Freddie Jackson-The Jazz Channel Presents (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Featurette-Meet The Artist
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	64:58
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Waymer Johnson
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Freddie Jackson
Case	Click
RPI	$39.95	Music	Freddie Jackson

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

    Freddie Jackson was born in Harlem in 1956 and had a gospel-influenced childhood singing at the White Rock Baptist church. He has worked with bands such as LJE and Mystic Merlin, as well as serving as a backing vocalist for Melba Moore before launching a solo career with the album "Rock Me Tonight" in 1985. Having had several successful R&B singles, he went on the quiet after the album "Private Party" in 1995 but recently has made a comeback in 2000 with "Life After 30" as well as a "Live In Concert" album.

    In this concert, Freddie performs a selection of his most well-known hits, including You Are My Lady and Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake) (from Rock Me Tonight), Have You Ever Loved Somebody/ Tasty Love and Jam Tonight (from Just Like The First Time), Nice 'N' Slow and Don't Let Love Slip Away (from Don't Let Love Slip Away), and finally Love Me Down (from Do Me Again). I found it interesting that he did not perform any songs from his newer albums so this is definitely a collection of oldies but goodies.

    I am surprised that the concert was so short (64:58 minutes), given that he has a wealth of material to draw from. Given that he had time (and even bothered to) change clothes halfway through the concert makes me think he probably sung quite a few more songs but these have been edited out.

    Freddie is backed up by a quartet consisting of electric lead and bass guitars, keyboards and drums, together with three backup vocalists.

    Freddie has a stage personality and mannerisms that struck me as curiously effeminate, or perhaps I'm just being old-fashioned. In any case, he certainly has a very appreciative female following, and I can understand why as his songs are very easy to listen to.

Video

    As the concert was recorded for TV, it is presented in a full-frame (1.33:1) aspect ratio and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    As with other recent Jazz Channel Presents ... discs, the concert appears to have been recorded directly onto digital video. Therefore, the transfer quality is excellent, featuring sharp, crisp images with perfect colour saturation and deep black levels. The subtle shades of colours in Freddie's suit in the first half of the concert comes across clearly in the video transfer.

    There's no video noise at all in sight, and the transfer itself is artefact free (apart from the occasional aliasing indicating an interlaced video source).

    There are no subtitle tracks accompanying the single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three audio tracks on the disc; English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s), English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kb/s), and English dts 5.1 (1536 Kb/s). I listened mainly to the dts track, but occasionally switched across to the other two tracks.

    Surprisingly, the dts track is mastered at a level about 3 dB below the Dolby Digital 5.1 track. It is pleasant enough to listen to, but sounds a bit dull. It is a native 5.1 mix (as opposed to an artificially enhanced stereo track) as the audience claps are primarily directed towards the rear speakers. However, I also noticed some bleeding of music into the rear channels, particularly keyboard string sounds and female voices.

    The subwoofer is used to subtly enhance the low frequencies of the audio track.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 track when adjusted to have equalized volume levels to the dts track sounds ever-so-slightly brighter and "edgier" than the dts track, which is an advantage in music like this. Indeed, I think I am veering towards preferring the Dolby Digital track although in truth I probably would not be able to reliably tell the difference in a blind listening test.

    By comparison, the Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track is mixed at a much lower level but once the volume levels are adjusted did not sound too bad.

    I did not detect any audio synchronisation issues with the audio track.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The only extra on this disc is a short featurette.

Menu

    The menus are full frame and static.

Featurette - "Meet The Artist" (9:29)

    This is a short interview captured with Freddie Jackson captured on full-frame video apparently before the concert performance. The accompanying audio is Dolby Digital mono. Freddie talks about growing up in Harlem, his long time songwriting collaborators Paul Laurence Jones and Barry Eastmond, and even his upcoming cookbook.

    As far as I can tell, the Region 1 and 4 versions of this title have identical content apart from NTSC vs PAL formatting.

    The Jazz Channel Presents Freddie Jackson features an all-too-short concert performance of the urban contemporary crooner singing some of his most well-known songs from the 1980s. The video and audio transfers are excellent, but the extras are limited to a featurette.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall