Go, iTunes for showing the The Concert for Bangladesh free this past weekend to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the concert held on August 1, 1971 at Madison Square Garden in New York. I’ve had the triple album on vinyl for years but had never seen the movie.
Highlights include George Harrison having to explain up front what a sitar is, and for the audience to sit quietly and behave during the Indian music part led by Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Alla Rakha. Just shows how culturally far the US has come musically since 1971. Today instruments like the sitar and the sarod are commonplace in American rock and folk music.
Then there are the ubiquitous Coke cans (I’m guessing Coke donated refreshments backstage or footed part of the bill for the MSG rental). It’s hard to believe the product placement is accidental. Billy Preston’s seen with one just before hopping up from his keyboard to go into a dance frenzy (must have been the caffeine), then Leon Russell’s seen with one at his keyboard just before belting Jumpin’ Jack Flash. There are just these Coke cans sitting around on the stage everywhere that get nicely framed by the cameras when they go in for closeups of the artists.
Also amazing is how many of them are smoking (tobacco) cigarettes. Today they’d probably have to hide that from the cameras to keep the film from getting an NC-17.
Eric Clapton is humble as usual.
For the most part the musical performances aren’t stellar (the simplest and most polished-sounding was George and Eric’s duet on Here Comes the Sun) but that wasn’t the point. The concert was quickly thrown together and they all did it for free to raise money to aid the grim humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh brought about by their war to break away from Pakistan (who can blame them?) and by the world’s largest tropical cyclone hitting them at the worst possible time. Even without the cyclone, the Pakistani army killed an estimated 3 million, systematically raped thousands of women, and 10 million refugees fled into neighboring India. The concert was intended to call attention to their plight and offer some relief for their horrific suffering.
If you download the concert (the album, not the movie) from iTunes they’ll make a donation to the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF. Or just go to concertforbangladesh.com and donate any amount there. For the month of August all funds raised will go toward famine relief in the Horn of Africa. That’s the famine in Somalia you’ve been seeing on the TV news every night for days. Why not chip in a little and help them out? It’s what George and Ravi and Eric and Billy and Leon and Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan and Badfinger would want you to do.
Last night I stumbled upon this blast from the past, a Lady in a Box short promo video I cut together for in-house use as a preshow warmup before the premiere screening of