HIT IT JOE!

Joe is playing a sort of modified orchestrion, which is an organ played with paper rolls like a player piano. This rendition has something of the 1812 Overture about it. For some reason the instrument is called an American fotoplayer, an odd name for something acoustic rather than visual. In this case, his highly physical enhancement of the piece is downright maniacal. These keyboard instruments were popular in the parlour in the early 20th century. They provide such a workout that it's a wonder Joe isn't more slender.

I have a fascination with mechanical musical instruments - I could go on and on, but I have to be somewhere - their hokey artificiality, out-of-tune-ness, and outlandish methods of propulsion, such as the steam-driven calliope popular with travelling circuses and Mississippi steamboats. Like bagpipes, which also utilize hot air, they're outdoor instruments, too deafening to be played in the parlour. These were instruments on the move, in circus wagons or on steamboats (or marching bands in kilts). 

It was technology of a sort, though analogue/manual. Obsolescence interests me, for reasons which kind of frighten me, sometimes. Like so many of my generation, I am slouching not-so-slowly in the same direction.

Joe has an entire YouTube channel of fotoplayer performances (link below). They are extremely intense, even noisy, so listen to them at your own risk.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEWQTsDz39znxWbohaQPoKw

Incendiary instruments

Welcome to my nightmare. One of my continuing feverish obsessions is with, what, old stuff? Old stuff connected to music, to musical instruments. . . to mechanical instruments, which fascinate me most of all. These were built to amuse the very rich in the days long before any sort of recording existed, and far exceeded the music box in out-of-tune-ness and general detestibility. But it is this that makes me love them so.

I would have included automatons, but I couldn't find any, which appalled me because I know hundreds of such videos exist. I can't find anything at all under "automatons" any more because it's now the name of some game or TV series or something, but I'm fascinated with them too because they combine music with jerky, macabre movements. Something weird going on here, too, because all of these instruments seem to be on fire, or about to put out a fire (the rackett at the top looks quite a bit like a medieval fire extinguisher) - the open-air calliope, designed for an old-fashioned riverboat, looks more like a giant out-of-control gas barbecue, and the bottom one, well. I guess we could call it steampunk. The awful camera work is for effect, I assume. These instruments were designed for old-fashioned circus wagons and were definitely made to be heard outdoors, at as great a distance as possible.

I shouldn't do it, I tell myself - stay up so late, get so engrossed - and find so many odd things, it's quite unbelievable.

Is the German guy part of the show?

This is the sound of an orchestrion, one of those cleverly-named self-playing musical instruments at the Siegfried Museum. When I first heard it, I just thought it was weird, then realized it was a meld of at least four sounds: the orchestrion, a mechanical bird chirping insanely, someone ringing an obnoxious bell, and a guy yelling loudly in German. (Did anyone ever yell softly in German?) I was a little disappointed the orchestrion didn't have a "guy yelling loudly in German" setting. But it could have. Who knows.

(Post-blog observations. Watching this thing a little more closely, I notice something going on that reminds me of the Beer Hall Putsch. The place is stuffed with Germans, most of them having some sort of Oktoberfest celebration with beer and bratwurst. If you look carefully on the left, there is a man wearing a military beret. Something odd going on here. And why on earth does this Orgasmatron or whatever-it-is have a big mirror on the front of it? You could take selfies that way, of course, in the good old-fashioned way.)