I'm reminded of Level 42 back in the 80s when they did Top Of The Pops. Lip-syncing was expected, and the band hated that, and did all they could to make sure the crowd KNEW they were doing so. I'm reminded of one performance where Mark King 'forgot' to play his bass, so you could hear bass but he wasn't playing it.
Here it is: Invalid Link Removed
There's also a couple of others where he's either wafting his hand over the bass in lieu of actually playing it, or even one where he'd forgotten the bass completely and was simply singing.
Yeah, he HATED miming with a passion.
Also in the eighties there were a lot of "Live" versions of songs used as Music videos but the details showing a rather different thing.
Let's be honest when a band does a music video which shows them performing a song you'd expect to see everything that you would get to see at a real live performance, the enthusiam of the crowd, the musicians themselves rocking out the all around excitement.
So here are some Performance Music Video's where the details are off, or where the crowd simply doesn't get into it or the opposite: get too much into it, or where it's blatantly obvious that the band themselves are not into it.
To start it off, I'll bring up the topic of the Crowd being too much into it. None more obvious than in the music Video for "Sing our own song" by UB40
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For this music video the Birningham boys went all out, they hired a club, got it filled to the brim, got the vibe right and recorded the music video. Problem was, that the audience was getting so loud that they drowned out the playback of the music. That's one thing you DON'T want to see in a performance video, the fact that the audience is louder than the band that's "playing live" because in real life, it's the other way round.
Then there's the detail thing. Again from the eighties, here's Wham with "I'm your man"
Wham - I'm Your man - YouTube
Like UB40 the guys from Wham went all out, they hired a club (The famous Marquee no less), set up their complete live backline, had their live backing band going and the audience happily went along with it. BUT there's one detail wrong: The guitars are all plugged in, the percussionist and the drummer have their instruments miked, the amps have their lights on signalling that they are in use but then there's the lead singer who's singing his heart out without a microphone in his hands.
By far the worst performance videos came from Hairmetal acts. Unskinny bop by Poison is a good example of how performance videos and excess don't always mix too well
Okay in this video we get to see the guys' stage show, the full monty, the outlandish hairdo's (hairdon't?) the pyro, the works. BUT, apparently they are content to playing empty venues since there's no audience and CC. DeVille seems to switch guitars every second. That doesn't exactly give off a "that must have been a cool performance, I wish I had been there" feeling...
