Won Dong

A live jazz night in ancient Rome, where every sound comes out of a physically simulated body. No samples, no synthesizers: only air, flesh and brass. The crowd is still buzzing when the MC walks out: "Good evening, Rome!" He brings the band on one by one, and each player answers with a lick. Brutus plays bass sitting down, so the chair rattles along with him. Nero drums with nothing but a bare sphincter. Maximus has a slide trombone and Octavius a saxophone, both plugged in where a mouthpiece would never normally go. The camera cuts in close to show how it works: the rectum is the air supply, the sphincter does the job of a trumpet player's lips, and the horn takes it from there. Then Signora Flatula counts it in ("Five, six, seven, eight!") and the band tears into "When the Saints Go Marching In". She sings the first chorus, the sax takes a solo while the whole amphitheatre claps along on two and four without using its hands, and by the last chorus everyone is singing: the band and the crowd. It ends the way a concert should, with a held chord, a drum roll and a standing ovation. Nobody uses their hands for that either.