The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium is owned by the City of Santa Monica and was built in 1958.
The Civic hosted some of the coolest concerts of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Such greats as Supertramp, Eric Clapton, The Kingston Trio, Blue Öyster Cult, Gentle Giant, Laura Nyro, Free, Ambrosia, XTC, Frank Zappa, Traffic, Prince, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and so many more.
On October 28th and 29th, 1964, the “T.A.M.I. Show” was held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Both nights of the concert were filmed, and released by American International Pictures as a concert film on December 29, 1964.
Jan and Dean emceed the event and performed its theme song, “Here They Come (From All Over the World)”. Throughout the show, go-go dancers performed in the background or beside the performers. Among them were Teri Garr and Toni Basil.
The list of performers at the T.A.M.I. Show included:
The Barbarians
The Beach Boys
Chuck Berry
James Brown and the Famous Flames
Marvin Gaye (with backing vocals by the Blossoms)
Gerry & the Pacemakers
Lesley Gore
Jan and Dean
Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
The Rolling Stones
The Supremes
The Eagles had three consecutive shows here during The Long Run Tour on July 27–29, 1980. These shows were recorded and featured on their live album, Eagles Live.
Notable concerts at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
12/17/2011 – Bad Religion
12/16/2011- Social Distortion & X
5/13/2011 – Incubus
1/29/2008 – Joan Baez
11/29/2008 – Jackson Browne
9/3/2008 – Bob Dylan
1/17/2008 – Lenny Kravitz
12/13/2005 – Bare Naked Ladies
7/22/2000 – Berlin
5/25/2000 – Crosby & Nash
1/15/2000 – Little Richard
8/15/1999 – Iron Butterfly
8/13/1999 – Missing Persons
2/21/1999 – Crosby, Stills & Nash
3/15/1998 – Warren Zevon
2/21/1998 – Carole King
12/11/1981 – Fran Zappa
12/8/1981 – DEVO
7/22/1977 – Poco
2/10/1979 – Spirit
2/18/1977 – The Kinks
4/1/1976 – Supertramp
9/26/1975 – Procol Harum
2/20/1971 – The Beach Boys
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
1855 Main St.
Santa Monica CA 90401
310 458-8551
Ambrosia rocked the Civic with a Brilliant performance in 1977.
PHepple, I was at that concert! I believe they opened with Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles. They put on a great show.
Saw a ton of shows over the years at the Santa Monica Civic but David Bowie with the Spiders From Mars blew me away! One of the all time best concerts anywhere.It was also fun to see Patti Smith there playing to so many people after playing the small room at The Roxy several times before.
Location of last real concert for Spirit, Randy pushed Neil Young off stage! Jay and Mark played
but we’re already members of Jo jo Gunne.