Last week Cass McCombs released a music video for his track “Big Wheel.” Today he’s shared another video from Big Wheel and Others. The latest is a dedication to the late Karen Black, who featured on his song “Brighter!”
McCombs got Black’s widower Stephen Eckelberry to direct the video. It’s a touching tribute that features footage of Black rehearsing the song with McCombs, as well as some of Black’s filmography, all projecting over Cass while he plays.
Here’s what Eckelberry had to say about the video:
Cass McCombs emailed me in late November 2013 and asked if I would create a music video for ‘Brighter!’ – the song he recorded with Karen in December 2012 – using classic clips from her movies. It struck me as an opportunity to explore a theme that interests me – the relationship of film and memory. We watch a movie and the images from that movie become part of our memory stream.
My own memories of Karen are intertwined with memories of her in films – it gets messier for me since I directed several movies she was in – which memory is stronger; Karen during the making the film or what ended up on screen? An image came to me: Cass himself becoming a screen for the projection of images of Karen – as if his memories of her were playing themselves out over his body.
I found a clip I had shot with my iPhone when Cass was over at our house rehearsing the song with Karen, and I combined that with clips of her movies, some iconic, some more obscure, and I weaved in footage of fire, sparks, burning . . . The song does seem to deal with hell, or is it the hell of fame?”
Find the video posted below.
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