The Smiley Smile Message Board

Been watching the T.A.M.I. Show screener due out in March from Shout Factory in March, really great to see this classic film fully restored with the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys look great!

How is the overall quality of the picture and sound? Any significant improvement over what's been available already at all? Did they use a a different master audio source other than the original video? If memory serves, it was recorded on broadcast video ("Electronovision", Wiki confirms, "hi-definition at 25 fps") but then transferred to film for a theatrical release, so it has that kinescope quality with rather harsh, monaural sound.

And I presume no T.N.T.?

Yes I 'm wondering if it's sourced (for this DVD) from 2" video or the kinescope? Does it look better than what's on the SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF SUMMER collection?

Thanking in advance!

Regards,
Cal
:)

I just hope James Brown's 19 minutes are intact.  To me they are the highlight of that entire show.

I've said it before, maybe here, and I'll say it again.  I've seen nearly 60 BB's/BB related shows since July of 1964.  I've seen Hendrix, Joplin, The Doors (hey, I'm old!) but the best two concerts of my Life were seeing James Brown in both 1967 and 1968 in Tulsa. OK.  "The hardest working man in Show Business"?  You bet your bleeping ass! 

At first he just looks corny (for lack of a better term) but after 3 hours and 45 minutes (4 sets; 3 intermissions of about 15 mins both years) he has you in the palm of his hands.

The Rolling Stones followed him at T.A.M.I., at least on the DVD version I have, and were reportedly devastated.  Something to the effect of "how the bleep do you follow that"?

Gotta agree with you about James Brown. I'm looking forward to the T.AM.I. show release as much for his performance as for the BB's.

The screener (and accompanying press release) don't delve into the subject of the masters used, etc. Maybe when it's released in March those details will be included in the packaging.  The beach Boys portion looks identical to the SASOS footage. The entire show is amazingly clear!

BTW, T.A.M.I. stands for Teen Age Music International.  Most readers probably knew that but I'm sure that there are a few that didn't.  If you know the Jan and Dean song "(Here They Come) From All Over The World", a minor hit in 1964, then you know the song that I suspect was written specifically for this show.  It definitely opens the show.

Teen Age Music International...really?  I don't think it was the brightest bulb on the tree that came up with THAT name.

Which, of course, stands for nothing.

They should have renamed it for this 45 year+ anniversary release  since the music is, magically, no longer teenage music.   Also, not so magically, those of us who were there are no longer teenagers.   

I wish they would do the same for the Big TNT show which I love.  It was also produced by Henry Saperstein who is likely responsible for the titles.  Both shows were recorded on video tape which was then transfered to film.  It will be interesting to find out what the source for this edition of the TAMI show was.       

The Jan & Dean single — "(Here They Come) From All Over The World" — was released in February 1965, so the Sloan-Barri song wasn't a minor hit until 1965 (CHARTS: BILLBOARD #56 -- CASH BOX #50). The film itself was still showing in some theaters when the single was released.

T.A.M.I. does stand for something: It was designed to be an international nonprofit organization that would produce a series of yearly concerts and awards ceremonies to be broadcast over a major television network, with proceeds earmarked for music scholarships and other musical programs to benefit teenagers around the world. (Teens were encouraged to vote via IBM punch-card ballots that would be distributed at the initial concert as well as in theaters when the T.A.M.I. Show made its debut.)

Gee, I don't know if that makes sense. maybe "it was supposed to stand for something" is better. I , for one, haven't seen anything about that organization;
It was intended to stand for something, but it doesnt. It's non-existent

Renaming it would be like colorizing it, and re-dubbing the bass and drum parts with new musicians. It was, is, and always will be the T.A.M.I. Show...probably the greatest pop music concert that was ever captured on film/video. I am also interested in the source as I know of a pristine 35mm print that was discovered a few years back...but this release (so far) doesn't seem to be reporting that as its source.

Definitely! Renaming it would be ridiculous.
I keep seeing the references to 35 mm film and/or 2"videotape. Does anyone know definitively the original medium? I'm presuming film.
Meaning, it's been said it was shot and mixed live from the monitors onto film. What exactly does that mean, and would there be tapes existing from multiple cameras that were then mixed down to make the film?

There are definitely multiple camera angles in existence as i have a version of Surfin USA that shows a different camera angle on a couple of shots than what is shown in the official released T.A.M.I. version.

