High Head Blues, the lead single off the third Black Crowes album Amorica, is a hot, Southern, grooving jam. For the video, Gondry tells a story of an alien takeover down south. It all starts at night in lead singer Chris Robinson's house.
A small spaceship lands in Robinson's kitchen. From it emerges a bunch of tiny people from some alien planet. They take over the stove, make it their factory, and chain up Robinson while he sleeps. As they wheel him into the stove, he wakes up, helpless.
Once inside the workshop, they begin work on Robinson, with bunches of tiny alien-people watching from several levels of walkway. After the surgery, Robinson has a metal walkway down his mouth, which leads to a hole to his brain. Several alien-people climb into his brain, in which houses a human cockpit. Special sunglasses are also molded onto his face, providing the windows to the cockpit. (All of this requiring loads of different effects during and post-production.)
The aliens test-drive their human, taking him on several different misadventures: one involving a woman, another about a car which slams into Robinson's knee - he doesn't budge, but requires some on-site repair.
After the collision, they walk Robinson into a convenience store. But things go awry as Robinson's co-pilots start fighting with each other. This fight is manifested also in Robinson's body as he has what looks like an epileptic fit. The confused-looking folks in the store drag Robinson outside. There, one of the alien-people is ejected from Robinson's mouth, and is successively smooshed by Robinson's falling fist. All the while, this is witnessed by one of the locals.
But it seems Chris Robinson's own will is taking control. The surviving alien-person inside the cockpit morphs into Robinson himself. Now in control, Robinson returns home to find 1: several more captured people, 2: another man incubating in the stove, 3: a tiny village of alien people on the floor, and 4: the spaceship docking on the stove. It seems this is the way the world ends. Though Robinson has the chance to end this alien takeover. At least this is the way the video ends.
Much of the video's feel and special effects are similar to those in Gondry's Snowbound video. Fantastic models and sets, film projections, and other post effects describe the aliens' creations: the stove/factory, the cockpit inside Robinson's brain, the tiny alien village, etc. Still, the video is rough around the edges, which matches the song's rugged, guitar-driven soul.
The video was included on the 1998 enhanced CD rerelease of Amorica.
According to Michel's then-assistant François Nemetä, the video was shot in 3 days, with enough material to create a short, 15-minute movie "movie," but didn't have enough material in the editing room to complete it.