Exceptional Creativity Finds Its Way to YouTube

Alonzo Garbanzo is having the time of his life creating whimsical and wonderful music videos for YouTube. Guess what? You can join in the fun with a click of your mouse. Remember the old "one-man-band" you'd see sometimes on a street corner? Alonzo has digitized that concept and sent it hurtling into space. Cyberspace, that is.

His masterpiece work is Steve Goodman's City of New Orleans, where Alonzo appears on the screen in eight different musical roles. You've got to see it to believe it.

Alonzo's version of Paul Simon's The Boxer is perfection itself. I almost fell of my chair laughing at the visual gag he sneaks into that video.

Alonzo Garbanzo's Drift Away reminds us of a song so perfect, it's timeless. That song is part of the fabric of the universe.

I checked in with a YouTube spokesperson to find out more about Alonzo Garbanzo's popularity. "We've never seen anything like it," the spokesperson said. "Last month, a full 1/4 of all Internet traffic was measured to be Alonzo Garbanzo music videos."

Okay, I made up the part about the YouTube spokesperson, but I did talk with an Alonzo Garbanzo fan who said, "Alonzo Garbanzo is certainly in the same league as Bob Dylan, although he's on a trajectory to far eclipse Dylan. Dylan might end up playing backup for Garbanzo sometime -- if he's lucky."

Speaking of exceptional creativity, check out this flawless a capella rendition of Jackie Wilson's classic, Higher and Higher by The Vineyard Sound, in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

And if you'd like to see the intersection of two creative geniuses, look no further than Bruce Springsteen's 1975 rendition of Bob Dylan's I Want You. Springsteen puts his unique musical signature on the song. You can't help but visualize Asbury Park, New Jersey, dancing with Hibbing, Minnesota on a hot summer night with warm beer on the hood of a car. That's like a simile dancing with a metaphor, or perhaps even vice-versa.

YouTube brings this all together. Home is where the upload is. We now have a single living room. We all live in it. Come on in. Pull up a chair. There's always room for one more.

Phil Shapiro
The blogger is a community activist and enthno-music-vagabond in the Washington DC-area. He sometimes moderates panel discussions where he plays the role of the moderator and all four panelists. (Thanks, John!) And he sometimes composes songs for his niece. His parable on noticing appears here. He can be reached at: philshapiroblogger@gmail.com

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