Gee, I don't know if that makes sense. maybe "it was supposed to stand for something" is better. I , for one, haven't seen anything about that organization;
It was intended to stand for something, but it doesnt. It's non-existent
[/quote]

That's what it stood for when the film was released, and the key word in my initial post was, "was." The whole thing dissolved, but the T.A.M.I. Show was the first of what they hoped would be many events, but that didn't happen.

If the Beach Boys portion is identical to what's on SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF SUMMER DVD, then all we have is digitally cleaned up kinescope. It can't be that amazlingly clear from this source.  If it's from video it should have a better frequecny response and be less tinny than the kinescope audio. Can you elaborate/compare/a-b the different sources for us?

Thanking in advance!

Regards,
Cal (aka "Beatle Bob")
:)

from Wiki:

"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 (obviously 35mm film - PS) film with sufficient enhanced resolution to allow big-screen enlargement."


The "sister" Big T.N.T show (linked and clipped on a terrible combo video, laconically and ridiculously hosted by Chuck Berry) was done the same way. T.N.T. has some fantastic material as well, including the best Ronettes ever recorded, Ike and Tina, Ray Charles, Pet Clark, original Byrds, Zal (who is wild) and the Spoonful (!), and an unforgettable Bo Diddley rave up ("Hey, Bo Diddley!"), with the sexiest image of a group I've ever seen - 3 gorgeous women singing backup, but with one, "The Duchess" (Norma-Jean Wofford), strumming a Bo Box Guitar while decked out in a glittering formal evening gown and heels, playing that infectious beat while dancing in unison, in beehives and "formals"...the contrast was exquisite, the fetish meter in overdrive...

The version that I have is excellent, but clearly a kinescope, with both video and 35mm print artifacts visible, and the sound in rather thin mono - this is why I'm curious to know if there was a proper two track master recorded from the board of either show.

again, from WIKI:

The Big T.N.T. Show is a 1966 concert film. Directed by Larry Peerce and distributed by American International Pictures, it includes performances by numerous popular rock and roll and R&B musicians from the United States and England. A sequel to 1964's The T.A.M.I. Show, and like it executive produced by Henry G. Saperstein (produced by Spector and 'audio consulted' by Larry Levine [/i] - PS), The Big T.N.T. Show was likewise shot on videotape and transferred to 35-millimeter film. Some footage from it was reused in the film That Was Rock a.k.a. The T.A.M.I. / T.N.T. Show (1984).

The concert was shot before a live audience at the Moulin Rouge club in Los Angeles, California on November 29, 1965. Its pre-release title was This Could Be the Night. The film's theme song was, in fact, called "This Could Be the Night", and was written by Harry Nilsson (which was later covered, of course, by Brian on the Harry Tribute - PS), produced by Phil Spector, and performed by The Modern Folk Quartet.

There were two shows that were documented for The T.A.M.I. Show on October 28 and 29, 1964. Although there were two nights' worth of concerts — as well as an afternoon how that was filmed on the second day without an audience present — the footage that makes up The T.A.M.I. Show was taken exclusively from the second night's concert, which took five hours to film.

The crowd was made of primarily of students from Santa Monica High School.

This being the case, would probably explain the different camera angles Jon mentioned.
Now finding the other footage, maybe the whole show(s) THAT would be Something!!

No...the different angles are from the same show/performance we all know and love. This was probably a four or five camera shoot, with the director choosing whatever feed choices from those multiple live cameras that he felt were best to make up the footage in the movie. What I have generally follows the same direction, but a slightly different choice of shots appear in a couple of places, very brief, in this particular edit. Might have been an early edit, or something someone messed with after the fact...but its the same performance of SUSA, with pretty much the same flow of shots, BUT with a couple quick and noticeable exceptions.

Only the second show was actually filmed

This being the case, where does that leave Jon's copy with the alternate camera angles? 
If the only film ever made from this is the one they're now using, where did the other shots come from? 

Perhaps you mean the "Surfin' USA" performance on An American Band? But that was just recut with footage from other songs.

No its not from American Band, and the differences are minor and subtle, but to my recollection it shows a slightly different camera angle (briefly) during the SUSA clip. This is not a complete TAMI show boot, but a clip of SUSA only in a privately made VHS compilation of rare '60's clips...which came to me from a well connected source many years ago...probably in the early '90's. I can recall A-B ing it against my standard full TAMI show copies which I've upgraded several times through the years. I've got to dig it out again and see if my long ago confirmation of this difference wasn't a hallucination.

I was not serious about literally renaming it.  I do find it noteworthy that most of the same exact music that was teenage music 45 years ago, is in now largely, in perception, adult music.    

