Jo Callis is a man with a list of music hits to his name that would make most people drool. As founder and principal songwriter of late 70’s pop/punk outfit The Rezillos, he had a string of UK hits including “Top of the Pops” and “Destination Venus”.  And then came…

The Human League!!! Jo co-wrote ALL their major hits and played and sang on them too. Don’t You Want Me, Mirror Man, (Keep Feeling) Fascination, The Lebanon, Life On Your Own, Louise, Heart Like A Wheel, Seconds, Open Your Heart and TONS more. Jo also wrote with Feargal Sharkey (of the Undertones) and had a UK hit with Loving You. And so on and so on and so on. But guess what?

HE’S COMING ON BOARD THE CABONAUTS TO REMIX OUR SONGS!!!!  Jo, based in Scotland, is a big sci-fi fan and so it’s only fitting he joins the cast and crew on the most unique sci-fi show ever. I can’t even begin to tell you how over the moon we all are. His remixes will be sold on iTunes later this year when we launch the show. In the meantime, it’s hard to believe that a genuine 80’s icon is remixing these songs I’m writing - and he’s kicking it off with the track from the pilot entitled “(Female) Scientists” featuring vocals by Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek), Miracle Laurie (Dollhouse) and James C. Leary (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Jo is now an official Cabonautee and we couldn’t be happier.

Here’s a selection of his videos.

And I couldn’t resist linking to this absurdly bad (so intentionally bad it’s brilliant) version of Fascination here on YouTube.It’s very Vic & Bob. We’ll let you know soon who else is coming on board the Scarad to remix tracks - some other great surprises are on the way

ps - have you added yourself to The Cabonauts Facebook fan page yet? go for it

We grabbed a moment with David H. Lawrence at the San Diego Comic-Con to talk about Heroes, Goodnight Burbank and The Cabonauts. David is best known for his role as Eric Doyle - the Puppeteer - on Heroes. Chances are his next best known role will be on The Cabonauts as a gay space pirate!

The news is out and the buzz is pretty damn loud! The wonderful, beautiful, exceptionally talented Nicky Nichols – Star Trek’s Uhura – has come on board the Cabonauts as CJ, the CEO of the cab company.
We couldn’t have done it without our unbelievable casting director, Erin Gray. Erin allowed us to connect and, after I delivered a script and character breakdown, Nichelle said yes. It happened so fast too; within 3 weeks of having the initial idea to approach Nichelle, she’d said yes.

We’ve already spent some time shooting scenes and recording songs and videos. Nicky looks amazing in an outfit put together by Angela Sauceda, our stylist. It was a crazy day that first day – about 20 people buzzed around doing various jobs, among them the Bui Brothers who took some amazing pictures. You can imagine my surprise when, during an interview we did on set, Nichelle began comparing me to Gene Roddenberry and The Cabonauts to Star Trek. As far as absolutely surreal experiences go, that was right up there. We’ll be releasing clips of that interview over the next few weeks as teasers - you can see the first one up above!

Nicky’s character CJ comes from a long line of very successful women. In fact, she keeps one of them on her desk – the clone brain of her dead Grandma sits in a plexiglass container doling out unwanted advice. CJ had been COO of Farmer’s Seuticals, a top drugs manufacturer, but was ousted after being tainted in a financial scandal that she had nothing to do with. CJ’s now working as CEO of The Cabonauts Inc., a huge step down for her, but she’s going to give it her all.

CJ was married briefly to Cyril’s father who passed away. On his death-bed, he made her promise to help his son out which is why Cyril is employed by her as a cab instructor. And of course it’s Cyril who’s her biggest problem, slovenly care-free guy that he is.

Nichelle will be in every single episode, either in scenes or singing and dancing in the music videos – or both! Mostly both (Grandma will too, but don’t expect her to participate in much dancing.) Seeing Nicky dancing with our dance troupe was so much fun too; I was watching her on the monitor as she shimmied away, her dazzling smile absolutely infectious! You’ll agree when you see it. Plus, we’re lining up some extra special interactive features that will…You know, it’s a bit too early to reveal those surprises, but rest assured you’ll be closer to Nichelle than you ever dreamed possible!

The show will most likely premiere in a few months but between then and now, we’ll be appearing at some big sci-fi conventions across the country, releasing interviews, trailers, pictures and news so be sure to sign up to the mailing list (links on the main page) to be the first to find out what’s going on. Our guest cast keeps getting bigger and bigger too – because someone needs to play the role of the passengers and we’re only taking names from iconic sci-fi TV series and movies ‘cause that’s how we roll. More news soon on who those people are - and which two players from the Joss Whedon universe will guest-star in the pilot. In the meantime, in the summer of Star Trek, we couldn’t be happier, and prouder, to be a tiny part of it with one of the biggest icons in the world of Sci-Fi. Nichelle – thanks for coming on board!

