The T.A.M.I. Show

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, the song erroneously asserting the Rolling Stones are from Liverpool. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.