That would not be unusual. The BB's tinkered with at least a couple of their concert albums, a practice many (probably most) other groups have followed.

Interesting.  So that's probably why TAMI-2 got the new acronymn: Big T.N.T.

 That's interesting and of course explains why original video tape does not exist.  Was this a common process and what was the purpose of using it  on this (relatively low budget) production?  

I hope so.  I loved most of the performances in that show. BTW if you look carefully you will see Frank Zappa (highly recognizeable) and also Ron & Russell Mael (less so) in the audience.    The "Moulin Rouge" club was (and the building still stands) on the south side of Sunset near the Hollywood Palladium not far from Ameoba Records.  It was called both the  Aquarius and the Hullabaloo Clubs in the late 60's.  It  is currently used as a stage  for Televison productions.  It could conceivably even become a club again someday.  

   Wiki is mistaken. Chuck Berry does not appear in the "Big T.N.T. Show.  If he had he might have been laconic, which would be great, but I highly doubt that it would be ridiculous. The actual host was David MacCallum.  How someone got those two wiki-mixed up is beyond me.

The wikipedia error was caused because they were thinking of the home video from the 80s which combined clips from TAMI and TNT- which Chuck Berry Hosted.  By the way-on the TAMI subject-as I mentioned in an article in ESQ recently-I have articles from 1973 in which Dick Clark discussed the TAMI Show-he bought the rights to the show and was going to re-release it in 73 (tied in with the nostalgia boom-American Grafitti etc).  Clark mentioned that the BB footage was being cut from the film because he could not reach a deal with them.  So the footage was excised at that time not in the 60s.  Article also mentioned that the BBs were paid more than most of the other performers to be in the film originally.  Indeed, the Stones were not yet huge in the states (no number one till 1965) and recieved half of what the BBs got.

So if I've read this correctly, this is still a kinescope though we're getting it duped from the 35 mm negative this time? It then should look many times better than the source used on SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF SUMMER.


Regards,
Cal aka "Beatle Bob"
:)

It strikes me that the only way they could have done this "direct from video cameras to 35mm film" thing at the time would have been to set up a 35mm camera and film a video monitor, which is, in fact, a kinescope. I imagine they must have used at least two film cameras (starting at different times) aimed at two monitors to avoid losing any of the performances when the film mag needed to be changed out.

 
   



This is a misunderstanding of my admittedly ambiguous entry. I was specifically referring to the combination - re-edited and intercut - video release called THAT WAS ROCK (1984) which I still have on VHS, where Berry is in a studio, reading introductions to the alternating TAMI and TNT performances on a soundstage and some kind of minimalist set (a car? I can't recall) -  by himself. Corny and campy (like the painful cue card intros still done today on award shows), and read "with a wink in his eye" might be a more apt description than "laconic" (though I think he is reclining on the set, "dock of the bay" care-free style, when we cut back to him at some point) - but there is an awkward disconnect between the excitement of the material and his rather useless intros, and he is self-consciously playing up the canned aspect of the whole thing. Painful to watch (you have to fast forward through his shtick after one viewing) next to these great performances. The WIKI entry does NOT mention Berry as being the host of TNT, but is also referring specifically to the THAT WAS ROCK combination tape. I do have the complete TNT show, (yes, hosted by McCallum - who, ahem, "conducts" an orchestral reading of Satisfaction) - and it does look very good, but, as I mentioned. if the image was going through a video camera from that era, even directly bypassing tape onto 35mm, you will still be able to discern a kinescope look in the texture and outlines (even though the specs on the Electronovision cameras were apparently "hi-def"). Looking forward to this release, then, especially in light of Mr. Furmanek's expert testimony above, but once again lamenting how 3 track masters of such things go "missing"...( a common story in music and film history before our current era of preservation for profit).

The excellent house band for TNT does sound, btw, at least in part like the Crew...

 That would be because it was "members" of the Crew wouldn't it?  I have to admit that I don't specifically remember which individuals.  It seems to me that Spector as musical director would have hired the musicians he usually worked with, esp. considering the show was in L.A. and they were the best choices in the world for this particular assignment.   One additional musician (whom I wondered about his identity) was the guitarist playing with Ike.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aWeluxVHhM
I feel that this is the definitive Ike and Tina Turner performance existing from their prime.  
For that reason alone the Big TNT Show should get out.  But it is also contains the definitive  performance from Bo Diddley's prime.  The Ray Charles is prime Ray Charles, The Spoonful performance is likewise.  A rare, maybe the only?, video of Spector in performance,  likewise rare live Ronettes footage, and more.
  
