“The single greatest rock n’ roll performance ever captured on film.” – Rick Rubin

“It’s the greatest rock movie you’ve never seen.” – Little Steven Van Zandt, Underground Garage

Royal Stompbox Presents:

THE T.A.M.I. Show – Live 1964!

Saturday, April 8

7:00pm - Vintage Rock & Soul Pre-Show

8:00pm – Feature Film Extravaganza

Featuring performances by James Brown & The Famous Flames, the late, great Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys (with Brian Wilson – two months before he stopped singing live with the band), Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles (all part of a package Motown deal), The Rolling Stones (young enough to be still doing their all-covers set!), Lesley Gore in top form, Jan and Dean, and more, The T.A.M.I. Show, shot at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on October 29, was the unprecedented pop event of 1964. Engineered for maximum teen appeal, the show mixed equal numbers of black and white groups, and to put the times in perspective, was just mere months after the Civil Rights Act put an end to legal racial segregation in the United States.

The film is revered for many reasons – the muscular arrangements from the house band of all-star session musicians, The Wrecking Crew (featuring Jack Nitzsche, Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Jimmy Bond and many more), an absolutely stacked bill of stars, Lesley Gore’s triumphant proto-feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me”, Chuck Berry doing the splits, a slew of happenin’ back-up dancers (including actress Teri Garr and choreography by David Winters of West Side Story and Toni Basil who went on to have the #1 novelty hit “Mickey” in 1982!). But the main attraction is James Brown’s legendary, exhilarating performance, famously blowing show headliners The Rolling Stones – who had pleaded unsuccessfully not to follow Brown – out of the water just before they took the stage.

Elvis Presley used to rent out movie theaters in Memphis just to sit there in the dark watching this scene over and over. For fans of the pre-counterculture wave of rock & soul, The T.A.M.I. Show – which stands for Teenage Awards Music International, by the way – is THE ultimate musical document of its time.