The George Harrison-led "Concert for Bangladesh" will make its DVD debut Oct. 25 via Rhino, the same day Capitol releases a remixed, remastered CD of the project. Rhino is also creating a deluxe edition set with a reproduction of Harrison's handwritten lyrics for the then-new song "Bangla Desh," a postcard set, a sticker and a print of the original show poster.

Staged on Aug. 1, 1971, at New York's Madison Square Garden, the show raised funds via UNICEF for Bangladeshi refugees caught in the middle of the country's battle for independence from Pakistan.

It featured Harrison performing alongside Bob Dylan (making a rare public appearance in the wake of a serious motorcycle accident), Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Ravi Shankar, Billy Preston, Badfinger and Leon Russell. The event was chronicled the following year on a triple-LP set and a feature film.

Rhino's DVD restores the original 99-minute movie in 5.1 sound and tacks on a wealth of extras, including a rehearsal performance of "If Not for You" with Harrison and Dylan and a soundcheck take on "Come on in My Kitchen" with Harrison, Clapton and Russell, plus Dylan performing "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," an outtake from the theatrical release.

The DVD will also include a 45-minute documentary, "The Concert for Bangladesh Revisited 2005," which features interviews with Bob Geldof and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Here is the track list for "The Concert for Bangladesh":

"Bangla Dhun"

"Wah-Wah"

"My Sweet Lord"

"Awaiting on You All"

"That's the Way God Planned It"

"It Don't Come Easy"

"Beware of Darkness"

Band Introduction

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

"Jumpin' Jack Flash"

"Youngblood"

"Here Comes the Sun"

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

"It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry"

"Blowin' in the Wind"

"Just Like a Woman"

"Something"

"Bangla Desh"

Some year, 1971. The year of the bad rock-star beard. George Harrison had one. Leon Russell had one too, not to mention miles of split ends. Leon! What were you thinking?

It's all evident in the Concert for Bangladesh movie. But that's not what I'm here to discuss.

I first saw it when it was released in the theaters in 1972, that's how old I am. I still have the original vinyl album and the great booklet with all the pictures.

I remember one summer the movie played at the local drive-in and I went with a bunch of buddies, crowded into a lime-green Volkswagen Beetle. When Bob Dylan came on, everyone honked their horns and flashed their lights. It was a cool moment. Of course, one of my cynical friends had to complain. "Look at Dylan! He's a has-been! He's OLD!" What was he, like thirty? I guess that was old back then, wasn't it.

Looking at the film on DVD all these years later, I'm struck by just how much sprituality was in evidence at that show. Harrison was so earnest in his beliefs and it really rang true. It still makes sense to me today. He never sang about subscribing to a certain religion, but simply what you can find inside yourself. You know, The Inner Light and all that.

There was such a heartfelt camaraderie on the stage that night. Ringo Starr looked great behind the skins, alongside future Wilbury Jim Keltner. When those shimmering first chords of It Don't Come Easy come up, so do my goose-bumps. You have to put this in perspective; The Beatles had only broken up a year or so earlier, and these guys were still infallible gods at the time. Not only that, to see Bob Dylan in person was an event; he'd been in exile for several years at this point. When the spotlight hit Harrison for the first time, he was greeted with an extended standing ovation. It was as though the audience just wanted to thank him for all those years as a Beatle. Well, I guess that's what they were doing.

Honorable mention goes to Billy Preston, who delivered a stirring rendition of That's the Way God Planned It, a song that could thaw even the coldest of atheist hearts. The moment he loses control and dances all around the stage is a moment for the ages. Eric Clapton, unfortunately and shamefully, was pretty strung out at the time. It didn't even look like him, and there was certainly no fire in his playing; he just sort of stumbled about. Thank goodness he managed to yank himself out of that deadly haze before he wound up on the cover of Rolling Stone for the wrong reason.

At the Concert for Bangladesh, George Harrison pulled it off. He came out from behind the shadow of Lennon/McCartney, proving himself as an artist to be reckoned with. He also proved himself to be a great humanitarian.