I would love to hear from anyone who can correctly identify the guitarist with I&T and the members the Big T.N.T. House band. (Spector on piano, with Baez,  of course for starters).

Ike and Tina used a lot of their own band. I don't know the names of everyone who was in it (Jimmy Thomas may be who you are thinking of) but it should the same one as on their Ike and Tina Live Warner Brothers LP

 You are right and the band changed members a lot.  I was surprised to learn that McCoy Tyner actually toured with I&T for a while during a lean period for him when jazz was just not selling.
 If you would know the band members by sight, please take a look at the video and let me know.  

Hendrix was in their band briefly around this time though obviously not in the film.

This method actually resulted in an overall less expensive production, as camera switches could be accomplished real-time in the control room off of the video feeds onto the master kinescope (a la live TV), instead of post-production editing from multiple camera footages captured on separate reels of film.  The downside is that you were locked into the director's live camera choices...unless you recorded multiple identical shows and edited them together.

Lee

I'm pretty sure all will be revealed with this fine DVD is released in March.

My mom was a senior at Santa Monica High (a.k.a. SAMOHI), and as she remembers it (vaguely after 45 years at this point), her and her friend Gail both got asked by an audience recruiter of some sort if they wanted to come back later in the evening (a few hours after school would end that day) across the street to the Santa Monica Civic Center to see a live music concert being filmed.

My mom wasn't really a big fan of the Beach Boys and was most excited to see James Brown, but got totally enthralled by seeing The Rolling Stones (especially Mick's swagger) that night. No idea if she saw the 1st or 2nd night filmed.

Both her and her friend somehow wound up meeting the band The Barbarians right around this time (she doesn't recall how exactly, or if it had anything to do with T.A.M.I), but they wound up hanging with them at  some pre-or post show stuff, and she has a few B&W snapshots of The Barbarians in front of, and inside their motel (presumably in Santa Monica?).

Wish she had more (or any!) Beach Boys-related T.A.M.I. stories to tell about!

I've interviewed director Steve Binder. He sent me a tape a few years ago.

Looking forward to the extras, like the intro without credits.

It's too bad Jan & Dean sound terrible on T.A.M.I. — but their opening segment, artist intros and connecting bits are classic.

M.

  The Barbarians were one of the great 60's garage bands.  I love the song "Moulty" though my understanding is that Moulty Moulton was the only Barbarian actually performing on the song. Levon and the Hawks (later to be the Band) played on the track.  "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" was great also.  It was some other song that they did on the TAMI show though wasn't it?     

Here is the link to Amazon.com for the long awaited official release of the T.A.M.I. Show on DVD coming this March 23rd.  If you go to the Amazon.com site, you will see the complete song listing of the whole show including bonus features.  It looks great.  I already pre-ordered my copy.


Rob


[www.amazon.com]

I can certainly see/hear an improvement judging by this Youtube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIBMaCTwFw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIBMaCTwFw)

This is a MAJOR improvement over SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF SUMMER DVD. Now, I'm VERY excited about acquiring this release. Could this show have the Beach Boys greatest live performance ever. My vote is yes!

Regards,
Cal aka "Beatle Bob"
:)

Best quality I've ever seen, by at least two generations.

No sign of it on UK Amazon? Any prospect?

Hate to say I told you so.

I concur with AGD --

Previous versions look like surveillance tapes compared to this transfer.

This will now be in the top five DVD pop/rock concerts ever released, if the rest of it looks this good.

(and all the other tracks  from each artist that I have never seen).

That is very nice quality. Now if only one can find the Hawaii footage..

Has anyone else noticed during "I Get Around" someone "jamming" along with the group? Most notably on guitar at 0:24-0:39 in the backround towards the right of screen and on piano (?) at 1:12-1:26 and 1:33-1:49 again towards the right of screen in the backround.

That's the house band, and their sound definitely wasn't up for the BB's set. You'll notice in most episodes of Shindig and other '60's TV shows the house band guys usually act like they're playing along with whoever's on camera just so they aren't sitting there doing nothing. Even the Beatles playing live in Germany in '66 you can see house band guys acting like they're playing along with them.

OK, thanks for the explanation.

Shindig with "Do You Wanna Dance" did it with a guy on piano...

On a side note it's interesting, Shindig, Sullivan, Jack Benny...they all did the same then directing wise. They found out that a normal shot of the group got applause and mild cheers, the minute they flash Denny on it was WAAAAAAHHHH screams. It's interesting because once the director finds that out he uses it all the time. Verses, group shot, close up of Mike dancing, maybe a shot of the nerdy Al Jardine for the old folks, chorus Dennis AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH.

