The Stones vs. James Brown

At the 1964 T.A.M.I. Show, Worlds Collided

Shown briefly as a special event in movie theaters in 1964, the year it was made, “The T.A.M.I. Show” spent decades as a P.O.W. of performance rights dickering and was M.I.A. from video or DVD shelves. On March 23, 2010, the pop culture specialists at Shout! Factory released it on DVD; I got a copy that year when it was played on one of my local PBS stations and made a membership contribution.

My understanding was that the show is culled from three performances over two nights at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The acronym stands for Teenage Music Awards International, and the idea behind it was to start an organization that would benefit music education. The director, Steve Binder, went on to acclaim as a go-to guy for rock on TV and the movies.

A conspiracy theorist might think that the real purpose was to block the British Invasion by showing that American talent, including some Motown stars, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Lesley Gore, and the Beach Boys—could compete with the new bree…