Former Vaudeville Musician Masterfully Recreates His One Man Band Act in the 1970 Film ‘Multiple SIDosis’

Former Vaudeville musician Sid Laverents quite masterfully documented himself playing the Felix Arndt song “Nola” on multiple instruments at the same time, recreating his one-man-band act. He cleverly named this piece “Multiple SIDosis”.

Sid Laverents, a retired Convair engineer, has long been a legend in the amateur film community. Multiple SIDosis is a kind of latter-day trick film, in which Sid reprises the one-man band act he performed as a traveling vaudevillian in the ’20s and ’30s.

While this particular feat is quite common with modern day computers, in 1970 Laverents had to do everything by hand. It all started when he received a tape recorder from his wife for Christmas.

This self-reflexive masterpiece features Sid–or rather many, many Sids–hysterically performing the song Nola, recorded with Sid’s ingenious sound-on-sound looping technique and filmed with the use of his handmade in-camera mattes.

via Miss Cellania

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.



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