The Steve Prestwich Band-Roll with the Rhythm...: Live at The Basement (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Featurette Music Video-Best Of A Bad Situation Music Video-Water Into Wine Music Video-Someone Caught My Eye
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	82:09 (Case: 105)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ross Wood Simon Francis Bernie Cannon
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Steve Prestwich Jack Evans Kara Grainger Mark Howard Jenny Marie Lang Darren Heinrich
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$39.95	Music	Steve Prestwich

    Cold Chisel was formed in 1973 under the name of "Orange" and was renamed the year after. The band signed with WEA Records in 1977 and recorded their first album the following year. The band's heyday was in the early eighties, but after seven albums the band broke up in 1984. Their last studio album was Twentieth Century but several compilation albums have been released since then (including Teenage Love, which consisted of out-takes and off-cuts recorded over the years). There was a brief reunion in 1998 resulting in The Last Wave of Summer album and accompanying tour.

    Fellow band members Jimmy Barnes and Ian Moss of course have since launched their own solo careers. Steve Prestwich as the drummer, singer and songwriter has always been one of the quieter and less well-known members of the band.

    Born in Liverpool, England, Steve's father was also a drummer and therefore it was no surprise that Steve picked up the sticks at an early age and was performing his first gig at 11. Emigrating to South Australia in 1971, Steve was in a band called "Ice" before joining Cold Chisel. Here he is, with his very own band, singing a collection of his songs, old and new.

    The programme on this DVD - a concert entitled Roll With The Rhythm ... was recorded at The Basement night club on 5 July 2001 and released as part of the "Live at the Basement" DVD series. It was broadcast on ABC TV at 10.55PM on 20 December 2001.

    The band line up for this concert was:

• Steve Prestwich - vocals, drums
• Jack Evans - electric and acoustic guitars
• Kara Grainger - electric, acoustic, slide guitar and vocals
• Mark Howard - electric bass, double bass and vocals
• Jenny Marie Lang - acoustic, slide guitar, mandolin and vocals
• Daren Heinrich - keyboards

    Steve sings (as well as play drums on) quite a few songs from his debut solo album "Since You've Been Gone" (the only exceptions are Trouble Free, Bended Knee and So Tired), plus 6 new songs (presumably to be included in the next album he's working on) and a few Cold Chisel oldies but goodies (including When The War Is Over and Flame Trees, and two songs from The Last Wave Of Summer: Water Into Wine and Way Down).

    Cold Chisel was an interesting blend of pub rock, coupled with some soul and blues. This concert seems to be much more laid back and introspective, with ballads dominating over the occasional rock song. Some of the songs, such as Best Of A Bad Situation, even sound like a little bit of country. All in all, a good concert for the Chisel fan, but don't expect Steve to sing too many Chisel songs. Those who have followed Steve's career post Chisel and fans of his debut album will of course not be disappointed.

Video

    The concert is 81:39 minutes long and presented in a full frame (1.33:1) aspect ratio, except for the opening credits which appear to be in 1.66:1 (and in a separate DVD title from the concert proper of 0:35 minutes in duration).

    This is a very pleasing transfer, with high colour levels, very good black levels and generally containing high levels of detail, which is even more impressive given the cramped and dimly lit conditions of the venue. The performance seem to have been captured directly onto video as I noticed video glitches every now and then (though not to the level of causing annoyance).

    The video appears to be digitally enhanced, as the colour saturation seem slightly over exaggerated and the black levels seem a little bit too good. There is a slight to moderate amount of edge enhancement leading to some ringing, and the general absence of low level CCD video noise in the background may have been due to enhancement as well, as you can occasionally spot low level noise around background objects.

    I also noticed minor instances of aliasing every now and then, particularly noticeable looking at guitar strings. Finally, there are some instances of Gibb's effect ringing around background objects but surprisingly no instances of posterization.

    There are no subtitle tracks on this single layered single sided disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
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Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only one audio track on this disc: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s).

    In general, I found the audio quality to be very good, and particularly commendable given that this is locally (ie. Australian) recorded, mastered, and encoded. The sound is rather edgy and "live", but that's due to the venue (although the slight harshness introduced by the Dolby Digital encoding process probably doesn't help).

    The 5.1 audio mix appears to be a discrete mix rather than enhanced from a stereo track, although this is hard to tell at the beginning as this is a very forward focused mix. There is almost no signal going into the rear speakers apart from (very) low level ambience. However, I can clearly hear audience conversation and clapping split across all speakers which indicates that it is a "native" surround mix.

    I can hear very low level microphone "buzzing" sounds every now and then. It appears that the recording engineer has a policy of switching off any track containing microphones not being used at will, because occasionally Steve's voice in between songs is quite soft, and in the last song (Devil Of A Time) Steve accidentally knocks off the microphone whilst playing the drums and yet we don't hear any noises from that.

    Audio synchronisation appears to be pretty spot on.

    The subwoofer track has been utilised to provide a subtle, but effective low extension to the music.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There is only 1 real extra on this disc, a featurette, but it is divided into chapter breaks to allow you to index into the songs contained within the featurette (which have been included in their entirety).

Menu

    The menus are full frame and static.

Featurette - Documentary, including Best Of A Bad Situation, Water Into Wine and Someone Caught My Eye (21:28)

    This is mainly an edited interview with Steve Prestwich, together with excerpts from the concert as well as three bonus songs which have been performed at thebasement.com.au studio as part of an "on air" interview hosted by Doug Mulray. It is presented in full screen and Dolby Digital 2.0. Steve talks a little bit about Cold Chisel, growing up in Liverpool, his solo career and songwriting. I was surprised that his "Pommy accent" was still quite noticeable given that he's lived in Australia for more than thirty years.

    The documentary includes three bonus songs featuring most of the band members but recorded at thebasement.com.au studio:

• Best Of A Bad Situation
• Water Into Wine
• Someone Caught My Eye

    This title is currently only released in Region 4, although it is not region encoded.

    Yet another concert from the Live At The Basement series, this one featuring Steve Prestwich the ex-drummer from Cold Chisel. The audio and video quality is high, and the DVD comes with an extended featurette that includes extra "on air" performances of some of the songs.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall