I DON'T WANT TO GROW UP

Tom Waits. Lesser world without him.

Click on his head and enjoy a music video you'd never see on the MTV. In the last century, we were shooting the pilot for ROTTEN TV. One of the early ideas was to get Johnny Rotten to 'review' music videos for his new teleee-vision show. We debated war strategies late one night and stumbled onto the idea that everyone would expect John to HATE every video. Too simple. John decided it was a good idea to actually LIKE at least ONE music video. Tom Waits was the winner.

http://www.lyricstime.com/tom-waits-i-don-t-wanna-grow-up-lyrics.html

http://tomwaits.com/

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DON WAS DELIVERS

Don Was                         Todd Snider                      Dock Ellis

Click Don to get the intro.

Click Todd to get the video.

Click Dock to get more.

Experienced an honor & a thrill a few weeks back in LA. Don Was invited me to visit one of his recording sessions at Henson Recording Studios in LA. The Muppets lair is the former home of the old A&M Records. The site was first known as Charlie Chaplin's movie studio at the turn of the last century.

The Wasmopolitan Cavalcade of Recorded Music is the My Damn Channel house that Don Was built. We're incredibly lucky bastards to have this man creating new music for your ears and eyes.

Today's brand new music is featured on our home page is from Todd Snider. If you're uninitiated, get to his music & his live shows.

We're on the road this weekend with Brother Don to film on location at Detroit's Concert of Colors. Check back here this summer for this live music supporting a most worthy event.

If you're in the Detroit area, or can get there - this weekend's shows are all free.

Don Was Detroit Super Session is LIVE this Sunday night at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit.

7:15 - 8:30 pm

Don Was Detroit Super Session Featuring the house band: Don Was (bass), Luis Rusto (keyboard), Randy Jacobs (guitar), Terry Thunder (percussion), David Was and special guests MC5 guitarist, Wayne Kramer, John Sinclair, Mitch Ryder, Lola Morales, The Muldoons, Sisters Lucas, members of Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, Black Bottom Collective, The Ramrods, Black Merda and other very special Detroit Superstars Motor City Rock, Funk, Jazz, Pop, Soul (USA) A once-in-a-lifetime event! Native Detroiter Don Was returns to lead an all-star cast of high-energy, only-in-Detroit talent. Fresh from the recent Was (Not Was) tour, Don Was (aka Don Fagenson) orchestrates a funky, jazzy, rockin’, soulful musical meltdown in historic Orchestra Hall, featuring John Sinclair, Lola Morales and members of Black Bottom Collective, Sisters Lucas, Detroit Cobras, the Dirtbombs and surprise special guests. Was is a master collaborator, best known for producing mega-watt musicians including Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson and Bonnie Raitt, whose Was-produced Nick of Time scored the 1990 Album of the Year Grammy Award. Was also took home the 1995 Grammy for Producer of the Year. Guaranteed to thrill!

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PRESIDENT BUSH "LIES" ON MY DAMN CHANNEL

Press Release 

 

PRESIDENT BUSH “LIES” ON MY DAMN CHANNEL

Harry Shearer’s “935 Lies” World Premieres Today

 

New York, NY – May 13, 2008 – My Damn Channel World Premieres Harry Shearer’s music video, “935 Lies” today. The song is from Harry Shearer's forthcoming record "Songs of the Bushmen."  See it here.
 

Harry Shearer is an actor, author, director, satirist, musician, radio host, playwright, multi-media artist and record label owner. His work is inside the heads of millions worldwide from The Simpsons, This is Spinal Tap, Le Show, and Saturday Night Live. Shearer plunged into the online universe to become a cornerstone of My Damn Channel.  Each week, Shearer unveils a new political or pop culture satire on his own branded channel.

 

“935 Lies” is filmed in what looks like a corporate meeting held by the publishers of "Modern Liar" magazine. Shearer enumerates, with what looks like either pride or insensate rage, some of the almost one thousand falsehoods uttered by Bush Administration leaders that led us to war.  Oddly, as he does so, he sings about other notable things that come in bunches of a thousand.  And food is served.

 

According to The Center for Public Integrity, “President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.”

 

Harry Shearer said, “If it just helps us all to be better liars in our own lives, this damn war will have been worth it.”

Rob Barnett, founder & CEO of My Damn Channel said, "The most powerful force in the world is not a weapon or a nation but a truth...that we are spiritual beings and that freedom is the soul's right to breathe." Barnett was quoting President George W. Bush. 
 

