Rock And Roll Will Never Die: ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL and THE T.A.M.I. SHOW

“Do your parents know you’re Ramones?” 

The best rock movies are all about fun. You can have the biggest, most ambitious musical numbers with the highest possible production value, but if there’s not a sense of abandon to the proceedings, what you’re left with is all-too-often something stiff, flat and decidedly, well, square. Go directly to the 1978 double-bill-from-Hell of The Wiz and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — the Beatles-inspired Bee Gees/Peter Frampton monstrosity in which George Burns, Steve Martin and Donald Pleasance attempt to sing — for proof. Big rock operas like Tommy and Pink Floyd: The Wall have their place, but “fun” might not be the word to use for a movie where Bob Geldof shaves off his eyebrows, wears Nazi regalia, and is lectured by a giant animated pair of buttocks.

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School came out only a year after Sgt. Pepper’s but feels worlds apart, more akin to ‘50’s teen-rebellion movies — even the title reminds you of teensploitation classics like High School Confidential  and Don’t Forget The Rock — than anything resembling the excess of the ‘70’s. Produced by Roger Corman and directed by rock junkie Allan Arkush, who worked at the legendary Fillmore East in the late ‘60s, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is by far the best rock comedy ever made— and on the short list of Best Music Films ever. All of the jokes — even the incredibly broad ones — work, the sight gags are inspired, the characters are well-drawn and, most importantly, the music is across-the-board great. Thank God that Arkush overrode Corman’s initial wishes for this to be “Disco High.”

        
 Rock ‘n’ Roll High School stars P.J. Soles, fresh off Halloween, as Riff Randall, a rebellious senior at Vince Lombardi High, whose love of rock music gets her in hot water with autocratic principal Miss Togar (Mary Woronov, who was part of Andy Warhol’s “Factory” a decade earlier) and music teacher Mr. McGree (Corman’s New World Pictures mainstay Paul Bartel). A ‘50’s-esque subplot details a budding relationship between nerdy quarterback Tom Roberts (Vincent Van Patten) and Riff’s brainiac friend Kate Rambeau (Dey Young) that’s being set up by the weaselly Eaglebauer (a never-better Clint Howard). It’s all tied together by the music of The Ramones, whose blistering punk, once so threatening, sounds cute and melodic now; The late Joey Ramone may have had the one of the ugliest mugs in rock, but the fantasy sequence in which Riff dreams that the band is serenading her to the plaintive tune of “I Want You Around” — the lanky Joey lumbers around her room while she finds Dee Dee Ramone playing bass in the shower — is genuinely sweet and charming.

The movie is filled with big laughs and great visuals, including a running gag involving rock music’s destructive influence on mice that pays off with a giant punk mouse (designed and played by then-19-year-old FX guru Rob Bottin) turning up at the climactic Ramones show. The Ramones are miserable actors, but they lend the movie a rough charm that wouldn’t have worked with more polished acts like Cheap Trick and Van Halen (!), both of whom were considered before the Ramones were suggested to punk fan Arkush by Sire Records head Seymour Stein. The Ramones, whose punk ethic was more ‘60’s garage than angry or political, are the heart of the movie— whether rocking down the corridors of Vince Lombardi High or arriving to a crowd of adoring fans in a convertible driven by LA music ambassador Rodney Bingenheimer, we immediately recognize why Riff Randall loves them so much. They’re not threatening; they’re just cool.

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is the debut film in Shout! Factory’s series of “Roger Corman Cult Classics,” which includes much of Corman’s New World output; titles out this summer include Suburbia, Death Race 2000, Piranha, and Battle Beyond The Stars. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School has been previously issued on laserdisc and a lack-luster DVD from Buena Vista; the newest release — available on DVD and Blu-Ray — blows them out of the water. Technically, the movie has never looked better— the new transfer, particularly the Blu-Ray, is fantastic, and it’s hard to imagine this looking as good back when it was first shown in drive-in double bills with The Who’s The Kids Are Alright.

