Nostalgia with T.A.M.I.

T.A.M.I. stands for Teenage Awards Music International, and the T.A.M.I. show was in theatres, first in Los Angeles, in November 1964.  Since then, the show has occasionally been aired on television, and many pirated videos have been made from those appearances or from the 2200 prints made for those first shows in L.A. and around North America and the U.K.

Now there is the official collector's edition DVD, and it is fabulous.

Anyone old enough (and many who aren't) to remember the Beatles first television appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show (February 1964), and to remember the swooning and excitement, is exactly the right age to appreciate the nostalgic trip offered by the T.A.M.I. show.

The 112-minute DVD features The Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, James Brown and the Flames, The Barbarians, Marvin Gaye, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Lesley Gore, Jan and Dean, Billy Kramer and the Dakotas, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Supremes, and The Rolling Stones - quite a stellar line-up!

The Beach Boys, at one point,  insisted that their performance be removed from all copies and from the master, but so many copies had been made that their part in the concert was preserved, which also allowed them to add the footage to a "best of" album/DVD in 2004. The bootleg copies also facilitated the collector's edition DVD.

As far as I know, these same artists never appeared anywhere else together; for that alone, the movie is a unique document; it's a piece of rock and roll history. Until now, I had no idea such a thing even existed.

Mostly though, for me, it's about memories and nostalgia. Gosh Mick Jagger has aged since those days - and I just don't want to think about what that implies for the rest of us who remember so well!