T.A.M.I. Show

T.A.M.I. Show
Movie poster
Directed by	Steve Binder
Produced by	Bill Sargent
Distributed by	AIP
Release dates	December 29, 1964 (1964-12-29)
Running time	123 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

T.A.M.I. Show is a 1964 concert film released by American International Pictures. It includes performances by numerous popular rock and roll and R&B musicians from the United States and England. The concert was held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on October 28 and 29, 1964. Free tickets were distributed to local high school students. The acronym "T.A.M.I." was used inconsistently in the show's publicity to mean both "Teenage Awards Music International" and "Teen Age Music International".

The best footage from the two concert dates was combined into the film, which was released on December 29, 1964. Jan and Dean emceed the event and performed its theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)", written by Los Angeles composers P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. Jack Nitzsche was the show's music director.

The film was shot by director Steve Binder and his crew from The Steve Allen Show, using a precursor to high-definition television, called "Electronovision", invented by the self-taught "electronics whiz," Bill Sargent (H.W. Sargent, Jr). The film was the second of a small number of productions that used the system.^[1] By capturing more than 800 lines of resolution at 25 frame/s, the video could be converted to film via kinescope recording with sufficiently enhanced resolution to allow big-screen enlargement. It is considered one of the seminal events in the pioneering of music films, and more importantly, the later concept of music videos.

T.A.M.I. Show is particularly well known for James Brown's performance, which features his legendary dance moves and explosive energy. In interviews, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones has claimed that choosing to follow Brown and The Famous Flames was the biggest mistake of their careers, because no matter how well they performed, they could not top him.^[2] In a web-published interview, Binder takes credit for persuading the Stones to follow James Brown, and serve as the centerpiece for the grand finale where all the performers dance together onstage.^[1]

The show also featured The Supremes during their reign as the most successful female recording group of the era. The group had three chart-topping singles from July 1964 to December 1964, with the album "Where Did Our Love Go" reaching number two. Diana Ross would go on to work with Binder on several of her television specials, including her first solo television special and her famous Central Park concert, Live from New York Worldwide: For One and for All.

Throughout the show, numerous go-go dancers performed in the background or beside the performers under the direction of choreographer David Winters.^[3] Among them were Teri Garr and Toni Basil. According to filmmaker John Landis' DVD commentary for the film's trailer, he and fellow seventh grade classmate David Cassidy were in the audience for the show.

In 2006, T.A.M.I. Show was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Dick Clark Productions later acquired ownership of the concert from Sargent.

List of performers

• The Barbarians
• The Beach Boys
• Chuck Berry
• James Brown and The Famous Flames
• Marvin Gaye (with backing vocals by The Blossoms)
• Gerry & the Pacemakers
• Lesley Gore
• Jan and Dean
• Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas
• Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
• The Rolling Stones
• The Supremes
• The house band, known collectively as The Wrecking Crew, was under the musical direction of Jack Nitzsche and included drummer Hal Blaine, electric bass player Jimmy Bond, guitarists Tommy Tedesco, Bill Aken, and Glen Campbell, upright bassist Lyle Ritz, and pianist Leon Russell, saxophonist Plas Johnson and others.

T.A.M.I. Show's executive producer was Bill Sargent. Sargent held patents in cable television and is considered the father of modern pay-per-view. He was the developer of Electronovision and its associated videotape technologies.

Set list

Home video release

During the VHS era, there had never been an authorized home video release of T.A.M.I. Show in its full, original cut, although bootlegs abounded. Most of the bootlegs were missing the The Beach Boys' performance. The Beach Boys had been deleted from all prints made after the movie's initial theatrical run because of a copyright dispute. Selected numbers from the T.A.M.I. Show were edited together with performances from another concert film by the same producers, The Big T.N.T. Show, to create a hybrid work called That Was Rock. This film did receive a home video release from Media Home Entertainment's music division, Music Media, in 1984. It was felt that the film was unlikely to be released due to the cost of obtaining the publishing and performance rights to the extensive lineup of artists. (All of the four Beach Boys songs from the show eventually surfaced on DVD in Sights and Sounds of Summer, a special CD/DVD edition of Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of The Beach Boys.)

On March 23, 2010, Shout! Factory released T.A.M.I. Show on a restored, digitally remastered and fully authorized DVD, with all performances, including The Beach Boys, included. (A DVD release of the complete film by First Look Studios was planned for 2007, but subsequently withdrawn.)

The film was shown in its entirety in Canada on First Choice Network in 1984, the 20th anniversary of its release.

Popular culture

The Police mention "James Brown on The T.A.M.I. Show" in their 1980 song "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around."

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone has a song called "Lesley Gore On The TAMI Show" which appears on the albums Pocket Symphonies for Lonesome Subway Cars (2001) and Advance Base Battery Life (2009).

References

External links

• The T.A.M.I. Show Remembered on its 40th Anniversary
• The T.A.M.I. Show at the Internet Movie Database
• The T.A.M.I. Show at AllMovie
• The T.A.M.I. Show - Still A Groundbreaking Music Event