On Stage at World Café Live (Decca Vision)

On Stage at World Café Live

2007, Not Rated

As PBS begins broadcasting the 13-episode On Stage at World Café Live series, Decca Vision is releasing in-concert episodes on DVD.

So far, 11 are available -- David Poe, Living Colour, Rhett Miller, The Knack, Shemekia Copeland, Steve Forbert, Duncan Sheik, Rita Coolidge, Marshall Crenshaw, Jennifer Glass and Danielia Cotton and Naked Eyes. As the series was shot in HD format at Philadelphia's World Café and originally shown on the HDNet channel, the photography is phenomenally good and three-dimensionally vivid. You can see the sweat on Marshall Crenshaw's forehead -- and the gray hairs peeking out of his trademark pageboy cap -- as he sings "Someday, Someway," for instance. Decca Vision provided me with a best-of sample disc and on it some performances were dreary (Naked Eyes, the generic Rock of Cotton), some inspired (The Knack's "My Sharona" still packs Power Pop punch) and most of the others acceptably appealing. (Steven Rosen) Grade: B