Yeah, I noticed that especially during their performance of "Wendy" on Ed Sullivan where a close-up of Dennis received by far the most audience response, followed by Mike and Brian. Equal last were Al and Carl with no squeal factor.

The Shindig shows are classic for that watch Johnny B Goode! It's sad but funny too!

These huge differences in fan reactions are not anecdotal. A significant number of the the Beach Boys female fans bought their records due to the fact that Dennis was in the band. That is a fact. He made them more popular than they would have been without him. Anyone who denies it needs to go back and do some research, read the zines and the biz press of the time. Talk to people who sorted the fan mail. Dennis' image made a difference in the group's bottom line. Dennis never really got the credit he deserved for this. Does anyone regaling the BB's history really ever admit that Dennis was more known and certainly more popular among the Beach Boys large 1964/65 fan base than Brian or any of the others? Most people tend to downplay, or completely ignore this fact...probably because it had to do with charisma, and physical energy, and looks. Its not exactly palatable to say a group who made the best records and had rock's greatest genius, were partially popular because the drummer was hot. But its true.

It couldn't have been easy on his ear(s)

I've viewed the whole thing, and it's absolutely astonishing to see it so clear, and sound so good. There will be lots of cool extras, with a complete collectible booklet.

Credit for being "hot"?

Could you possibly post a full-fledged review about the entire DVD's contents? It would be appreciated by all!

Thanking in advance!

Regards,
Cal aka "Beatle Bob"
:)

Everyone always says the other guys were "lucky" because Brian's talent gave them their wealth and success. That is absolutely true. However, if you can imagine a time when no one gave a rats behind that Brian was a genius, but a lot of people(females) cared what the drummer looked like on TV, record covers, magazines, concert appearances...and rushed out and bought the records with that in mind. It wasn't the entire formula for their popularity, but it was a significant part of it in '64/65. This is a fact. Dennis rarely gets credit for it in any serious way. The others were "lucky" to have him in the band. It made them more popular, and wealthier.  

Specs from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/T-M-I-Show-Collectors/dp/B0030ATZIA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1264613547&sr=1-1

Regards,
Cal aka "Beatle Bob"
:)

Anyone know whether this is getting a UK release? Not showing up on Amazon.uk...

Asking. I'll let you know.

No UK release is planned. No explanation as to why. Look for a full review of the TAMI in the Spring edition of ESQ, as well as an upcoming edition of Goldmine that I'll be writing after I interview the director, Steve Binder.

There'll be rare pictures from the set of the show, in addition to comments from Dean Torrence on hosting the show with Jan Berry.

No UK release, that's ridiculous

The audio source that they did use is not also 3 track?  fold down mono?

I wonder if they still have the original audio for the Big TNT show, and if it is 3 track or something other?  

Thanks David - is the standard US release Region 1 coded, or Region 0 ?

Be a real shame if European & Asian fans were out of the loop on this -  we don't all have region-free players!

The 1964 concert never turned into the annual fundraiser it was envisioned as, but it did bring together the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys and James Brown, and now it's on DVD.

By Randy Lewis

March 23, 2010

"The T.A.M.I. Show," the fabled film document of an equally legendary 1964 concert in Santa Monica with the Rolling Stones, James Brown, the Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, Chuck Berry and a half-dozen other acts, has a back story that reads like the inspiration for the Stones' observation years later about getting what you need even when you don't get what you want.

As originally planned, "The T.A.M.I. Show" was supposed to be considerably more than a concert film featuring several of the day's hottest pop-music acts.

Executive producer William Sargent Jr. envisioned the event, whose acronym stood for "Teenage Awards Music International," as an annual nonprofit concert series and award ceremony that would be televised internationally, with proceeds going toward music scholarships and programs benefiting teens worldwide.

None of that ever panned out.

"I think Bill was the prototype for the Zero Mostel character in 'The Producers,' " says Steve Binder, the director of "The T.A.M.I. Show" feature film that arrives Tuesday for the first time in an official home-video release.

"He would come up with these great ideas," Binder recalled last week, gently chuckling at the memory, "but he tried to do them independently, and he always seemed to run into money problems."

Fortunately, that first and only "T.A.M.I. Show" turned out to be one of the most celebrated, and sought-after, assemblages of talent in pop music history, documented by the same director and much of the same crew that four years later would be responsible for the equally venerated Elvis Presley 1968 "comeback" special.

