i lol'd at the fact that the roadies are dressed just like in the show.

I was curious, so I went for a walk in Wikipedia:

"In 1969, Pete Townshend, The Who's guitarist, created the band to play songs written by the former Who roadie, drummer / singer John 'Speedy' Keen (miscredited as "Keene" on the single's label). Keen wrote the opening track on The Who Sell Out album, "Armenia City In The Sky". Townshend produced the single, arranged its strings, played its bass guitar under the pseudonym Bijou Drains, and hired for it eccentric GPO engineer and jazz pianist Andy 'Thunderclap' Newman (born Andrew Newman, in 1943) and the fifteen year old Glaswegian Jimmy McCulloch.

Originally titled "Revolution", but later renamed because the Beatles released a single of that name, "Something in the Air" captured post-flower power rebellion, marrying McCulloch's sweeping acoustic and glowing electric guitars, Keen's powerful drumming and yearning falsetto, and Newman's felicitous piano solo.

The single was Number One for three weeks, holding off Elvis Presley in the process. The scale of the song's success surprised everyone, and there were no plans to promote Thunderclap Newman with live performances.

Eventually a line-up, augmented by Jim Pitman-Avory (bassist) and McCulloch's elder brother Jack (drums), played a handful of gigs. Personal records say the band played live only five times, although Keen referred to a two-month tour, playing "everywhere".

"Something in the Air" appeared on the soundtracks of the films The Magic Christian (1969), Almost Famous (2000), The Dish (2000), The Girl Next Door (2004), and The Strawberry Statement (1970); the last having helped the single reach No. 25 in the United States. The song also appeared in the deluxe edition of the Easy Rider CD. In the UK, a follow-up single, "Accidents", came out only in May 1970, and charted at No. 44 only for a week, and an album Hollywood Dream, peaked in Billboard at No. 163. "Something In the Air" played at the end of the 26 March 2007 episode of The Riches on FX. An episode of the television sitcom, My Name is Earl also featured the song.

The members of the band had little in common. Newman once commented, in a 1972 interview with New Musical Express, that he got on with Keen's music but not with him personally, it was a similar case with McCulloch. Two more singles followed before the band split."

Hey! Where's my roadie? My goo ain't *sticky enough.

death by roadie...

They weren't washing machines, they were coin-operated Maytag dryers. Whenever they stopped, a roadie would go out and put quarters in them to get them going again. At the end of every show, the band would take the concert T-shirts out of the dryers and toss them into the crowd.

Geddy Lee jokingly claimed that they were there to add a "warm, dry tone" to his bass (and they are miked up as if they're amplifiers), but I think they were there just to visually balance out Alex Lifeson's Wall-Of-Amps on the other side of the stage.

That's my favorite Floyd song-- I especially enjoyed the part with how the voices were recorded. I'd always assumed it was the band members talking, not roadies and doormen. Incredible.

Why the disbelief?

While I can't comment on the authenticity of this particular video, there is no reason to doubt it. A good roadie can sustain 50km/h on an open and flat stretch of road, and can sprint much faster for shorter distances. While there's no way that a cyclist could outrun a cop car- that's not what we see here. Instead, our hero slips through the gap between a couple of trucks that a car can't fit through. Prior to that the cop was pacing the guy, not being outrun. I actually have to give the cop a certain amount of credit for resisting the temptation to simply nudge the cyclist over- which would certainly have ended the chase right then and there, probably resulting in some nasty injuries to the cyclist.