Jonathan Takiff: It's showtime, with 'Rent,' 'Allegro,' a new Sheik

Some genuine and would-be show stoppers lead the CD and DVD release pack this week. Also jumping out are hot country and jamtastic concert prospects.

APT TIMING? At the tail end of "Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway" (A), out today on Sony Pictures Home Entertainment DVD and Blu-Ray, a poster locks on the screen. It urges viewers of this landmark musical to catch the touring production when it comes their way with original stars Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp.

As it turns out, the disc is debuting just as that stage version lands tonight at the Academy of Music for a week's run.

So here's the quandary. For essentially the same $25 cost of a nosebleed seat in the Academy, you and yours could enjoy a most excellent, big-screen telly perspective on Jonathan Larson's "La Boheme"-inspired, joyously pop-rockin' tale of New York bohemians. You won't miss a word or beat on the video version, thanks to razor-sharp sound mixed by Giles Martin, son of "Fifth Beatle" Sir George Martin.

And the video captures the momentous, last-ever Broadway performance with a cast populated by new faces and returnees, as well as a hootin', hollering audience that includes former cast members (like "Law and Order" star Jesse Martin) and the proud parents of auteur Larson, who died just as the show was opening 14 years ago.

Plus, you get a widescreen, high-def (Blu-Ray) backstage look at the unwinding of a show so cool and so important that many predicted it would never close.

A BELATED COMEBACK: Also out today is the first-ever complete recording of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1947 musical "Allegro," (Masterworks Broadway, B-) the far less successful follow-up to their enormous Broadway hits "Oklahoma" and "Carousel" and film musical "State Fair."

Then and now, this birth-to-death saga of a country doctor with a grand agenda seems experimental. Song fragments weave in and out, and major numbers are given to minor characters or an observant chorus. There are a lot of instrumental interludes for Agnes de Mille's ballets.

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization (which has also nurtured the very successful, recent return of "South Pacific" to Broadway) funded this project and stocked it with a strong cast, including Audra McDonald, Marni Nixon and Liz Callaway, plus a 50-piece orchestra.

But much of this double CD curio is a yawner, especially the early scenes.

MORE SHOW STOPPERS: Singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik first struck it rich with his hit tune "Barely Breathing," then with his rock musical about raging teenage hormones, "Spring Awakening" (returning to the Academy of Music come spring).

Now, Sheik hopes to be hit by lightning again with "Whisper House" (RCA, B), a dark musical about the spirits haunting a seaside lighthouse, which he's introducing as an album of the same name. The mostly melancholy score is sometimes evocative of the chamber pop of Damien Rice, with Sheik's find Holly Brook fleshing out those Lisa Hannigan-like harmonies. Subtle, classy horn arrangements underscore the theatrical potential.

I appreciated the music as an atmospheric Duncan Sheik experience. But I'm thinking the stage rendering needs more tunes with a kick.

The theme of making it in the music biz colors both PT Walkley's "Mr. Macy Wakes Alone" (Frisbie, B+) and the soundtrack to "Spectacular!" (Columbia, C-), a made-for-TV musical debuting Feb. 16 on Nickelodeon.

Walkley's likeable concept disc oft suggests the storytelling and music-hall flair of a classic Kinks album. It features support from Larry Campbell, Sean Lennon, Jesse Harris and string arranger David Campbell. Hear Walkley perform the work live in stripped fashion tomorrow night at Brittingham's, in Lafayette Hill.

"Spectacular!" boasts a cast of young unknowns and a bunch of those aspirational, let's go crazy ditties typical of today's made-for-tweener TV song-'n'-dance movies. To my ear, it all blends together, but if you're age appropriate, it could ring some bells.

COUNTRY COMFORTS: Is there a country-rock lyrical cliché - flirty girls, pickup trucks, rodeos, drinking and otherwise carousing - that handsome hunk Dierks Bentley doesn't touch on in "Feel That Fire" (Capitol, B)? Nah, but he hits all the rusty nails with conviction.

Also out and about again is Texas tornado Pat Green with "What I'm For" (RCA, B+). This roots rocker has enough hooks to grab a pop audience and the smarts to court his traditionalist base.For a country session with really sharp teeth and legs, seek out Thom Schuyler, "Prayer of a Desperate Man." (www.thomschuyler.com, A). He's a legend at Nashville's singer/songwriter haunt, the Bluebird Cafe. And Schuyler's every turn of the page feels honest, thoughtful and often amusing.If you treasure the Irish school of country/folk music, veteran singer Tommy Sands' new, generation-gapping collaboration with fresh voices Moya & Fionan, "Let The Circle Be Wide" (Appleseed, A-), is highly recommended.

NASTY NOODLING: Jam-band fans should get a major buzz from the DVD "Rhythm Devils Concert Experience" (Star City Recording, A-), a fresher recreation of the Grateful Dead experience than the reincarnated version of that band is likely to show on tour this year.

The Rhythm Devils are named for and star the Dead percussion section, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, working alongside five-string bassist Mike Gordon (Phish); the true heir of Garcia-toned guitar, Steve Kimock; talking drummer Sikiru Adepoju and full-throated vocalist Jen Durkin.

They're working over a polyrhyhmic, groove-centric set of "spirit" music endowed with kozmic, thumb-sucking lyrics by Robert Hunter. Nuff said? The video enhances the experience with mind-warped light-show visuals, too.

The project was put together by Bethlehem's StarCity Studios, with video production by Ber-

wyn's Lunchbox Communications and Philly's Keystone Pictures, and packaging by Allentown-based North Star design company. *