The iSousaphone

I was digging around for some Sousa marches on Memorial Day and came up with this. It’s my new favorite YouTube video.

It’s a video, transmitted over the internet, of a phonograph playing a 78 RPM recording of a man playing an arrangement for organ of Sousa marches. When I first saw it, it was streaming wirelessly to my iPod in the kitchen, which sort of enhanced the effect. I like the unsteady cinéma vérité nature of the handheld camera work. And the zoom in the middle is almost like when Luke is attacking the Death Star at the end of Star Wars. Whoa! How close are you going to get to that thing?! Throw in some 3-d goggles and you’d be dealing with some serious vertigo.

The whole thing makes a good history lesson. Kids these days just don’t understand. Why in my day, we had to look at betamax videos of phonographs playing 78 RPM recordings of Sousa marches.