The sights and sounds of 1,000 people in Cesena, Italy, playing “Learn To Fly” by The Foo Fighters might be instantly likeable, but if you’re a crusty music consumer, you might find it a bit too familiar, too. Behold these other situations in which many, many humans gathered to make similarly loud and/or chipper music:
1. Bang Camaro
The Boston band performs anthemic original rock tunes that achieve the whooshy gang-chorus sound of ’80s pop-metal by combining the hollers of a dozen or so vocalists onstage. There are several guitarists, too. Every pop-metal throwback band should have a chorus when it tours. See also: Diarrhea Planet.
2. 77 Boa Drum by The Boredoms
In 2007, the legendary Japanese noise-rock band convened 77 drummers in a park in Brooklyn for an audio/video project. So much drumming. “YOU are the 78th member! This is because the sound will spiral outward, from left to right, like DNA, from deep inside of us right out to you,” says text from the trailer video for the DVD. Whoo, drums!
3. Glenn Branca
Army of axes! The avant garde composer has been a font of ideas for the use of electric stringed instruments, including pieces that require orchestras of 100 guitars.
4. Up With People
This group still exists, apparently. In the early years of the Super Bowl era, their weirdly positive halftime takeovers were unavoidable in the world of televised sport. There’s something solidly U.W.P. in the Cesena video’s vocalists. See also: The Langley Schools Music Project; that famous Coke commercial.
5. Yanni
Maybe it’s just the presence of the longhaired conductor dude on the platform in the Cesena video. Or maybe it’s the fact that Cesena is part of a Mediterranean country. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that this particular performance of “Learn To Fly” has distant undertones from Live at the Acropolis by the Greek god of the keyboard. Or maybe we just want Dave Grohl to dress like Yanni if/when The Foo Fighters play Cesena.