Like many Frank Maglio Jr. began working from home because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Maglio has Diabetes, so he is in the highly vulnerable group if he were to contract the deadly disease. Because of Maglio’s health condition, his employer enabled him to work from home during the course of this pandemic. With such a different lifestyle, while working from home, Maglio began looking for new hobbies and things to do around the house. One of the new hobbies Maglio found was playing guitar with his parrot singing along.
It all began one evening when Maglio picked up his guitar and began playing like normal, strumming his favorite songs. Maglio’s parrot, named Tico, began jamming and singing along with Maglio’s guitar playing. The parrot by no means is a perfect vocalist who hits every note in perfect pitch and lyric syllable perfectly, but rather is really more of a jammer who goes off from the song script and riffs on his own. However, at certain moments during the song performance, one can tell Tico has heard the song before and knows the material. After jamming with Tico for a few minutes, Maglio felt compelled to record the duo and place the video online. The video quickly garnered over a million views and became a viral smash hit. With one viral hit under his belt, Maglio felt Tico might be able to do it again. In his second viral video, Maglio played the song Stairway to Heaven and Tico quickly chimed in. During this second video, Tico was no longer in his cage and instead stood on a wooden bird stand with snacks attached in a bowl. Maglio shared the video to his YouTube channel with the title description: “Last night we remade Stairway to heaven. It was one year ago that we shot that 1st video and posted it to Facebook, not knowing millions of people would eventually be watching. It was purely discovered & launched Tico’s fame. Let’s do this again pls share.”
Thousands of comments were left on the video from many excited video watchers. One musician stating, “We are an instrumental band, but we’d make an exception for the amazing Tico.” Another stated, “What a lovely man – he plays beautifully but is still willing to be upstaged by his musically gifted parrot. These videos give me so much joy – and this one in particular. Lucky little bird. It’s clear daddy loves him.” While another patron said, “He’s a bit bird-brained, naturally, but you can tell he’s listened and remembers the real song. Sometimes he hits around parts of the original melody, but he’s really out there on his own stuff, just jamming.” Tico reminded one person of their own pet and said, “My budgie used to compose accompaniments to music we heard, ringing his bell at different tempos and in musical ways frankly he understood better than I would and vocalizing subtly in accompaniment. He died this spring. I miss you, Little Genius.” Overall, Maglio seems to have found a partner to help him with his new hobby found during the quarantine. Tico singing along with Frank will most likely bring hours of enjoyment for not only Maglio and Tico but also the general public who have found the videos irresistible.
