Automatic Pilot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Automatic Pilot was a San Francisco, California band. Born in 1980 as the first "unofficial" subgroup of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, Automatic Pilot soon came into their own as an independent force, creating a niche at the fringe of the nascent gay musical movement and a new musical style.

They achieved notoriety early on with songs such as "Sit On My Face" and "Killer Purses" performed at benefits for the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, Theatre Rhinoceros, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They derived their name from psychiatric testimony at the Dan White trial, from a characterization of White's mental state when he killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

The ensemble consisted of up to four part vocals led by Matthew McQueen, backed by pianist Karl Brown, with violin, flute/sax, string bass (later electric) and drums.

With an acoustic parody of punk rock as a starting point, writers Brown and McQueen incorporated elements of jazz, classical, theater and the avant-garde into somewhat twisted song structures that are both interesting and accessible. Their sound, dubbed "erotic jazz wave" has been compared to cartoon music, klezmer, and Frank Zappa. Automatic Pilot anticipated the queercore bands by a decade. The post-punk genre fits best due to the time period, punk influence and experimental bent.

Automatic Pilot continued to perform in San Francisco at various venues including the Castro Street Fair, the On Broadway Theater and the Valencia Rose gay performance space, venturing as far as the Chute II Bar in Reno.

In 1983, vocalist Tony Kramedas set out to produce an album for major label release. These recordings, done over time as budget permitted, had a more electric 80's sound with guitars, synthesizers and drum machines. The project came to a halt when Kramedas became ill; he died in 1985, as have several other band members.

The master tapes sat on a shelf until 2002 when the Automatic Pilot website was launched, with many complete recordings in mp3 and ogg format of live performances and studio works, and a detailed history. The site also features music from The AIDS Show written and performed by Brown and McQueen for the 1984 Theatre Rhinoceros production, and newly rediscovered video (in both H.264/MPEG-4_AVC and MPEG-1 format) from Automatic Pilot's December 1982 performance at the Valencia Rose. The CDs were released in 2005.