RECORD CHAIN, AMNESTY GROUP UNITE

At the Tower Records store on Sunset Boulevard, the video monitors are always on. They show videos, concert footage and other rock ‘n’ roll odds and ends--all designed to entertain the customers and, not incidentally, to encourage them to buy records and tapes.

Starting today, the West Hollywood store and most of the 75 other music and video stores in the Tower chain will also show another kind of video. These clips--featuring performers like Run-D.M.C., Jackson Browne and Whoopi Goldberg--are designed to convince customers to fill out post cards aimed at freeing political prisoners.

The videos are part of a three-week project that unites the retail chain with Amnesty International, the human-rights organization that has long enjoyed the support of musicians and performing artists, most notably on last summer’s “Conspiracy of Hope” tour.

According to Amnesty’s western regional director, David Hinkley, that tour raised more than $2 million and helped recruit 35,000 new Amnesty members. It was the main reason, he said, that Amnesty has begun “to attract a large audience and, in particular, a large youth audience.”

But on that tour, fans could support Amnesty simply by buying tickets to see a star concert lineup that included U2, Sting and Peter Gabriel. The Tower project is a newer and perhaps chancier concept that asks shoppers to notice the videos or the large in-store displays and stop long enough to fill out post cards asking for the release of one of a group of specially chosen political prisoners.

Will that be enough to pressure the governments of, say, Chile or Syria into releasing prisoners? “We’ll have to see,” said rock singer Little Steven Van Zandt, who is also featured in the video. “It might work: The display’s pretty big, the video monitors will be going and people kinda know the name Amnesty International now. If it doesn’t work, they can try something else.”

(The effectiveness of the rock-Amnesty link was underscored last week when the organization announced that a post-card campaign launched by rock band Simple Minds when it played in San Diego last year has led to the release of Sri Lankan political prisoner P. Udayarahan.)

But in the world of rock ‘n’ roll benefits, the Tower Records project is itself something new. That’s part of the reason it’s being tried, said Ty Braswell, Jackson Browne’s co-manager and one of the organizers of the project. “We do lots of political projects,” said Braswell, “and the feeling was that there’s gotta be more ideas than just doing another benefit concert. Because the public, and certainly the press, have gotten jaded when it comes to concerts.”

So when Browne played Sacramento, Tower’s home base, last year, retail consultant Babs Stock suggested he meet with Tower president Russ Solomon. The two hit it off; Stock and Braswell came up with the idea for an in-store appeal, and Amnesty International head Jack Healey readily agreed to what may grow into something bigger.

“We wanted to test the idea before we go full-scale with it,” Stock said. “Other stores are interested, too, but Tower has a manageable number of stores, and those stores have the largest foot traffic in the United States. If we can just get 5% of those people, we’ll be in great shape.”

The appeal will be made with the help of some of the videos shown on the “Conspiracy of Hope” tour and MTV broadcast, plus new clips filmed on a cage-like set and featuring Browne, Van Zandt, Run-D.M.C., Goldberg, actress Daryl Hannah, Lone Justice, Colin Hay and Hiroshima.

But there’s a significant question. Since Tower is in the business of selling records, how often will the stores turn off their regular video fare in favor of the Amnesty ads?

“We can’t say for sure, because that will be up to the individual managers,” said Kim Nelson, the project coordinator for Tower. “But there should be something about the project shown once every hour or once every two hours.”

Hinkley said that Amnesty International doesn’t have a specific goal for this project, but Browne and Van Zandt are clear about what they hope to achieve: Both look beyond Amnesty’s non-partisan stance and say they hope the project will help Americans become more aware of what they feel are their own country’s transgressions.

Browne said that he thought writing letters to other governments could give some Americans “a political education that’s much needed in this country,” while Van Zandt wants the spotlight on areas “where we’re most directly involved in human rights violations.”

But, Van Zandt added, he also “loves the idea of business people getting involved in something like this. I like to see business people giving something back, and that doesn’t happen often enough. When a record store does that, it shouldn’t be surprising. It should be normal.”