Paper Planes but every time there's a gun shot it's a musket

August 4, 2019 10:45 PM

Paper Planes but every time there's a gun shot it's a musket
posted by Bugbread (25 comments total)

Okay I had no idea what to expect but that was hilarious.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:20 PM on August 4, 2019 [8 favorites]

forget the muskets, I'm revelling in the complexity of the backing track
posted by greenhornet at 11:36 PM on August 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

Brilliant.

Sad.

Brilliant.
posted by andreaazure at 2:08 AM on August 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Okay I had no idea what to expect but that was hilarious.

It was exactly what I was expecting and I was very pleased.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:53 AM on August 5, 2019 [5 favorites]

Parchment Ornithopters
posted by oulipian at 5:16 AM on August 5, 2019 [6 favorites]

Greenhornet, I believe it's a tweaked sample from an old song by The Clash.
I'd just been thinking about expanded magazines!
posted by Capybara at 5:31 AM on August 5, 2019 [4 favorites]

Indeed, it's the intro to Straight to Hell.
posted by Bugbread at 5:33 AM on August 5, 2019 [10 favorites]

The musket footage is sped up and looped right? It's small on my screen, but they seem to be getting 4 shots a minute out, doable but I can't imagine a common skill, and maybe my eyes are just slow but I never see them prime the pan.
posted by Acid Communist at 6:02 AM on August 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Like great find, thanks, but I can't help but imagine what it'd be like to see a battalion in line getting off volleys at that speed. I can barely understand how people could stand on the other end of that, even knowing how inaccurate muskets are.
posted by Acid Communist at 6:05 AM on August 5, 2019

maybe my eyes are just slow but I never see them prime the pan.

It's not a flintlock, it's a percussion rifle. You put a percussion cap on the nipple and pull the hammer back to shoot. Much better system, faster to load and more resistant to bad weather. This one minute video shows the process.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:41 AM on August 5, 2019 [3 favorites]

It's small on my screen, but they seem to be getting 4 shots a minute out, doable but I can't imagine a common skill

Training with the Brown Bess musket was usually for 3 or 4 shots a minute, and they could do up to 6 if tap loading in the hands of a skilled user. And that was the flintlock version, percussion cap conversion sped that up.

That rapid musket fire was what the British army used to defeat Napoleonic columns - a 2 man line firing 8 balls a minute per pair could absolutely devastate the narrow head of the column then break them with a bayonet charge. They might not be particularly accurate, but if you miss 3 feet to the right, you'd likely just hit someone else. And given the state of medical support back then, you'd be lucky to just lose a limb if you got shot. IIRC line vs line pitched musket battles saw casualty rates that weren't seen again until WW1 and machine guns.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 7:39 AM on August 5, 2019 [5 favorites]

OMG I laughed so hard.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:50 AM on August 5, 2019 [3 favorites]

That was hilarious! If anybody doesn't feel like watching, the song has 4 gunshots in rapid succession in the chorus - they are changed to a guy firing a musket 4 times which takes the song from about 4 minutes to 12.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:18 AM on August 5, 2019 [3 favorites]

The tweet is really funny, but what I'd forgotten about Paper Planes is how long you have to wait for the gunshots, and the building tension you get from that makes the video's realization even better than just the joke.
posted by Copronymus at 9:53 AM on August 5, 2019 [4 favorites]

looks like a flintlock to me; if you watch closely you see him flip the frizzen back down over the pan.
posted by valkane at 10:13 AM on August 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Send this to every member of Congress along with a copy of the Second Amendment and the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ emoji
posted by Automocar at 10:19 AM on August 5, 2019 [4 favorites]

Yeah, this is an excellent reminder of how much things have changed since the 2nd Amendment was written.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:46 AM on August 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Also, isn't the shooter in this video skipping a step in loading? He's only shooting powder for the sake of display & making it go bang. He'd need to load in an actual bullet, too, wouldn't he?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:50 AM on August 5, 2019 [2 favorites]

Y'all.
posted by amanda at 12:00 PM on August 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Not the first excellent video around this song though. Just making sure all Borderlands players have seen this cleverly edited take.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 12:42 PM on August 5, 2019

looks like a flintlock to me; if you watch closely you see him flip the frizzen back down over the pan.
posted by valkane at 11:13 AM on August 5 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]

I think you may be right. The big puff of smoke at the back of the barrel is pretty clear. Acid Communist is right, there is something fishy about it though.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:04 PM on August 5, 2019

I'd long thought that the DFA remix was the only remix worth listening to (and it lacks the gunshots entirely!) but this has changed my mind.

(Apologies for the bad intro in the link - a 'clean' version of the DFA remix was surprisingly hard to find!)


posted by deeker at 1:08 PM on August 5, 2019

I'm just not sure, can't see it well enough. You do get a puff of smoke from a percussion gun at the back of the barrel after watching a few of Cap and Ball's videos.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:10 PM on August 5, 2019

I want to see a live rendition of this, like orchestras that do the 1812 overture with actual cannon.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:46 PM on August 5, 2019 [5 favorites]

I’ve never seen MIA perform live, but if she isn’t doing that track with actual mortars on stage she’s missing a huge theatrical pyrotechnics opportunity.
posted by a halcyon day at 7:48 PM on August 5, 2019 [2 favorites]