"One thing about 'The T.A.M.I. Show' is how beautifully shot it is," said pop music historian and documentary filmmaker David Leaf, who included Binder's film in a class on rock documentaries he taught recently at UCLA. "It captures that era in a way I don't think anything else does. Those extreme close-ups are just stunning: Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, to see them in the first blush of their careers, when they were young and becoming stars . . . . And it may be the best footage of James Brown ever. Rolling Stone called it the greatest rock 'n' roll film of all time, and in certain ways it is."

The DVD includes the complete feature film that premiered theatrically just two weeks after the concert took place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium -- including the long-missing segment featuring the Beach Boys that was excised from more than 2,000 prints a short time after it first screened.

How and why that happened remains a subject of some debate. Binder, who says he wasn't privy to the legal wranglings that went on after he delivered the two-hour film, believes that Murry Wilson, the father of Beach Boys siblings Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson who had worked for a time as their manager, insisted it be snipped because "he didn't want them to continue to be associated with those early songs about cars and surfing and girls."

Others have suggested it was more a matter of the group's handlers not wanting the quintet -- the most popular American band of the time -- to share a stage with anyone. The success of the Beatles' feature film debut, "A Hard Day's Night," had primed the pump for pop groups making the jump to the big screen, and the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits and Gerry & the Pacemakers (the latter also on the "T.A.M.I." lineup) each eventually starred in films, and some in the Beach Boys camp thought the group might have a shot at a movie of its own too.

Whatever the reason, most people who eventually saw the film -- and there weren't nearly enough of those for it to turn a profit -- saw it minus "Surfin' U.S.A.," "I Get Around," "Surfer Girl" and "Dance, Dance, Dance." Most who have viewed or owned it in the subsequent 45 years did so by way of copies bootlegged from a few isolated television screenings in the 1970s.

The film's labyrinthine ownership trail was finally sorted out by Dick Clark Productions and Shout! Factory, the company specializing in vintage audio and video reissues.

Binder notes in the director's commentary, one of the DVD's bonus features, that Lesley Gore was the biggest star on the bill, having come off a peak year in 1963 when she scored four Top 5 pop singles, including her signature hit "It's My Party."

But the performer who most impressed many of the "T.A.M.I." participants was Chuck Berry. Although it was years past his biggest '50s hits, in 1964 he'd found his way back into the Top 10 with "No Particular Place to Go."

"That was the kind of music Jan and I listened to -- we were in awe," said Dean Torrence, who with his Jan & Dean singing partner Jan Berry not only performed on "The T.A.M.I. Show" but served as its stripe-shirted, skateboard-riding hosts.

Chuck Berry opens the show, then trades songs with Gerry & the Pacemakers, another batch of Liverpudlians handled by Beatles manager Brian Epstein and produced by their recording studio overseer, George Martin.

The Pacemakers get what seems like an inordinate amount of time on camera. "I couldn't agree more," Binder acknowledged. "Had I been able to edit it, I think I would have taken the scissors to it and cut them back a song or two."

But Binder notes that because it was shot essentially in real time and assembled live as the music played, "There was nothing to edit. Unlike when I did the Presley special, there were no outtakes, no isolated cameras for unused angles. I never stopped an act and said, 'Do that over again.' "

And it still holds a special place for those who were there.

"There's a story that Keith Richards once said 'Following James Brown was the biggest mistake of our lives,' " Leaf noted. "Maybe, waiting in the wings for the audience to recover, the Rolling Stones felt it was a bad idea at the moment. But watching the footage today, the Stones' performance is first-rate rock 'n' roll. It's just not epic in the way Brown's is. Really, nobody could follow James Brown."

randy.lewis@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-tamishow23-2010mar23,0,7721882.story

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Watching them rip through 'I Get Around', they're like an early '60s Ramones. Fast and in your face-at least, as in your face as The Beach Boys could get.

Also, I'm always struck at how only  two years later, Brian was creating the Pet Sounds and SMiLE music. You never would have thought that by looking at him up there in his candy striped shirt, singing the car, surf and girls songs. Quite a musical progression.

My teenage daughter always refers to Dennis as the cute one. She loves the "I get around" segment.

And I'm struck at how lame the Beach Boys sounded live in '66 (judging from the Michigan-concerts) compared to this and the "Concert"-stuff.