The days leading up to the pilot often seem more fraught with problems than the bloody shoot itself does. 24 hours before shooting, we were still finishing up the set, installing A/C in the green screen studio, and having to deal with finding a new wardrobe stylist because the one we’d had decided to take a different gig at the last second. Nowt like people. Anyway, believe it or not, all was dealt with and a new stylist was found within 15 minutes (gotta love Twitter).

I woke up at 5am the day of the first shoot, and in the news: Dr Who’s signed on a new companion. So instead of learning lines, I’m on the web trying to find who she’s repped by to see if there’s a chance of getting her on the Cabonauts.

Back to reality. The day went as days in production normally go - fraught with problems. We were using an HD camera for the first time and that means everything is shot digitally – no tape. But that also means that you have to take the filled up card and download it to a hard drive, dump the contents onto it, then begin shooting again. That wasn’t the problem. It was discovering that the particular camera we were using had just had its firmware uploaded and the drivers that the computer needed to be able to recognize the HD card…were nowhere to be found. So while camera whiz Paul Wojciak worked on that problem, we all had to wait around for 3 AND A HALF FRUDDING HOURS. But it wasn’t all bad. We had lunch. We shot lots of behind-the-scenes stuff. We learned – rather Monica and Norm learned – the unbelievable dance moves that Monica McSwain our amazing choreographer had come up with. I sort of wimped out and grabbed the synth and stood behind that nodding.  Then Paul called us all back ‘cause he’d figured it out.

By 6pm or so, we’d gotten a few scenes in the can – some stuff with Cyril and Harry in the cab, some stuff of Lolita and some intense dancing for the music video. We were all very hot, sweaty and ready to collapse but I was over the moon. Finally, I am starting to see my vision come together and it’s looking pretty damn good dare I say it myself. It’s colourful, it’s vibrant, it pops - and then you throw in music and dancing and you’ve got something so unique that…Well, I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself (but I’m so damn excited!!!). Our next shoot is scheduled for next Wednesday and we hope to pick up all the stuff we missed. And while we won’t have to deal with HD drivers next time,  trust me - there’ll be something entirely new to screw it all up.

One of the most insanely fun things about the Cabonauts is the fact that we’re getting some majorly iconic sci-fi actors and actresses to play the roles of passengers. Well that was the initial idea. You write that into a pitch and then you scratch your head and ask “how the hell am I going to do that?”. First off, as I quickly discovered, agents are more than useless. I say more than because they actively try and put the kibosh on it. When you’re on a small budget, agents don’t wanna know – not because they’re concerned about their clients (that’s the LAST thing on most of their minds) but because it means the money they’re bringing in to their agency isn’t big enough to warrant their own jobs. Actually, it’s not really the agent’s fault; it’s a plan set up by the agencies themselves and Hollywood’s now a slave to it.

But not us.

Very early on, we met with an absolute angel with a massively impressive acting resume herself. Erin Gray – you will remember her as Wilma Deering from the Buck Rogers TV series and the mom from Silver Spoons – now runs a company that represents iconic sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre actors for conventions and speaking engagements. Over a lunch at the Daily Grill (the one in Studio City, on Laurel), Erin told us that she’d never been involved in casting before. I told her I’d never done a sci-fi musical comedy - and she was in!

While talking, she mentioned a couple of big sci-fi names that she was very close to. It squirreled itself away in my mind as people we could get in our backseat. It was only a few weeks later that I had the thought “What if we got PERSON X as a regular? How unbelievably frakken amazing would that be?” So I made a call, someone else made a call, Erin made a call, and the next thing you know PERSON X said…Sounds interesting. I want to see more.

So more is what I sent ‘em. A script. An outline. And a character breakdown lovingly created 100% for PERSON X. A week later, the phone rang. PERSON X had said Yes.

They. Said. Yes.

I think I jumped up and down and screamed like a 10 year old girl when I got that phone call.

PERSON X said yes? To me? PERSON X will be saying back my lines? Singing my songs? Acting next to me? Holy shizzles. This was big. So big that we thought it best announcing at ComiCon ’09 (not that I’d ever been). And here’s the great thing about ideas, especially ones that spring up around The Cabonauts – it’s going to happen. Daily Motion’s PR firm, run by the very professional Ephraim C., made a call and voila. Looks like it’s happening.

But it hasn’t stopped there. More and more people are expressing interest on a weekly basis. People from Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Buffy, Dr. Who (the new series), Alien Nation, Stargate… Every week, I get to have my own personal freak out when we get a call from Erin or some of other well placed industry friends who are reaching out on my behalf (thanks to Marti R too for some massive gets!).

Who’s next? There are some people I want to work with just ‘cause I’m a huge fan, so that’ll be fun, just reaching out and asking. I also think once they see the show they’ll say yes because it’s so different – but the sky’s the limit, and there’s only one way to find out!

