When Beck released Midnite Vultures in 1999, he “wanted it to sound like Captain Beefheart produced by Puff Daddy — that was my grand concept,” according to an interview he did with me years later for Mojo magazine. “That album had lots of goofiness, with me singing in cartoonish voices…but people just didn’t get it.”

Well, I got it. As much as I appreciated the total 180 he did for his following album, the gut-wrenching, gorgeously sad Sea Change (one of the best breakup long-players of all time) and its new companion piece, Morning Phase, I always, always thought Midnite Vultures was completely underrated and undeserving of its bad rap.

I mean, it had song titles like “Nicotine & Gravy,” “Mixed Bizness,” “Hollywood Freaks,” and “Sexx Laws.” The latter song’s video even starred Jack Black and Jellyfish/Imperial Drag/Moog Cookbook synth wizard Roger Joseph Manning Jr. in a glam-rock superhero cape. What was there not to like?

I was reminded of Midnite Vultures‘ bawdy brilliance this past weekend at the Coachella festival, when Beck surprisingly played an awesome extendo-mix of “Debra,” that album’s freaky-deaky novelty slow-jam that he had disavowed in recent years.

Readopting his Prince-ly Midnite Vultures persona, he belted the geekiest musical seduction attempt ever, the song that probably inspired countless budget dream dates at Silver Lake’s Zankou Chicken. There were those old falsetto promises of cruises in a Hyundai lovemobile, of fresh packs of gum, of Glendale Galleria parking-lot romance, of group sex with a JC Penney employee’s prettier sister…and it was amazing.

So while every rock critic in America is currently salivating over Serious Beck’s Morning Phase (and rightfully so), I think it’s time to revisit Wacky Beck’s Midnite phase. Step inside his Hyundai and take a wild ride back to 1999 now: