The T.A.M.I. Show

The T.A.M.I. Show
Movie poster
Directed by	Steve Binder
Produced by	Bill Sargent
Distributed by	AIP
Release date(s)	December 29, 1964
Running time	123 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English

The 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. It was shot with TV cameras by director Steve Binder and his crew from The Steve Allen Show, and was the second of a small handful of productions to be recorded in Electronovision - one of the first high-definition video cameras that captured somewhere between 1000-1100 lines at 25fps. Then it was via kinescope recording converted to film with sufficient enhanced resolution to allow big-screen enlargement.

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. Jan and Dean emceed the event and performed its theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)". Jack Nitzsche was the show's music director. 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 each of the two concert dates was edited into the film, which was released on December 29, 1964.

The T.A.M.I. Show is particularly well known for James Brown's performance, which features his legendary dance moves and remarkable energy. In interviews, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones has claimed that choosing to follow Brown & The Famous Flames was the biggest mistake of their careers, because no matter how well they performed, they could not top him. 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. In addition, throughout the film, were numerous go-go dancers in the background or beside the performers. Among them was a young Toni Basil and Teri Garr. It also featured The Supremes performing 3 back to back #1 singles signaling their reign as the most successful girl group of that era. Diana Ross would go on to work with the director Steve Binder on several of her television specials including her first solo television special and more importantly her iconic Central Park concert, Live from New York Worldwide: For One and for All.

The film was shown unedited and in its entirety on cable television in Canada in 1984 (20th anniversary of its release), on the First Choice Network. However, there has never been an authorized home video release of the film in any format, though bootlegs have abounded. (A DVD release of the complete film by First Look Studios was planned for 2007, but subsequently withdrawn.) Also, because of a rights dispute, the footage of the Beach Boys' performance was deleted from all prints made after the movie's brief initial theatrical run, and is therefore absent from most of the bootlegs. All of the four Beach Boys tunes 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.

A sequel,^[1] 1966's The Big T.N.T. Show, was produced by the same executive producer, Henry G. Saperstein.^[2]

In 2006, The T.A.M.I. Show was named to the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress.

List of performers

• The Barbarians
• The Beach Boys
• Chuck Berry
• James Brown and The Famous Flames
• Marvin Gaye
• 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 T.A.M.I. Show's Executive Producer was Bill Sargent (H.W. Sargent, Jr). Bill Sargent held numerous patents in cable television and is considered the father of modern pay-per-view. Bill Sargent was also the developer and founder of Electronovision and the associated video tape technologies.

References in popular culture

The Police mention "James Brown on The T.A.M.I. Show" in their 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).

American producer Rick Rubin recalls in an anecdote that, when visiting Prince's offices, a loop of James Brown's performance on the show was looped on a lobby television. He speculates "that may be the single greatest rock & roll performance ever captured on film."^[3]

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