I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it’s right here on your very

own Internet.

It’s My Damn

Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry

Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a

driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was

(Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely
entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance
Party" — a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a
budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well

worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs

from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking a recliners.

"I can’t compete with the set-up on Letterman" Was says with a laugh.

"But doing something like this, we asked, ‘What could we offer that’s different?’

The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations
of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from
their sponsors’ businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who
owns the store," he says. "It’s just the right combination of terribly
wrong and ‘Yes! We should be doing this.’"

It works — and, yes,
having sponsorship helps — where so much of today’s Internet video
content doesn’t. "I’m worried that in a DIY culture people can just
throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you

shouldn’t put up crap just because you can."

Was’s channel offers songs for download — Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project

after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song

"San Francisco" here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet

was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American

Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new

single, "I Wanna

"That show was really awful — Fox has already

turned politics into sports, and now they’ve done it with music too," he says.

"Rocket will last longer than that show."

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Was (Not Was), by the way, has a new album "Boo!" due on April 8. More on

this later, but it’s funk-on-a-bender. The group has a Feb. 14 show at the Orpheum, too,

which will feature three-song appearance by both Brian Wilson and Kris

Kristofferson.