Beck just turned 43 yesterday, and for a guy who is still young, he's had a pretty varied career. From his early low-fi stuff, to being a 90s superstar, to sad acoustic albums, Beck has had a lot of career "eras" in a relatively short amount of time.

My favorite Beck, however, is the Beck from around the time of the 1999 album Midnite Vultures. It's Beck at his funniest with tracks like "Debra", and it's an extremely fun and varied album. It also produced some fantastic music videos. We'll get to the classic Beck videos another time, but today we're watching a video that embodies this period in Beck's career, 1999's "Sexx Laws", directed by Beck himself.

This video doesn't lend itself to description, but we'll give it a try. First there is the intro with the Vision Warrior Men's Circle, headed by Jack Black. In 1999, Jack Black was a well-known guy, but was more famous for supporting parts and television than any leading film roles. This is pre High Fidelity (2000) and School of Rock (2003), so he's much more recognizable in retrospect, but he definitely brings all of the Jack Black patented style to the intro and outro of this video (more on the outro later). Also, in the group is author/journalist Neil Strauss.

The Vision Warrior Men's Circle are having a good time and making progress when they are interrupted football players and the chaos that will be the main feature of the rest of the video. In just the first minute or so alone we see a fridge humping the stove, a can of SMEAT and Mr. Cheese enjoy some lovemaking, and Beck's banjo player is a mannequin with a zebra head - and it just goes on like that.

It would take a long time to list all the things going on in this video, but suffice it to say that after a bizaree Power Rangers style scene and other misc items, we get a closing speech by Jack Black that is an homage to a film that Beck could not have expected more than a few people to even be aware of - 1969's Mr. Freedom. Mr. Freedom, as Wikipedia describes it, is a low budget "anti-imperialist satirical farce", just the type of reference that MTV viewers in 1999 would definitely not get. Here's the scene that the video is referencing:

There is, of course, a longer version of the video with an extended Vision Warrior Men's Circle at the begining. We could only find it on Dailymotion:

There is also, of course, a version called "Saxx Laws" that has an alternate Vision Warrior Men's Circle intro and an extended cut of the first football scene set to the jazz music. This was actually just made by the band for fun, but was eventually released. Beck's description:

The track beautifully evokes the abandon of smooth. Its a little long, but if you stay with it, it will reward you with a smooth outlook for the rest of the day.

Beck will probably be remembered for his serious and weird sides more than anything, but it's videos like this that remind us that Beck can bring the humor, too.

Adam Fairholm is the co-founder and lead developer of IMVDb. You can find him on twitter at @adamfairholm.