Amnesty Concert a Cause for Hope--and Concern

Amnesty International’s two ambitious concert tours in the ‘80s were high-profile landmarks in pop music’s embrace of social causes. A decade-plus later, the idealistic organization finds it harder to create a music-activism synergy that matters: It wasn’t even able to strike a deal for live broadcast of its December concert in Paris, marking the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

The three-hour edited version of the show, “The Paris Concert for Amnesty International: The Struggle Continues . . . “ and available today on pay-per-view, illustrates the difficulty of giving an event a memorable identity in an age of proliferating concerts-for-a-cause. All the pieces are in place here, including key veterans of the Amnesty tours, yet it all tends to look familiar and routine.

The bill mixes marquee names (Bruce Springsteen, Alanis Morissette, Page & Plant, Shania Twain), newer acts (Asian Dub Foundation, Radiohead), Third World representatives (Kassav’, Youssou N’Dour) and exemplars of the artist-activist (Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman). There are some strong performances, the direction is clear and dynamic, and there’s plenty of information offered on the declaration, a sort of universal bill of rights.

But sparks rarely fly. One problem is the decision to give all the acts fairly equal time. Instead of capitalizing on the presence of a Springsteen, who embodies everything the concert was about, the schedule confines him to a brief, three-song turn.

With the Beastie Boys’ annual Tibetan Freedom Concerts pulling the youth vote and gaining critical mass these days, the Amnesty event takes on a sort of grandfatherly air. That’s less of a problem than the march of history--events in Europe this week underscore both the urgency and the impotence of the document being celebrated.

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“The Paris Concert for Amnesty International: The Struggle Continues . . . “ airs at 9 p.m. and midnight on Viewer’s Choice pay-per-view, with repeats on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and April 18. Price is $20.95, with more than half the fee going to Amnesty.