Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Ice Cream For Crow

Ice Cream For Crow
Gary Lucas' first music video appearance was in the 1982 video for "ICE CREAM FOR CROW," the title cut of the last album from CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND THE MAGIC BAND. Directed by Don Van Vliet himself (with uncredited assistance from Ken Schreiber) and with cinematography by Daniel Pearl ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"), the band is seen cavorting in the Mojave Desert with occasional interruptions by a runaway tumbleweed which gathers much disjecta membra and desert detritus (used kleenex) as the video unfolds. Gary is featured in both color and black and white sequences flailing his '63 Stratocaster and 1920's National Steel; planting flowers in the desert soil; and sporting an oversized cowboy hat which is mysteriously yanked from his head in the midst of the cactus bachannal. The clip also features several lush Beefheart paintings, prefiguring Van Vliet's decision to chuck his music career for a paint-spattered existence.

The video has the distinction of being rejected by MTV on the grounds of being "too weird," but it found a home in the permanent Film and Video collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). It was also included on a video sampler given away by England's New Musical Express in 1982.
Gary Lucas - Skin the Rabbit

Skin the Rabbit
Gary's first music video under his own name was the 1993 clip for "Skin the Rabbit," a featured cut from his 1992 GODS AND MONSTERS album. Filmed in bitter cold weather in Brooklyn, and boasting a cast of many die-hard fans including the Mekons' Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh, the clip begins with Gary being psychoanalyzed by none other than Sigmund Freud (Ernest Rosenfelder in a diabolical cameo) on the couch where he is busily perusing the latest copy of LEG SHOW magazine. Freud asks in his thickest Viennese accent, "MEESTER LUCAS! WHY ZIS OBZESSION MIT SKEEN UND RRRABBITS?!" The clip then breaks into a rococco fantasy sequence as Freud hypnotises Gary with the old swinging watch trick, and we are plunged into a pagan world of dancing sprites and dithyrambic spectators whirling around a midnight bonfire; hotblooded Latino beauties stamping their feet and flashing their eyes in the flamenco break; Gary and Freud pursuing and alternately being pursued by a fetching Rabbitess; shots of Gary playing electric and acoustic guitars joined by Jared Nickerson on bass and Jonathan Kane on drum(s); and eventually the whole thing exploding into psychedelic ecstasy as Gary's guitar bursts out beautiful streamers of unearthly sound. Not to be missed!

Directed by Ken Greenblatt for Akiva Films, the clip was actually shown several times on European MTV during the spring of 1993 much to Gary's shock and astonishment, and he still occasionally gets greeted in small towns in Germany with cries of "Hey Gary...Skin the Rabbit!"
Gary Lucas - Vampire Circus

Vampire Circus
The latest Gary Lucas video clip is for the trip-hop apocalypse "VAMPIRE CIRCUS" from the BAD BOYS OF THE ARCTIC album. Filmed on location in NYC by Dutch madman Pascal Plantinga in such locales as the 14th Street meat market, Times Square at midnight, Wall Street at rush hour, and the U.N. Plaza, Gary is seen lipsynching to the track (a denunciaton of this exploitative world) in the midst of chaos, cops, random passerbyers, and vampires and vampirellas who do their best to turn him into one of themselves. The clip boasts an appearance by post-porn modernist Veronica Vera at home in her lair, salivating over her latest victim and his trusty guitar (the everpopular black Strat).

The clip features incredibly sophisticated rapid editing with over 300 cuts alone, a secret sex-cameo on the Sony Jumbotron in Times Square, a reappearance of Gary's pals Peter Keepnews and Irene Trudel (who met on the set of the "Skin the Rabbit" video and are scheduled to marry in the spring of 1996) essaying the roles of psychotic vampires (along with Maija Wilder and Jeni Beck, Kenny Hurwitz of Kenny & Larry fame and ENEMY label president Michael Knuth), and lots more riotous fun in this, the most frenetically raucous and blasphemous of the Lucas video oeuvre (check out the sequence in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which was shot via a smuggled camera inside the holy tabernacle as Lucas and Plantinga posed as tourists). The clip has been shown in its entirety on local cable outlets in NYC and regionally (VIDEOWAVE, etc.).
Gary Lucas - Guitar Unbound
I Want To Play Your Guitar
from the documentary, "Guitar Unbound"
time: 9 sec, 25 frames, file size: 912k

This TV special was first broadcast on Holland's Dutch Arts Channel in October 1995. Chock full of historic footage (that's Gary's parents Adele and Murray smooching in the clip!), rare photos, incisive interviews and behind-the-scenes clips from his video productions as well as a large chunk of the 1920 "The Golem," the program boasts long uninterrupted sequences of the solo Lucas in action playing his heart out before a boisterous Amsterdam audience. There are also mini video treatments of "Bad Boys of the Arctic" songs like "I Want to Play Your Guitar" and "Out From Under," charmingly illustrated by impressionistic home video footage of the 1940's and 50's from the Lucas archives. An invaluable, fascinating document.
Gary Lucas - Live Performance

Live Performance
time: 19 sec, 21 frames, file size: 1,143k
(Knitting Factory 7/21/95): This clip is taken from Lucas' opening salvo at the 1995 Macintosh New York Music Festival held in July at NYC's Knitting Factory, and shows him swinging into action. Gary transmits his ethereal guitar fantasia to set the mood for the intense, rocking band set which followed.

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