Formed by members of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, Automatic Pilot created its own niche in the newly organized gay performing arts scene, and helped to shape that scene. Starting as a punk rock parody with very gay attitude and lyrics, Automatic Pilot developed a unique form of hard core rock music performed on all acoustic instruments, with complex vocal harmonies and no guitar, which they called Erotic Jazz Wave. The core members went on to create professional recordings produced by singer Tony Kramedas, with a decidedly more electric sound. The songwriters Karl Brown and Matthew McQueen then contributed music to Theater Rhinoceros The AIDS Show.