Here's an interesting interview with the director of the TAMI show, Steve Binder, that lends some insight into why the BB's performance went missing for so long:

http://www.spinner.com/2010/03/22/the-tami-show-dvd/

Steve Binder says:
"There was a big legal battle going on as to who owned the television rights, the motion picture rights, international rights. Then it was compounded when [Murry] Wilson, the father of [Beach Boys] Brian and Dennis, demanded that once the film made its initial distribution run, he'd take the Beach Boys segment out. Somehow, Dick Clark got involved, I don't know how or when. I have a suspicion Sargent must have said, 'Hey, I'll give you the television rights.'"

A few years ago we obtained an original 35mm print of the Beach Boys' sequence, and we made a high definition transfer.  We lent that high def master to Dick Clark Productions for their restoration as the group's segment had been cut from the original negative.  As our print had a nasty splice in the middle of "Surfer Girl," Dick Clark must have found another source to cover that bit....but I haven't watched the DVD yet, so I'm not positive how they worked that out.

It's interesting to note that the film was originally released in a wide screen format using a letterbox within the 35mm frame, with the top and bottom of the picture area masked.   Watching it in wide screen for the first time, we finally caught a glimpse of Teri Garr, dancing up a storm off to the edge of the frame.  The poor girl been lopped off when the film was transferred to 4x3 video.

Our local PBS station ran the film in High Definition a couple of weeks ago as part of their latest pledge drive, but I only caught the last half hour or so of the broadcast.  It was great to see Dean as one of the hosts for the pledge drive segments.

I have an article from 1973 in which they interview Dick Clark, who had bought the rights to re-release the film. He says that he couldn't reach an agreement with the BBs, so their footage was cut-Nothing at all to do with Murry.  I tend to believe this story (especially as it makes more sense-Murry was no longer their manager when they did TAMI).  The article says that the BBs recieved 40, 000 to appear in the film-far more than the Stones, who had yet to break big in the states-though they soon would.

It makes it strange that the Stones would close the show, if the Beach Boys were the more popular and better paid act, doesn't it?  Or was that a nod to the "British invasion" that they wanted an up and coming Brit group to close?

L.A.'s pre-Woodstock music summit, finally on DVD

By Michael Simmons
published: March 25, 2010

The T.A.M.I. Show featured the single greatest rock & roll lineup of the pre-Woodstock era. The T.A.M.I. performers at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on October 29, 1964, were truly extraordinary — a veritable mid-'60s pop-history lesson.

A number of subgenres were represented: the British Invasion (Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas), garage rock (the Barbarians), California surf music (the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean), girl groups (Lesley Gore, who, while not a group, was close enough in style) and Motown (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes).

Then there were the three headliners: Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones and James Brown — the Father, Sons and Holy Ghost of rock & roll and rhythm & blues.

Best of all: It was filmed.

After a theatrical run back in 1964 and years of grainy VHS dubs and substandard YouTube clips, this week Shout! Factory is finally releasing a proper DVD of the program. This is T.A.M.I. as it was always intended to be seen, which makes this release particularly exciting for rock geeks and other discerning music fans.

The real co-star of T.A.M.I. — an acronym for "Teenage Awards Music International" — as seen in this newly mastered and restored version is the audience: maniacally enthusiastic teenagers from local high schools (go, SaMo!), screaming, cheering, shaking, screeching, dancing, clapping and generally raawwking to the sounds of their music.

It's a cinema vérité portrait of the sudden predominance of a vast youth culture, as boomers hit a collective puberty that would have international sociopolitical ramifications. Within three years of this hellzapoppin' adolescent rock & soul orgy, many of these same kids would switch brands from Tang (the astronauts' favorite) to LSD (the innernauts' choice).

Director Steve Binder, 23 at the time, captured the proceedings in real time, with no retakes and no breaks beyond "pee-threes," the union-mandated few minutes for bathroom use.

Binder shot the show with four cameras, in black-and-white "Electronovision" (an early high-definition technology), adding to the defiantly unslick aesthetic. Despite vestiges of showbiz shtick in Jan & Dean's comedic introductions and some of the Motown acts' coordinated routines, everything else about the show, down to the wild choreography of the stage dancers, spells out raw, sweaty, blatantly libidinous physicality.

Superlative music aside, Binder's realistic direction is the key to T.A.M.I.'s brilliance as a music documentary. There's no curtain to hide the wizard: Performers, audience and cameras are all in plain sight.

"My mantra was honesty," says Binder in a recent phone interview. "There were so many rules in those days with traditional Ed Sullivan–type shows, and one I broke was, 'You never shoot off the set.' When James Brown finished his last song, he started to move off to the side of the stage and off the set. I screamed to the cameramen to keep following him — 'Don't stop at the end of the scenery, because I want to see James Brown! I don't care if we're showing garbage in the wings!'"

