A series of four historic human rights music concerts from the 1980s and 1990s is being released in a new Amnesty International DVD and CD collection on 28 October.
Apart their initial broadcast screenings, three of the four concerts has never been made available on disc until now.
The six-disc DVD box-set and accompanying four-disc CD set - all going under the title ¡RELEASED! - features dozens of the world’s leading musicians performing in concert. Artists include U2, The Police, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Radiohead, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Youssou N’Dour, Tracy Chapman, and Alanis Morissette.
The box-set’s release coincides with the 25th anniversary of the most high-profile of all the concerts - the Human Rights Now! world tour in 1988. This six-week, five-continent, 20-concert tour - which launched with a concert at Wembley Stadium - was headlined by Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N’Dour, and was attended by over one million people and seen and heard by many millions more on television and radio. The tour led to a tripling of Amnesty’s worldwide membership.
Also featured are new in-depth interviews with Bruce Springsteen and Sting about their human rights work with Amnesty. Other unique material includes Peter Gabriel’s home movies of the 1986 Amnesty tour featuring backstage moments.
The Human Rights Concerts series comprises four films. The first consists of more than five hours drawn from the all-day final concert of A Conspiracy of Hope - Amnesty’s 25th anniversary concert tour of the USA in June 1986. The second film is of the Human Rights Now! world tour in September and October 1988. The third film is An Embrace of Hope - the October 1990 concert in Chile celebrating that nation’s liberation after 17 years of dictatorship. The fourth and final film is The Struggle Continues… - the concert staged in Paris in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The six-disc DVD set contains 120 songs (over 12 hours of music), as well as 32 additional segments featuring background and additional music performances, altogether comprising nearly five hours of supplementary features. The full running time of the box-set is almost 17 hours.
The box-set is distributed by Eagle-Rock Entertainment.
