What Is He Building In There?

Still Life with Guitars
Originally uploaded by Captain Automatic.

Guitars at Lars' house, AAA Commune, outside Red Wing, CO, September 2005.

Louisiana 1927

While it's not going to dry anybody's carpet, I recorded my own version of Randy Newman's song "Louisiana 1927" that has been in every NPR interstitial for the past three weeks. Enjoy.

If you want to make a difference for a just reconstruction of New Orleans, Nathan Newman has some ideas how.

The First Bunny Movie

For those of you who like this sort of thing, here's a movie about
two bunnies. (Quicktime).

Clowns Without Borders show

House Party at Joann's 07-10-2005 024
Originally uploaded by Banjo Max.

Things got a little bit mixed up at the Clowns Without Borders fundraiser show. But thanks for coming out to see us: your generosity raised more than $700. Not bad at all!

We went to Spaceland/Clowny clown clowns

Thanks to everyone who came out to our proto-debut at Spaceland in Silver Lake last Sunday. Scott was nice enough to give us a CD off the sound board and it sounds really good. Here are a few tracks from the show and if there's interest we could post the whole thing.

• After Yesterday's Crash
• Monster Movie Setup
• Channel 5 Martyr (Waters of March)

Our next affair will be at a very special fundraiser(.pdf) on Sunday, July 10th. Help us raise money for Clowns Without Borders! We'll be joined once again by Banjo Max and there will be delicacies by the inimitable Holly Myers, queen of little toasts and other delights. Party starts at 3 pm, we'll probably play at 5 or 6.

KYOU

"Gus Gus Gus" was among the podcasts played for KYOU's inaugural day of "open source broadcasting". Meaning that I uploaded a bunch of MP3's to the station's website and they liked one. Cool! The folks at Music Biz demurred; scroll down to "They Gave Up Imus for THIS?"

Live Jazz ReRocked

Ilse Hoplite, who has officially changed her Captain Automatic status from Active Member to Lady's Auxiliary (there is only one Lady in the Auxiliary), favored us with an appearance last Saturday night. Despite technical difficulties and a foreshortened, it was a hot show. Thanks to all who came. If you didn't hear about it and wanted to, sign up for the newsletter! And download an mp3 of I Remember Travis. I'll put a movie up presently.

Also: members of the SLAJVC, download Magalena if you like.

Skooby's Reduxby's

Our triumphant return to Skooby's resulted in the eating of more hot dogs. This is what we looked like:

We played Liars and Lovers, a song by The Dogs. Here's the original, with Paul, and drumming, guitaring and vocalizing respectively. The Austin remains the same.

We closed on Please Come Home which has become a nice way to go out.

See you at Live Jazz!

That's Captain Also Recommended Automatic to you!

Pick of the week, L.A. Weekly, saturday night. Check it out! (small print, towards the bottom).

Where I've been

Via Matthew Yglesias:

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

Monkey Movies: The Year of the Rooster

A Chinese-American colleague snuck a judge into City Hall to perform her wedding before the Year of the Monkey expired and turned into the Year of the Rooster. For those unfamiliar with the Chinese calendar and its implications, Sky K Studios put together this explanatory video.

If you're wondering to yourself, "Self, does this mean that the bunny movies are going up online?" then you can wonder right back at yourself, "Self, I do believe this means that they are."

Mayors and markers

At the Skooby's show, this dude named David Kogan (I think -- I realized that either he's into mirror writing or I scanned the image wrong) drew a picture of us rocking out. Here it is for your viewing pleasure. Also here is a video of the mayor's race dubbed over with funny voices. Also here is our myspace.com page, which is going to make us even more famous and you can hear Gus Gus Gus on it for free. Watch out! We're coming back to Skooby's AND Live Jazz veddy veddy soon.

Skooby's show

Rockin' the Hollywood Boulevard with franks and freaks

Skooby's Hot Dogs may be the best place to play in Los Angeles. Who knew? We went on after American Placebo, who by day rocks the dogs at Skooby's; we invited her back up for an on-the-spot jam-along to one of her songs and put an MP3 of the collaboration up here. We also wrote a brand new song for the occasion: Here's a QT movie of "Theme from Skooby's".
Special praise goes to Skooby's artist-in-residence Alanna who put the whole shebang together.

Attempting a Hard Rock Lick

Drummer Dan had been at a party the night before, where he chatted up a woman named A. "My band is playing a hot dog stand tomorrow night," said Dan. "Neat," said A. The next night A.'s beau R. said, "Hey, my friend's band is playing at a hot dog stand. Let's check it out." A. admitted to us that her first thought was, "Gee, I didn't know so many hot dog stands hosted rock shows in L.A." God bless her.

Face of the Bassist

Following us was Chromosome Tea, who look totally ready for embiggerment. The guitar player also plays with Pink Mochi, who I meant to see at sea level records but missed. Cool name tho.

Los Angeles Downtown News article

Take my picture, Gary Leonard!

Live Jazz rocked. (Live rock didn't jazz.)

Great time at the Live Jazz show. The keys + vox dude from Dusty Rhodes flailed about like Joe Cocker's puppy and Cockeysville brought in a big crowd for their last show ever. Some guy came by and sold the club a huge box of oranges for $2 and then Dusty Rhodes wrote "Dusty Rhodes Loves Captain Automatic" on an orange and I ate it. There were Journey references and I left my bank card there. Here's a QT movie of us doing King of Karaoke. Gary Leonard came by and took our picture. We should play there again this Spring.

We have a name.

We are now Captain Automatic*. URL and everything!

*That is, our name is "Captain Automatic". Let's be clear: Captain Automatic himself did not authorize this, nor, we want to make clear, do we ever recommend having him in your corner in a fight. And don't get me started about the Five Flavors ...

The Fais-Do-Do Smartgals Show

Was way cool. Check this out! Click on the bottom image to see a QT movie (10MB) of Gus Gus Gus.

Live Jazz exists!

I finally found the website for Live Jazz. It's pretty cool. They have a robot disco and some interesting research. I hope you have it in you to stay up late with us the night of January 26th!