The youthful Binder intuitively knew that the adolescent fans were crucial to T.A.M.I.'s power. "The audience is 50 percent the end result," he says. "They become part of the chemistry of what turns the artist on and builds the energy. In rock & roll [films], my job is to give [the viewer] a front-row-center seat in the audience. My goal is to make 'em part of the energy of watching these tremendous artists onstage."

Inevitably, it's James Brown & the Famous Flames' kinetic set that's referred to as T.A.M.I.'s highlight. The film confirms Brown's reputation as a remarkably athletic hoofer, and one can see in his gliding footsteps the precursor to Michael
Jackson's moonwalk.

During "Please, Please, Please," Brown even does his famous cape act — first he appears to be fainting, then, as "cape man" Danny Ray gently covers him to lead him offstage, the Godfather of Soul heroically declines the aid and insistently lurches back to the microphone to finish the song.

Brown's elaborate stage act notwithstanding, he wouldn't rehearse before the shoot. "I'd never seen James Brown ever when I went up to him and said, 'Okay, James, it's your turn to rehearse,' " Binder recalls. "He looked at me, smiled, and said, 'Hey, Steve, you'll know what to do.' [Laughs] It wasn't easy to feel what he was doing, but it was exciting for me. In all honesty, when I look at the James Brown segment specifically, I say to myself, 'Holy sh*t, I did that!' "

(By the way, despite conventional wisdom about this legendary program, the evidence shows that while the Stones had the hapless task of following Brown, they more than held their own with their unique brand of limey cool.)

Watching The T.A.M.I. Show 46 years later reveals a time when American music was not only less compartmentalized but also less racially divided — a distinct irony given that legal apartheid had just ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As Don Waller notes in his smart, affectionate liner notes for the DVD, "Black. White. Boys. Girls. Vocal groups. Bands. It was all rock 'n' roll. And they were all good."

Interestingly, Binder was hired after having worked with T.A.M.I. producer Bill Sargent on two NAACP benefit performances celebrating school desegregation.

"There was a camaraderie among all these acts," he recalls. "I was so young and naive at the time that I didn't realize it was the first time blacks were treated as equals nationally. I was born and raised in L.A. I came from a very liberal family, who treated people for who they were, not what color they were. It just seemed natural to me."

Binder would go on to direct the pop-music variety show Hullabaloo, and later helmed Elvis' 1968 Comeback Special — as the notes rightfully point out, his "other crowning contribution to rock & roll cinema."

A trove of treats and trivia comes with this much-awaited, official T.A.M.I. release: the fully restored Beach Boys set that was cut from original theatrical prints; actress Teri Garr's appearance as one of the fanny-shakin' dancers; and shots of the extraordinary studio musicians for bandless acts, like arranger Jack Nitzsche, Glen Campbell and several other members of the reliable "Wrecking Crew" (my eye caught an elegantly coiffed pianist, and I quickly realized I was looking at a pre–Master of Space and Time Leon Russell!).

The film may also provide an answer to the intriguing question of the permanence and resonance of rock & roll and soul music from the 1960s, even among the youth of the 21st century.

Popular music has become endlessly fragmented over the last 40 years — but for a brief, shining moment in 1964 Santa Monica, the era's musical excellence came together on the T.A.M.I. stage. The Stones, Brown and Berry supply unadorned intensity and rhythm, the kind of energy craved by punk rockers and hip-hop fans. Smokey Robinson and even Gerry Marsden of Gerry & the Pacemakers — one from Detroit, the other from Liverpool — display vocal chops with soul and advanced technique.

And, crucially, all the artists perform songs whose tunes wrap around your head, showing that the sometimes-neglected art of writing melodic hooks is, and always has been, the cornerstone of music that matters.

http://www.laweekly.com/2010-03-25/music/the-t-a-m-i-show-santa-monica-rock-city/

Just watched the DVD . . .  amazing quality.

Drummer for James Brown kicks major ass.

At the end, when the Stones are playing everyone back on stage, Jan & Dean and Mike Love scoop up Dennis Wilson and run with him across the stage. Pretty funny . . .

Great Beach Boys set.

Just been watching this great DVD. However, has anyone else noticed a sync problem during the guitar solo break in "Dance, Dance, Dance" specifically around the 59:45-59:49 range? I just want to know if I have a dud copy or not.