The performance video

The performance video is a promotional tool in much the same way as a promo clip using excerpts from a film, but rather than promoting a film, the performance video promotes a band or artist, a single and/or an album and/or a tour. Performance videos are often filmed extracts of a band's tour and may be used to promote a longform video release of that tour. Depeche Mode released two versions of their "Condemnation" single in 1993, "The Paris Mix" and a live version, for which the accompanying promo clip featured live footage of their recent Devotional tour, which was also released on longform video. Similarly, promo clip for Blur's single, "End Of a Century" (1995), was taken from a longform video of their recent British tour.

Tagg defines the performance video as a "rockumentary" (p.7), and offers an insight into the realities of a particular band or artist, free of any constructed images presented in promo clips and press shots. Performance videos may include footage filmed at live events (such as Depeche Mode and Blur's promo clips), studio footage featuring the band recording the single (Bon Jovi's "Born To Be My Baby" in 1988 was interesting in that the video's soundtrack was a special mix, highlighting the instrument that was being seen recorded at any one time during the clip) or the accompanying album (Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters", 1991). The performance video may also be a compilation of photographs, home video footage, TV appearance etc. such as the clip for Take That's "Never Forget" (1995) or Queen's "The Show Must Go On" (1991), or may be a combination of any number of the techniques listed above, as was the case with Madonna's documentary film "Truth or Dare In Bed With Madonna" (1990).

Despite its use by a variety of bands of different genres, the performance video has become synonymous with the Heavy Metal genre, especially during the 1980s when the New Romantics (probably the antithesis of Heavy Metal anyway) were encouraging more sophisticated use of visual narrative, while video sampling brought about the development of "scratch" video techniques and, eventually, computer animation. The performance video has attempted to stand the test of time, and (especially, it seems, in the case of Heavy Metal) seems to regard itself as a visualisation of "real" musicians playing "real" instruments, hence the shots of Bon Jovi playing acoustic guitars and singing in a room during the promo clip for "Lie To Me" (1995), which also features a narrative about a young homeless boy surviving on the streets; Aerosmith performing on-stage in a bar during a bar brawl for the "What It Takes" promo clip (1989), Slash playing a guitar solo atop a cliff in Guns"n"Roses" "November Rain"(1992), and of course, any promo ever made by AC/DC whose unchanging visual (and musical) image has become the epitome of Heavy Metal's timeless representation of rock music as pure macho energy and/or hidden sensitivity (the myriad of close ups of pained expressions and sincerity in countless rock ballads).

The history of the performance video is probably a longer one than that of the video that features a filmic visual narrative. Jazz shorts were the first ever performance videos, early this Century, films which featured jazz and big band musicians playing live and which led to rock shorts, Elvis Presley movies in the 1950s, which led to The Beatles" movies in the 1960s, films such as Alan Parker/Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (1979), countless jazz and rock biography films, and, of course, the live music programmes such as Top Of The Pops, Ready, Steady, Go! MTV Unplugged, Old Grey Whistle Test etc.

What is important to remember about performance videos, from jazz shorts to AC/DC is that music is the most important element, the visuals are purely secondary and are often used only to promote a band's "pretty boy/girl" image, such as most promo clips made by Boyzone, Take That, Erasure, En Vogue, Eternal, Kylie Minogue (among countless others).

A performance video may also be striking in its simplicity and lack of visual effects, as with Jamiroquai's "Half the Man" (1994), which is filmed in monochrome and consists of a single, uncut shot of singer Jay Kay's face, lip-synching the song and nothing more. Lip-synching is synonymous with the performance video - the two are inseparable, except in extreme cases where any deviation from this idea is interesting. One example is the video for The Pixies" "Here Comes Your Man" (1989), which is a performance video filmed using unusual camera angles and visual effects, but rather than lip-synching the lyrics, the three main singers (one male lead, a female lead and a male backing singer) merely open their mouths to indicate who is singing at any one time.