AFTER YEARS of being bootlegged, an official DVD of 1985's monster, 13-hour Live Aid concert was released this fall by organizer Bob Geldof. The proceeds will go to benefit the Band Aid Trust, with the noble goal of feeding the hungry in Ethiopia. To watch the DVD is to unearth a time capsule of 1980s pop culture.

As the four-disc, ten-hour set shows, the concert was an incredible spectacle. Held at open-air stadiums on two continents--Philadelphia's JFK Stadium, and England's Wembley--the concert also utilized additional satellite hookups to Japan, Belgrade, Cologne, The Hague, and Melbourne. Organizers went so far as to fly Phil Collins across the Atlantic on the Concorde, so that he could play in both the United States and the Britain.

The concertgoers certainly got their money's worth. While there were a few clinkers, most of the nearly 70 acts gave it their all. And as the DVDs demonstrate, the groups which came off best were, for the most part, seasoned road veterans to whom playing a stadium like JFK or Wembley was just another gig, even if another billion and a half people were watching at home: Elton John, U2, and Brian Ferry all put on good shows, as did Eric Clapton. While he and his veteran band had probably played "Layla" hundreds of times before, Clapton turned in some beautiful lead lines on the song's extended coda. For other groups, Live Aid was a swansong. In many respects, it represented the culmination of Queen's career. Freddie Mercury would largely

Of course, not everybody came off so well. A failed microphone meant that most of Paul McCartney's lyrics on "Let It Be" were inaudible; he overdubbed a new lead on the song for the DVDs. But not all mistakes could be covered up: Led Zeppelin, reuniting five years after the death of drummer John Bonham, delivered a dreadful set and refused to allow it to be included in the DVD.

WHILE LIVE AID was a great day for pop music, it was meant to be more than that. It was organized by Bob Geldof, who, prior to his efforts, was best known for two things: He was the lead singer in an Irish new-wave band which had moderate chart success with the song "I Don't Like Mondays," and was the star of The Wall, the film version of Pink Floyd's best-selling album.

The seeds for Live Aid were planted in 1984 after Geldof saw a BBC documentary about famine in Ethiopia. Touched by it, Geldof decided to get involved, first by co-writing a song called "Do They Know It's Christmastime" to raise money for famine relief, (this spawned an American counterpart, "We Are The World"), and then by organizing mega-concerts.

While the recordings of "Do They Know" and "We are the World" raised several million dollars, Geldof wanted more. As he said to the global audience on the night of the concerts, "Don't go to the pub tonight; there are people dying now. So please, stay in and give me the fucking money!"