1971 may have been the year of the bad rock-star beard, but it was a good one for the world.

it's about time the concert for bagladesh came out on dvd. even better is the deluxe edition, which i bought. besides the outstanding quality of the concert dvd, the additional disc, with interviews and bonus tracks is just great. (although it's a pity, isn't it a shame that bob dylan didn't do an interview). then there's the packaging, which is beautiful. the dvds in its own case, and the great booklet. the poster is great for framining and hanging on your wall. postcards are cool, and the apple sticker is ok. this is how older material should be presented, as opposed to the latest lennon "collection". skip the regular dvd edition and get the deluxe.

Well, the boxed set deluxe edition of "The Concert for Bangladesh" is a thing of beauty - the package is almost identical to the classic 3-record boxed set, with no hideous bar codes marring the cover - and the visuals, the sound, and the extras on the 2nd disc are all sublime. The sticker and the postcard remind me of being a kid in the 70s, 'cause when you bought a Wings or an Elton John album, for example, there would be lots of cool stuff inside - of course that doesn't happen now. Fun things could still be made to fit inside well-designed CD packages, but ours is a disposable culture and the the record companies are just to cheap.

Of course, George Harrison's oeuvre was/is the antithesis of "cheap" and "disposable," and this concert, following his now-stone-classic solo debut "All Thing Must Pass," was his finest hour. It's good to at long last see and hear Bob Dylan's performance of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit." But where is George's performance of "Hear Me Lord" from the afternoon show? It's nowhere to be found on either the remastered DVD or CD? His equally gospel-fueled "Awaiting On You All" sounds amazing, so it's hard to think that his performance of the stirring "Hear Me Lord" would be anything less than stellar. So why wasn't that included in either package? I'm assuming that all this was done under the supervision of Harrison, and then his family following his untimely demise. The ommission of "Hear Me Lord" is as glaring as the ommissions on "The Dark Horse Years" boxed set. Very annoying. I'm also annoyed that Dylan didn't appear in the commentaries along with Ringo, Eric, Ravi et al. Of course being a Dylan fan does mean putting up with the man's eccentric quirks (which George evidently did very well). One of the nicest bonuses is seeing and hearing Bob and George dueting on "If Not For You" at the rehearsals, looking at each other each time they sang "if not for you" - very sweet, and their deep friendship and mutual admiration is obvious. Sometimes in our star-struck culture, we need to be reminded that icons are human beings who need refuge from their fame and maybe can seek solace in each other. That said, where is "Hear Me Lord?"

I've not bought the remastered CD. Based on the reviews that I've read here, I'm not sure if I will. Who cares if the gospel voices sounds "dated"; hence the "need" for them to be muted? That sounds suspiciously racist and culturally biased to me. For those of us who have the original LPs and the CDs, we grew up with the asides and ovations that seem now to be deleted. I have no problem with the new cover featuring George - this has always been the iconic Harrisonian image, both Christ-like yet Rasputin-esque in visage - so long as the original cover and art is inside. Starvation is not a pleasant thing to look at, not then and not now, but designer Tom Wilkes made the poor Bengali child sympathetic and universal. I realize the Harrison-the-dead-icon (who, like Lennon, the critics routinely shat upon while they were still living only to cry sanctimonious tears upon their deaths) will sell more copies than a starving Bengali child (Madison Avenue probably figured the people who would buy the "deluxe edition" were the older, hard-core fans who associate the 60s and 70s with now-dead idealism), but let's not forget the WHY of why George organized this pioneering event in the first place.

The Botton Line : Dylan himself, in his encomium to Harrison, called his friend "the sun, the flowers, and the moon." If you love the music of either of these men or both (as I do), you owe to your inner fan to have this DVD in your collection.

The Concert for Bangladesh was shot on 16mm film with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (4:3). When it came time to release it theatrically, it was matted (which is kind of the opposite of pan-and-scan) and blown up to 70mm. Reportedly, the theatrical experience was very poor. Pixels were said to be the size of ping pong balls on the screen. That being said, this DVD lavishly presents the concert in the aspect ratio in which it was filmed, nothing is compromised. It was not an uncommon practice in the 60's and 70's for film-makers to film in 1.33:1 and then crop out the edges of the composition to make it "widescreen-shaped." The benefit in doing this is that it allowed the director to construct 2 shots, 1 for the theatre (widescreen) and 1 for the TV (full-screen), without losing vital information in either version. Stanley Kubrick filmed many of his later films using this technique. In the case of Bangladesh, as most of the shots are perfectly framed for 1.33:1, it's doubtful that the widescreen release was something that was planned from the beginning.