ROCKAPELLA "IN CONCERT"

Is it a CD? Or is it a VHS/DVD experience? Why, it's both! Eschewing a studio release in favor of saturating themselves all across PBS, the glorified cable access network which handed them mid-level celebrity in the early 90s, the gentlemen of Rockapella offer us  "In Concert."

The CD, released on March 6th, has remained in Amazon's Top 100 since before its release, peaking at #5. The disc contains such long-awaited fare as "Use Me" and "Keep On Smilin'".

To be totally honest from the outset, I'm not a fan of live albums in general...no matter how mesmerizing the particular artist involved may be in concert. They're often bloated and self-indulgent, and live cuts don't lend themselves well to mix CDs, my personal music fetish. Live CDs are also  often bogged down by crowd noise...or even worse, crowd participation in the songs. Ugh. Garth Brooks is a notable offender in that right. Do I really need to know firsthand that 30,000 people all know the words to "Friends in Low Places"? Not really. That having been said, I didn't really have high expectations when I received a copy of "In Concert" a couple of weeks before its release. And while I still would have preferred a studio album, I have to say that the CD  avoids most of the typical pitfalls of the live CD genre -- crowd noise is kept at a bare minimum and the guys showcase their nearly impeccable ability to replicate their studio sound live. With the most obvious  exception being dear Kevin's goof on "Tempted." All in all, it's a nice filler between studio CDs. Hey, I'm always game for that all-covers CD, the next time they're short on original material....

A whole 70 minutes of onstage mastery are captured on the VHS and DVD, prompting many viewers to discover for the first time exactly how sexy spitting into a microphone really looks when lit with the correct gels. The first thing that struck me about the overall presentation was the fact that it's very hard to capture lightning in a bottle. Some things just don't translate well to canned media, and Rockapella's live show seems to be one of them. The almost eerie absence of banter on the album (which pretty much totally disqualifies any possible "It's just like being there" feeling) is duplicated on the video, for the most part. Gone are Kevin's rambling but oddly endearing tales from the road, Bear's

PG-13 introduction to "Long Cool Woman" has been sanitized for a family viewing audience. Even the classic Girly Man monolgue hit the cutting room floor. And with that much of the idosyncratic charm of Rockapella's concerts is sadly lost. It's hard to escape the icky canned flavor of the whole thing, even despite some brilliant singing and entertaining staging. By the time "Pretty Woman" rolls around, I was pretty much ready to throw up my hands and chalk it all up to some kind of alternate reality. It's not that I have an overall distaste for marketing -- it certainly has its place, and I suppose in this case, everything was packaged in such a way as to appeal to the largest audience possible. But I think I'll just take my live shows they way there were meant to be....live.