DVD producer Cliff MacMillan has pulled together a strong bunch of extras— all of the supplements from previous versions, including the solid “Back To School” retrospective from the Buena Vista release, have been included, along with two new audio commentaries, one from Allan Arkush, P.J. Soles and Clint Howard and another from writers Richard Whitley and Russ Dvonch, both of whom appear in the film (Dvonch is the hapless Freshman who is constantly abused throughout the movie). “Staying After Class,” a new featurette where Vincent Van Patten meets up with Dey Young and PJ Soles at Calabasas High School, is charming. We learn that PJ Soles kept her iconic satin-jacket-and-colored-tights costume, which her daughter has worn for Halloween, and that James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd were production assistants on the film and delivered coffee to the actors! It’s clear that, as hard as Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was to pull together — Arkush collapsed from exhaustion on the second-to-last day of filming and Joe Dante had to finish the shoot — that it was a labor of love for all involved. “Why are we making this edition?” Arkush, now a venerable TV director and producer, asks in a new interview segment. “It’s another way of bringing things around full circle and pointing out how that the stuff that you do because you love becomes the good stuff.”

Equally amazing is the long-awaited first-time video release of The T.A.M.I. Show. If Rock ‘n’ Roll High School hearkens back to an earlier age of rock innocence, it’s of the era of The T.A.M.I. Show, which, short for “Teenage Awards Music International,” was a massive concert held for two nights, October 28 and 29, 1964 and edited together into a feature released two months later. The movie is watching for marquee value alone— we get everyone from Chuck Berry to The Beach Boys to Marvin Gaye to James Brown to an impossibly young-looking Rolling Stones, all on the same stage. 

But it’s the performances that make this movie one for the rock canon— concert movies like Monterey Pop and Woodstock have inspired moments, but for every blistering solo by Jimi Hendrix, you’ve got to sit through a lot of Canned Heat. Here, everyone is great, even bands that have faded into obscurity like Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas. It’s amazing to learn on the trailer commentary by John Landis — who, as a seventh grader, was in the audience — that that teen singer Lesley Gore was the show’s biggest draw.

                      
 Hosted by Jan & Dean (who play “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” and “Sidewalk Surfin’”), the show is one band after another coming onstage, surrounded by go-go dancers that include a very young Teri Garr. The house band is the legendary “Wrecking Crew,” a group of session musicians orchestrated by Jack Nitzsche that include Glen Campbell and Tommy Tedesco on guitar, Hal Blaine on drums and Leon Russell on keyboards. Chuck Berry starts things out playing “Johnny B. Goode,” while Gerry & The Pacemakers sing their hit “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying.” But the show doesn’t really come to life until we see Smokey Robinson and The Miracles sing “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me,” followed by Marvin Gaye busting out with “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow” and “Can I Get A Witness.” In an era where racial segregation was still a way of life in America, seeing Motown artists such as The Supremes butting up against The Beach Boys and garage rockers like the fantastic, largely unknown Barbarians (with their one-handed drummer Victor “Moulty” Moulton and his drumstick prosthesis) was nothing short of revolutionary.

The T.A.M.I. Show has long been bootlegged, but often in incomplete versions which cut off The Beach Boys’ terrific performance, which include “Surfin’ USA” and “I Get Around.” Singer Mike Love looks hopelessly square as he dances stiffly on stage, but Dennis Wilson completely tears up his drum kit and it’s great to see the oft-tortured Brian Wilson look like he’s having a blast.  The Supremes’ medley of their early hits is transcendent but feels somewhat truncated, making way for by far the best act of the entire show: James Brown & The Famous Flames, who just dominate the entire show. Brown’s performance of “Night Train” is something that has to be witnessed to be believed— he’s a literal force of nature as he dances and shimmies around the stage. It’s up there as one of the greatest rock moments in history.

The Rolling Stones — with a particularly feral-looking Brian Jones on guitar — follow with an R&B-inspired set that fits in with the rest of the show, but despite a fantastic “Time Is On My Side,” and “It’s All Over Now,” it feels like anticlimactic after Brown’s set. Jagger’s charisma is in full effect, however, and it’s amazing to see Keith Richards long before hard living set in. When all of the artists congregate on stage as the Stones play “I’m Alright” and you see Dennis Wilson carried across the stage by his bandmates and James Brown dancing next to Florence Ballard of The Supremes while Lesley Gore prances around The Stones’ Brian Jones and Bill Wyman, you can’t help but feel grateful that this once-in-a-lifetime show has finally made its way — complete and with a sharp anamorphic widescreen transfer — to home video.

You could do a lot worse than a double-bill of The T.A.M.I. Show and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. Rock movies don’t get much better— or much more fun. 

Get Rock 'n' Roll High School and The T.A.M.I. Show Collector's Edition via Amazon.