Name. Collectively, they are the captors of Captured! By Robots. The concept was that the guy – a humanoid named JBOT – had been enslaved by the ‘bots he had created. Not only could they play music, but they berated him between songs.

Now, there’s new music (sometimes even rock operas) and new bots with every tour. Now the stage is filled with percussion robots, a bass playing robot and even a horn section. Some say JBOT is actually San Francisco musician Jason Vance, a veteran of The Blue Meanies and Skankin’ Pickle.

Whatever. You gotta check it out. The show kicked off April 8 in Salt Lake City and it winds down in – can you believe it – San Francisco on May 20. In between there’s Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Atlanta … gosh, just a whole lot of places for the evil robots to attack.