So said Steven Van Zandt of The T.A.M.I. Show, filmed in 1964 before a screaming capacity crowd at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. It's an incredible line-up; it seems as if anyone who was anyone in rock and roll showed up, except for the Beatles. (T.A.M.I. stood for 'Teenage Music Awards International', even though there were no awards, just an unforgettable concert. There were no complaints about the non-existent awards.)
The show was produced by Steve Binder; four years later he would take part in another chapter in rock and roll history when he produced Elvis' transcendent '68 Comeback Special. While that has been widely available for decades as a cultural touchstone, The T.A.M.I. Show basically disappeared after its initial release. As recounted in Entertainment Weekly, "It premiered in Los Angeles in November 1964, with a wider release just after Christmas that year, but before long was chopped up — in particular, the Beach Boys performances were removed — so that the full film has never been publicly available since that first release and is only out now on DVD for the first time". Again, EW:
It was filmed just eight months after the Beatles made their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, but you can see and hear how the culture shock that the Beatles represented had already rippled out into the world. Everyone in the movie, on stage and in the audience, is very polite, because “the 1960s” hadn’t happened yet. And yet the show, which is brilliantly paced, with a momentum that builds and builds, keeps pointing to the eruption that’s about to be unleashed.
One especially notable aspect to The T.A.M.I. Show is that it clearly reveals--and celebrates--rock and roll's indebtedness to, and conflation with, rhythm & blues. Rock and roll n' roll burst on the scene the same year that the civil rights movement kicked into gear; that was no mere coincidence, and here we see the on-stage state of things ten years later.
Even in 1964, a vast majority of the audience that ate up the music of Elvis and the Beatles had little to no idea that the basic rhythms they were grooving on were the creation of black rhythm-and-blues artists. The T.A.M.I. Show makes that thrillingly explicit. From the get-go, it mixes black and white musicians into a Utopian jamboree."
It ends in dramatic fashion with a face-off with the final two acts, James Brown and his Famous Flames, and the Rolling Stones. Rick Rubin has called Brown's appearance "the greatest rock and roll performance ever captured on film". Some say Brown won the day. Others think the Stones did. I consider it a perfect stand off.
The T.A.M.I. Show didn't just point to issues of race, but also feminism--pointing to another eruption about to be unleashed:
They scream when Lesley Gore comes out in her Tracy Turnblad flip, her movements just staid enough to make her look like the Hillary Clinton of teen idols. Don’t be fooled by her appearance, though — she’s incredible! A one-woman pop powerhouse! Standing in the spotlight, Gore turns “You Don't Own Me” into a searing manifesto, The Feminine Mystique squeezed into three soaring minutes."
Here's two clips from "The T.A.M.I. Show', The first part of James Brown's performance, and Lesley Gore singing "You Don't Own Me"...
