Front Row Seat: Sing-Along with Barbara

In this very informal, low-budget effort, Barbara Jacobs plays piano and leads a class of seniors in a sing-along featuring 20 popular songs from the early 1900s, including "Give My Regards to Broadway," "For Me and My Gal," "Baby Face," and "Over There." The camerawork is relatively amateur, the edits occasionally abrupt, and the singing--well, let's just say that it's reasonably spirited (in several different keys). Part of the problem here is the format--I have to believe that the real benefit of bringing together a group of rest home residents to sing has less to do with music appreciation than with social interaction, and social interaction is a conspicuously absent feature of a videotaped program. Yes, I suppose the activity director at a convalescent center could ask everyone to gather round the monitor, but in that case, the program should have left out the trivia tidbits and bantering between tunes (who wants to hear, each viewing, the rather dubious claim that listening to music raises human growth hormone levels?). A reproducible lyrics booklet is included with the tape. Not a necessary purchase. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)