Jeffrey Osborne: The Jazz Channel Presents

This review was written by me for MichaelDVD, an Australian DVD review site that is no longer online. A capture of the site is held by the Internet Archive: browse it there. It is reproduced here from my own copy of the site, as part of the record of what I have written.

The film

The Jazz Channel Presents: Jeffery Osborne is another in a series of TV specials featuring concerts by black musicians produced by BET on Jazz.

Despite what the title may suggest, this is not really a jazz concert - instead, it is heart thumpin’ funky music with groovy synth sounds, screaming electric guitars, deep rhythmic electric bass, silky sweet female backup singers and a solid drum track that brings back memories of the good ol’ late 70s and early 80s. To illustrate what I mean, let me just quote from the first song on this concert (We Party Hearty):

When we party, we party high. When we boogie, we boogie woogie.

And I am not ashamed to admit that I enjoyed every minute of it.

Jeffrey Osborne (born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1948, the youngest of 12 siblings) began his professional singing career in 1969 with a popular funk and soul group called Love Men Ltd, which eventually became LTD. Jeffrey then went on to pursue a solo career that resulted in five gold and platinum albums as well as Top 40 hits such as “Don’t You Get So Mad,” “Stay With Me Tonight” and “Love Power,” which he performed with Dionne Warwick.

In this concert, Jeff is backed by a five piece band and two backup singers. The track listing for this DVD is:

My favourite song in this concert is the beautiful romantic ballad On the Wings of Love, which starts off with Jeffrey accompanied by only the acoustic guitar, and as the song progresses the rest of the band joins in one at a time. It’s a beautifully touching performance, although I did think the ending (with Jeff doing some microphone tricks with the reverb turned up to the max) was a bit over-the-top.

Jeff has an electric stage presence and I love the way he engages with the audience and makes them a part of the show, from the chorus of “oohs” in Stay With Me Tonight to the sing-a-long session in That’s For Sure and finally getting selected members of the audience to help him sing the Woo Woo Song. The audience look like they really really enjoyed the concert. So did I. I got so wrapped up I started singing along with the rest of the audience! (Aren’t you glad you weren’t in my living room then!)

The end titles are superimposed towards the end of You Should Be Mine (The Woo Woo Song). Although I would ordinarily object to this, in this case it’s acceptable as he’s clearly wrapping up the end of the Woo Woo Song.

The video transfer

Given that this originated as a TV special, the transfer is presented in a full frame aspect ratio.

In general, the transfer seems reasonably clean, with good sharpness, detail and colour saturation. There are slight signs of chroma smearing in 20:39. Shadow detail is probably about typical for a video source.

In terms of MPEG artefacts, I can detect occasional aliasing and slight ringing, but nothing that would cause annoyance..

Surprisingly, this DVD actually comes with several subtitle tracks. I was hoping that one of the subtitle tracks would be in English and that the song lyrics would be transcribed onto the track. But alas, no such luck! The subtitle tracks here contain translations of Jeff’s stage banter into various foreign languages but do not include translations of the lyrics to the songs. Just for fun, I turned on the Italian subtitle track for a brief period. The translation was pretty comprehensive and accurate - they even translated brief interjections in the middle of songs. In the last track, they even got the audience names right (let me remember, there was Chiki, Lois, A.J., Steve, …)

This disc is labelled DVD9 indicating that it is a single sided dual layer disc (RSDL). The layer change occurs at 57:35 minutes into the concert. It did disrupt the concert, but at least it was between songs (near the transition between Chapters 9 and 10). Giv

The audio transfer

This DVD has three audio tracks: Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448Kbps, DTS 5.1 (unknown bitrate) and Dolby Digital 2.0 at 224Kbps. I listened to the DTS 5.1 soundtrack in its entirety, and in addition listened to a fair proportion (say about half an hour’s worth) of the Dolby Digital 5.1 track.

The DTS track is actually more like a 4.0 track since the centre channel was not engaged during the entire concert. The soundstage is very front-focused, with the rear surround speakers mainly carrying ambience information. The original audio source must have been in stereo and then remixed into 5.1, but the remix was done well - the “oohs” from the audience in Stay With Me Tonight came appropriately from the rear speakers as opposed to the music coming from the front.

I loved the DTS track - it sounded very “live” and made me feel like I was physically present at the concert. Every subtle detail in the mix seems to have been captured, right down to the slight FM-like “buzz” I can hear in the background in some tracks. When Jeff switches from the stage microphone to a wireless one for the audience participation section of the Woo Woo Song, I can detect a slight change in the timbre due to the different microphone characteristics.

In comparison, the Dolby Digital track also sounds excellent, but does not have the “live” feel. I felt like I was listening to a recording rather than being there. I listened briefly to the Dolby Digital 2.0 track, it is similar to the Dolby Digital track except it has a collapsed soundstage and has been mastered at a much lower level.

I did not detect any audio glitches or synchronisation issues.

The extras

Given that most music DVDs don’t come with any extras, the presence of an “interview” featurette, biographical stills, and the unusual inclusion of foreign language subtitles makes this DVD a cut above the average.

Menu

The menus are reasonably pleasing and seems to be relatively free of MPEG artefacts, unlike some DVDs I’ve seen. They are in full frame format and are static.

Biography - Jeffrey Osborne

This is a single still providing a brief biography of Jeffrey Osborne.

Discography - Jeffrey Osborne

This is a single still providing a list of Jeff’s solo albums.

Featurette - “Meet the Artist”

This is a brief (26:44 minutes) interview with Jeffrey Osborne. Jeffrey is presented in a small “window” over a background consisting of excerpts from the concert footage. Jeffrey talks about his childhood, how his father encouraged him to play the trumpet but he wanted to sing instead, his association with LTD, and comparing the music scene of his generation to the music scene today. He laments the fact that musicians today tend to go straight from oscurity to a recording contract without the experience of playing live. Given his incredible stage presence I can only but agree. There are quite lengthly periods (for example, the entire last 5 minutes) in which he doesn’t talk (and the little “window” disappears), I suspect this is a short 10-15 minutes interview that has been stretched to 25 minutes.

Region 4 versus Region 1

There appears to be no significant differences between the R1 and R4 versions of this disc.

Summary

The Jazz Channel Presents: Jeffrey Osborne is a great concert presented on a DVD with a superb video and audio transfer. The extras are nothing special, but welcomed anyway.

Ratings (out of 5)

© Chris Tham (read my biography) 27 January 2001

Rating	Score
Plot	★★★★½ 4.5 / 5
Video	★★★★½ 4.5 / 5
Audio	★★★★½ 4.5 / 5
Extras	★★½ 2.5 / 5
Overall	★★★★½ 4.5 / 5