Thursday, March 25, 2010

The T.A.M.I. show

from DangerousMinds


[Monday] marks the first time The T.A.M.I. Show has seen a proper release since it was in theaters over 40 years ago, although bootlegs have been easy to come by since the late 80s. James Brown’s inspired performance—perhaps the finest moment of his entire career—will knock your socks off.

Filmed at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, October 29, 1964, the performers also included Chuck Berry, Gerry And The Pacemakers, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Lesley Gore, Jan & Dean, Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas, The Supremes, The Barbarians and The Rolling Stones. The DVD, put out by the mighty Shout Factory contains restored footage of the Beach Boys performance which was cut from the theatrical release.


And from Wikipedia

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[1] - one of the first high-definition video cameras that captured somewhere between 1000-1100 lines at 25fps. Then, via kinescope recording, it was 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,[2] because no matter how well they performed, they could not top him. In a web-published interview,[1] 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 were a very young Toni Basil and Teri Garr. It also featured The Supremes performing three 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 until the authorized DVD release in March 2010, 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.

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