A few days ago, the good people in Bristol's The Exchange were treated to an airing of a very familiar hit. Africa by Toto is a Radio 2 staple, a gloriously daft moment of 80s pop rock, so hearing it in a music venue should be no big deal.
But then the DJ played it again. And again. And again. And again. He played Africa (and nothing but Africa) for a total of 12 hours, as part of a charity endurance marathon that started at 11pm and ran until 11 the following morning. Music fans were sponsored for how long they could put up with hearing the same song nearly 20 times an hour for 12 hours.
[WATCH] Bristol venue raises cash with 'Africa' marathon
But, as impressive as this is, it is nowhere near the kind of exceptional feats of endurance some musicians have put themselves through in order to break a world record.
Here are just nine of the most dedicated.
Longest freestyle rap marathon - 25 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds
We've all seen Fire in the Booth, right? And we know that with the best will in the world, even the greatest rap minds on the planet would struggle to find fresh material after, what, 20 minutes? An hour? That's why you have to take your cap off to Pablo Alvarez, of LA-based rap group Good Bison. His particular triumph on August 30-31, 2017, was to find things to rhyme about for over 24 hours.
He ended up crowdsourcing ideas for rhymes from Good Bison's fanbase, using social media, and they were trying to catch him out. He told : "I was incorporating their words into my rhymes. They would throw something at me that they thought I couldn't rhyme. I was probably given the word 'orange' 20 times throughout the day."
By the end, his face started to pack up, his tonsils were raw and enflamed, his nose clogged up: "I didn't understand that part. My body was shutting down on me - I could tell." But he completed the task, and with only one break to use the toilet.
Longest harmonica solo - 24 hours
The harmonica is an instrument that lends itself well to endurance playing, in that you can breathe in and out and still keep the music coming. That doesn't mean 24 hours of continuous performance is easy, especially without lip balm, but it's probably not as tiring as it would be on the oboe. But the really interesting story behind this remarkable feat is that of the man huffing on his harp.
Bonny B. is a Cambodian blues obsessive and prodigious mouth organ virtuoso whose family moved to Thailand on the run from the Khmer Rouge, when he was little. He now travels the world on the festival circuits, teaching the blues, particularly in Switzerland, where he has run a couple of blues clubs. But he only started his world record breaking 24 hour huff 'n' puff because of a bet, although he finished it primarily in order to raise funds to open a school in Cambodia for underprivileged children.
Longest drum roll - 14 hours
The grim reality of breaking endurance records is that it takes ages. Pandit Sudarshan found this out the hard way when he elected to play a drum roll for 14 hours in July of this year, at London's Enterprise Academy.
The roll is a relatively complicated manoeuvre involving bouncing the tips of the drumsticks on the drum skin in a continuous trundling wave of noise, and is entirely unleavened by dynamic peaks or troughs. Which means it's really wearing on the hands and the ears (and the drumsticks) and he didn't even have a cymbal on hand as a snazzy showbiz finale when he'd finished.
Longest Elvis impression - 43 hours, 11 minutes and 11 seconds
There is something about Elvis Presley that brings out the record breaker in people. And not just musical world records either. For example, the world record for the largest coffee mosaic - an overhead shot taken of 5,642 cups of coffee, each one with different amounts of milk added to make a different shade - comes together as a picture of Elvis's face. And the most expensive hair ever sold at auction was his too (it sold for £72,791).
And he has his own category of awards too, so the fastest marathon run by a man dressed as Elvis took place in 2009, at the Seattle Marathon, in which the very British Ian Sharman romped home in just 2 hours, 42 minutes and 52 seconds. Mind you, going at that pace, he could have fitted in another 15 marathons by the time Thomas 'Curtis' Gäthje had finished his Elvis world record. In 2004, Thomas sang the songs of the King for a preposterous 43 hours, 11 minutes and 11 seconds (including copious breaks to say "thankyouverrmuch", naturally).
Longest flute solo - 27 hours, 32 minutes and 32 seconds
Another record-breaker with a fascinating backstory, Katherine Brookes first broke the world record for playing the flute with a marathon performance lasting 25 hours and 48 minutes. At the time she was raising money for cancer charities, but within days of her performance her mother was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and the initial prognosis was not good.
Thanks to help from cancer care charity workers, Katherine's mum lived for nearly four more years. However, around the same time that she died, Katherine's world record was broken. So, like any dutiful and heartbroken daughter, she set out to get it back, in tribute to her mum, and to raise more money for the same cancer charities. On August 4, 2017, she began playing, finishing 27 hours, 32 minutes and 32 seconds later, in front of a live audience at Bedworth Civic Hall, Warwickshire.
Longest performance on guitar - 114 hours, 6 minutes and 30 seconds
The best thing about this video of David Browne beating the world record for continuous playing is that it shows the mentality of a guitar player down to a tee. David's marathon shred-off lasted for nearly five days, from 12 to 17 June 2011. But what do you do when you've played solidly for nearly 115 hours straight, the previous record has been broken and the crowd in Dublin's Temple Bar Pub are going crazy?
You just damn well keep on going, even if your sore and blistered fingertips are hanging off. It's what Hendrix would've wanted.
Longest continual vocal note - 1 minute and 52 seconds
Singing one continuous note is harder than it seems. According to the rules set by Guinness World Records, you have to maintain pitch (within reason) for the entire attempt, and keep your voice above a certain volume level from a distance of 2.5 metres. This makes the achievement of Turkey's Alpaslan Durmus - who made a single note last nearly two minutes - all the more impressive.
He told Guinness World Records he had a particular reason to get it right during his 2016 attempt: "I… promised my father that I will enter the Guinness book of records and all over the world shall hear me… My father is sick and I will keep my promise before his death and my father can see this success of me."
Longest solo karaoke marathon - 101 hours, 59 minutes and 15 seconds
We all know someone who fancies themself as the ultimate karaoke diva, hogging the microphone all night long and always taking the lion's share of the spotlight. Well, no matter how doggedly they refuse to share, those people are timid and shrinking violets compared to Leonardo Polverelli: karaoke king.
His reign of musical delight started on the 19 of September 2011 at the Astra Caffe, Pesaro, Italy, and ended four days later. During that time, he sang a total of 1,295 songs. Top that, Springsteen!
Longest human beatbox - 25 hours and 30 minutes
Peter Wehrmann is the German rock fan who has turned beatboxing into a comic art, under the name Pete the Beat. As you can hear from this clip - taken from beatboxing channel Beatbox Battle TV - he's particularly good at recreating riffs from classic rock songs. But the reason he has made this list is the astonishing twenty-five hour (and a half) marathon beatboxing binge he embarked on in the Best Western Premier Hotel MOA Berlin, in 2012.
He started his record-breaking attempt at midday on 20 October, and finished just after lunchtime the next day, presumably with a sopping wet microphone and a terrible face ache.
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