Rock NYC loves DVD re-issue company SHOUT Factory. We find all of their releases to be of high quality, and more often than not offering solid value for your money.
Recently SHOUT factory released the Teenage Awards Music International show, or TAMI Show for short. Filmed at the Santa Monica, CA Civic Auditorium on October 29th, 1964, it is truly the first concert movie of the rock era.
The line up included acts such as The Rolling Stones, James Brown, Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson And The Miracles, and The Supremes just to name a few.
The film has not been seen in it’s entirety since it’s initial theatrical run. Most notably because The Beach Boys, in what was one of many in a pattern of bad business decisions asked the filmmakers to have their performance removed from all subsequent screenings. The documented reasoning is sketchy, but it’s rumored that they felt that their performance put forth an image that they had outgrown.
The undercurrent beneath all this music is the celebration of the social change it brought about. Lesley Gore sings “You Don’t Own Me”, a stunning manifesto of feminine independence.
The background dancers (choreographed by a young Toni Basil) aggressively thrusting themselves to and fro in an uninhibited fashion just seven short years after Elvis Presley’s “waist up” only camera shot on the Sullivan show.
James Brown sending women of all colors into rapture with dance moves which at the time were not of this earth and still shock and amaze to this day.
Smokey, Diana and the stars of Motown playing to a fully integrated audience where just a few years earlier they toured the deep south , and played to audiences that were openly segregated with blacks and whites cordoned off by ropes monitored by law enforcement.
The Rolling Stones more than holding their own faced with the dubious task of going on after the Godfather of Soul to close the show playing a set of tunes steeped in R&B tradition .
With one great live performance after another, for music fans it is nothing less than a treasure trove of brilliance. Behind it all lies to the answer to the decades old question, “Can Rock And Roll Change The World?” The answer is a resounding “It already did”.