I’ve always loved music – tons and tons of stuff but my heart is deeply embedded in 80’s synthpop. “Faggy English pop” as my friends called it but whatever you wanted to brand it, it was fun, poppy, at turns melodramatic, gorgeous and danceable. For instance, I love the Pet Shop Boys. And I still do. But my only experience with a piano was playing “Fur D’elise” as a child and winning some award for it. Back then, and to this day, I could play by ear (which absolutely kills your head) (I’ll be here all week; please remember to tip your waitress), but found it very difficult to read music and so subsequently decided I was much better off just listening to it.

Last summer, I dated a girl who loved to sing and compose music. One day while she was over, I pulled out my massive organ – bad choice of words - a keyboard I had laying in the back of a closet, plugged it up to the Mac and turned on Garageband. Within seconds, she was writing a song and asked me if I wanted to contribute a melody. I came up with something that she termed “complex” – and I thought “Wow. Maybe – just maybe – I could write music!”.

The girl and I broke up but she’d left me something far more valuable; the desire to start writing music. I immediately wrote a new theme tune for both Goodnight Burbank and Abi’s Teen Diary, replacing the far more gorgeous ones that Ryan Shore had let me use, but by doing them myself meant I didn’t have to worry about the costly licensing, etc, if we sold the shows to TV as-is as interstitial segments. All I had to do was something serviceable, it’s not like I needed to write a #1 hit.

So once that was out of the way, I thought “it’s time to write a pop song.” And that track has not only become the first song (for the pilot episode) but a template for what I did with the rest of the songs. They’re short – about a minute and a half or so – have a couple of hooks to them, are quite poppy, and quite retro, given that they sound quite synthy and 1980-new-wave-poppy. I’ve been writing the music first and then adding lyrics later (to those who want to know which came first), and all the tracks hew to this short, poppy format with little in the way of regular song structure (that being verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, chorus chorus chorus).

Writing songs has been the most fun I’ve ever had sitting upright. Since I’ve never done it before, I’ve no pre-conceptions stopping me and so it’s all quite cathartic. I can’t wait for you guys to hear it. If you don’t like synthy 80’s stuff then hopefully you’ll just dig on the lyrics, the gorgeous girl who’ll be doing a lot of the singing, or the 15-person dance troup known as “The Cabinettes”.

Welcome to the pre-production blogs and website for The Cabonauts – thanks for coming!!! Before I go any further, a massive thank you to Gennefer Snowfield for designing the site and getting it up and running for me. Yay Genn!!!

It’s a work in progress, but that’s what we’re here to celebrate. With behind the scenes videos and peeks at the creation of the CGI and expert design work, the casting process, the recording of the songs, etc, we’ll cover it all. Well, everything the bloody lawyers will allow anyway!

So where are we at the moment?

Let’s start with the basics.

The deal with Daily Motion is now officially signed (pause for roars of excitement - oh, wait, that’s just me). Two very British signatures (their CEO is English and if you don’t know me, now you know I’m English, too) now sit on the paperwork, and so we’re off to the races. Although, to be honest, we set off on this journey almost a year ago, and that’s where this blog shall begin…

(Making wavy shapes to denote a flashback.)

The original script was written back in May 2008 back when I hadn’t thought of making it a musical yet. That came when I cast the very handsome, square-jawed Norm Thoeming as Harry. Norm performs weekly at I.O. here in Los Angeles, in an improvised musical. You yell out an idea at the beginning of the show – and I tried it myself, so I know it works – and the team launches into a wholly original, one-hour improvised musical! It’s absolutely hysterical and the entire team (that, comedy fact-fans, comprises Shulie Cowen who co-stars in both Goodnight Burbank and Abigail’s Teen Diary) works wonders.

I was sitting with Norm at Burbank’s own Bob’s Big Boy over a ‘getting to know you’ lunch (Shulie had introduced us), when I began wondering aloud how we could incorporate Norm’s singing into the show. Ironically, my first thought was just to have him sing original, improvised songs for fans as an interactive add-on – but it was so incongruous. I mean, okay, I could make his character a wannabe singer who’s become a cab driver because he can’t catch a break, but it still felt fairly shoe-horned in. Watch the show about two guys driving a spacecab then have one of the main characters sing you a song? Weird. Norm, bless him, was up for it but then, he’s up for anything, or so his wife tells me. So after a month or so of thinking about it, I had this other, rather crazy idea.

What if I made the show a musical?

Oooh.

You feel the excitement, too?

It took another few weeks whilst my head came to grips with the idea. A musical sci-fi comedy? A comedy sci-fi musical? A sci-fi comedy… you get the idea. It was like holding a square peg and a round hole and wondering what to do with them. But one morning, I woke up and it fit. Perfectly. The only problem now was writing music because I’d never done that before.