The T.A.M.I. Show

The T.A.M.I. Show

1964. USA. Directed by Steve Binder. Captured in what Quentin Tarantino called one of the “top three of all rock movies,” the fabled Teenage Awards Music International (T.A.M.I.) featured a mind-blowing lineup of pop, Motown, and rock bands from the 1960s—breathlessly caroming from The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and Lesley Gore to Chuck Berry, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. The show was performed live at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium before some 3,000 screaming high school students, and shot using specially developed high-resolution “Electronovision” cameras that allowed audiences at home to “see the talent on stage, the sweat on their faces, the guts of it” (Binder). The Rolling Stones were making one of their first American television appearances (“those fine fellows from England”), and though the stakes were high—Keith Richards would later say that “following James Brown was the biggest mistake of our lives”—they held their own, incredibly, even as Brown, dripping with sexual lust on “Night Train,” had to be mock-dragged off the stage after singlehandedly ushering the virginal white girls from Orange County into puberty. Courtesy Dick Clark Productions. 112 min.