This one will require some backstory:
Felix Arndt was a composer whose popularity peaked in the 1910s, and died in 1918 during the Spanish Flu Pandemic. While, in his 29 years, he recorded over 3000 piano rolls, with a good number of hits, most of his work has fallen into obscurity, except for one little song, a jaunty little tune called "Nola." Over thirty years after Arndt's death, Les Paul (yes, the same one the Gibson guitar was named after, and the first artist of note to have a hit record that used multi-tracking) would earn a Top 10 hit with his cover of "Nola":
But that's not why I'm bringing up the song; now another name enters into this story: Sid Laverents. He was born in 1909, and learned to play the banjo, harmonica, ukulele, and several percussion instruments in time to become a one-man-band on the tail end of the vaudeville era (i.e. post-1929). Eventually, he decided to relegate that to a hobby as he decided to settle for working with sheet metal. However, he also developed another passion: film, making a couple nature films, but then, one Christmas, he got a tape recorder as a present from his wife. He then looked through the manual and discovered it had the option of multi-tracking. So, likely inspired by Les Paul's feat, he decided to do something similar, multi-tracking himself 11 times, filming it, and turning it into a film:
Bear in mind, this was all done the hard way: he filmed each of the twelve tracks separately using multiple exposure technology, some of which he had to invent himself, and if any of the performances had a mistake, he had to scrap it all and start it all over again. This took over four years to make, and it had a good reception at the San Diego Amateur Moviemakers Club, but 30 years after the movie was finished, it ended up in the National Film Registry, with coordinator Stephen Legett saying, “We selected it to honor all the many terrific films produced by amateur ciné club filmmakers throughout the U.S. over the years. The film is technically quite adept and inventive, amusingly droll and quite mesmerizing to those who see it.” He's made a couple other films over the years, including a documentary about his life, but it's less inventive. He died in 2010 at the age of 100.
Of course, video technology has increased to such a point that any bugger can do the same thing over the course of a weekend, and perhaps even more elaborate in its arrangement. While I haven't found anyone on Youtube try for a shot-for-shot remake of Multiple SIDosis, I suppose I may as well end with a modern variation on this theme:
I understand this may very well be a lot more of this quaint song than most people might want to listen to, but I do feel this probably really needed this level of exploration.
Felix Arndt was a composer whose popularity peaked in the 1910s, and died in 1918 during the Spanish Flu Pandemic. While, in his 29 years, he recorded over 3000 piano rolls, with a good number of hits, most of his work has fallen into obscurity, except for one little song, a jaunty little tune called "Nola." Over thirty years after Arndt's death, Les Paul (yes, the same one the Gibson guitar was named after, and the first artist of note to have a hit record that used multi-tracking) would earn a Top 10 hit with his cover of "Nola":
But that's not why I'm bringing up the song; now another name enters into this story: Sid Laverents. He was born in 1909, and learned to play the banjo, harmonica, ukulele, and several percussion instruments in time to become a one-man-band on the tail end of the vaudeville era (i.e. post-1929). Eventually, he decided to relegate that to a hobby as he decided to settle for working with sheet metal. However, he also developed another passion: film, making a couple nature films, but then, one Christmas, he got a tape recorder as a present from his wife. He then looked through the manual and discovered it had the option of multi-tracking. So, likely inspired by Les Paul's feat, he decided to do something similar, multi-tracking himself 11 times, filming it, and turning it into a film:
Bear in mind, this was all done the hard way: he filmed each of the twelve tracks separately using multiple exposure technology, some of which he had to invent himself, and if any of the performances had a mistake, he had to scrap it all and start it all over again. This took over four years to make, and it had a good reception at the San Diego Amateur Moviemakers Club, but 30 years after the movie was finished, it ended up in the National Film Registry, with coordinator Stephen Legett saying, “We selected it to honor all the many terrific films produced by amateur ciné club filmmakers throughout the U.S. over the years. The film is technically quite adept and inventive, amusingly droll and quite mesmerizing to those who see it.” He's made a couple other films over the years, including a documentary about his life, but it's less inventive. He died in 2010 at the age of 100.
Of course, video technology has increased to such a point that any bugger can do the same thing over the course of a weekend, and perhaps even more elaborate in its arrangement. While I haven't found anyone on Youtube try for a shot-for-shot remake of Multiple SIDosis, I suppose I may as well end with a modern variation on this theme:
I understand this may very well be a lot more of this quaint song than most people might want to listen to, but I do feel this probably really needed this level of exploration.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.