The Kingston Trio - Round About the Mountain (1959)

This is one of my many favorites from the Trio's very best album, Here We Go Again! (1959). The timing was perfect for my first listen at age 6: the Christmas season, 1959, when we were stranded at my grandparents' house during a snowstorm. My uncle had just bought this album and brought it over to play on my grandfather's stereo. My cousins and I listened to it several times during the night before going off to bed. By that time, I knew every lyric by heart, and my cousin and I sang some of the songs, including this one which really captured my imagination.

I tried to bridge the gulf between the mundane and the mystical here as best as I could. The initial images of Jesus we see are the friendly familiar ones, but I wanted to go deeper into the Jesus of the Transfiguration (which we get a glimpse of later). Some hold this occurred on Mount Tabor, but I believe those who insist it occurred on Mount Hebron ... and it is Mount Hebron we see in this video.

I would have liked to have made this video ten years or more ago with film, performance, and image, but there was just no way that could have been possible. This video has finally been made possible with AI, and I hope it demonstrates that AI can be harnessed for good. Remember, AI is only a highly sophisticated tool: it is us a million times faster. But it is still US at work, and it is with us that responsibility must come to bear.