“935 Lies” Credits:

Music & Lyrics HARRY SHEARER; Director HARRY SHEARER; Producer KAREN MURPHY; Music Producer/Engineer JOHN FISCHBACH; Director of Photography MATT MINDLIN; Editor MIKE HALE

 

About My Damn Channel:

My Damn Channel is an entertainment studio and new media platform created to empower comedians, musicians and filmmakers to co-produce, distribute and monetize original, episodic video. Artists create content for the My Damn Channel website and for syndication on the most heavily-trafficked online communities and social networks. My Damn Channel has racked up 22 million views, 7 accolades from the 2008 Webby Awards, worldwide media coverage, major national advertisers and blah, blah, blah…Are you still reading? Start exploring now: www.MyDamnChannel.com

Contact:
Maria Diokno

866.424.8864
Maria@MyDamnChannel.com

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PROCRAST-ERRIFIC

Dobrow's Procrast-errific Web Video Destination

Media Reviews for Media People: My Damn Channel

By Larry Dobrow

Published: May 08, 2008

I spend 37 hours per day in front of the computer and have the attention span of a sugared-up first-grader, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I inhale a staggering amount of online video. Indeed, as I craft my masterworks of Western thought and struggle to locate that elusive mot juste ("luftmensch"? "jecoral"?), web video serves as the default procrastination apparatus. Mostly my wanderings lead to Springsteen clips, which I then forward to my similarly Jer-Z-fied pals. We've wasted 7,250 hours on low-res 1978 versions of "Prove It All Night" alone.



So no, I don't have a single regular supplier for my video fix, and I'm probably like the vast majority of web monkeys in that regard. For texty information and illumination and whatnot, there are 15 or so sites I'll check out every day. For video, I unthinkingly go wherever my idiot friends point me.


Happily, I've found a procrast-errific web-video destination in My Damn Channel, a better-realized version of the astronomically hyped, Ferrell-and-Apatow-backed Funny or Die. That's not a slap at Funny or Die, so much as an endorsement of the more comically consistent My Damn Channel. It's all well and good that the Ian Zierings and John Mayers of the world have chosen Funny or Die as their preferred venue for gentle image-tweaking, but such lazy bits pale next to the goodies tucked away in each of My Damn Channel's, uh, channels.


Where Funny or Die throws up a bunch of clips and calls it an afternoon, My Damn Channel showcases a range of distinct personalities. Funnyfolk like David Wain, Harry Shearer and Andy Milonakis get online mini-laboratories to call their own, and use them for everything from low-concept weirdness to wry political commentary. No one channel is like the next, though each shares a twitchy, absurdist comic sensibility that should resonate with fans of Andy Samberg's SNL Digital Shorts, "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and anything involving alumni from MTV's "The State."


My Damn Channel has justly been lauded for the passive-aggressive (and educational!) comic gold that is "You Suck at Photoshop" series and Wain's vigorously quirky "Wainy Days" quest to find his fictional self a gal. The site's less-hyped content -- especially the soap opera spoof "Horrible People" and the self-explanatory "Cookin' With Coolio" -- similarly revels in its own silliness, especially the former's asides about how "a waxed ***hole is a window to the soul."


I also dig Grace, the gal who, for lack of a better way to put it, serves as My Damn Channel's hostess and hype woman. She has the Sarah Silverman I'm-adorable-so-I-can-get-away-with-saying-stuff-about-Hitler-and-weed thing down pat, but doesn't overplay the gimmick -- which makes it all the more rewarding when she sweetly intones "be nice to your mother, because you f*cked up her baby hole." Her presence keeps My Damn Channel from feeling like a guys-only clubhouse, a fate that Funny or Die hasn't been able to avoid.


My Damn Channel even pulls off the nifty trick of being entertaining in its advertising. Don Was' music channel boasts Lincoln as a primary sponsor, for example, but also tapes performances in the grungy "grand showroom of our sponsor, The Furniture Outlet, located in North Hollywood, California, at 13054 Sherman Way ... c'mon down for some great music and some great bargains on love seats and bedroom sets!" A bunch of brands that appeal to homebound drones like me -- iTunes, Wolfgang's Vault, National Geographic Channel -- have been in heavy ad rotation of late, as have web mainstays like Match.com and Peapod. They're all easy fits, just as cellphone tchotchkes and other portable media devices would be. Ads for new movies or records would probably get lost amid all the content, though.


The two potential worries here for marketers? One, that few of the clips are safe for work; and two, that almost none of the humor here is linear, meaning that devotees of Jay Leno and "Two and a Half Men" will furrow their brows in a futile attempt to grasp the punch lines.


In the end, you can easily lose yourself for 45 minutes at a time at My Damn Channel -- in fact, I kinda just now did, courtesy of the Lori McKenna and Jackshit clips on the Don Was channel. I've yet to feel a comparable pull to any other web-video destination not named YouTube, and YouTube's clip quality and smallish viewing window seem primitive nowadays when compared to MDC, Funny or Die, Hulu and the like. If you can visit My Damn Channel without meandering around for awhile, I applaud your self-discipline.

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TRUSTING TALENT pt. 3

We built My Damn Channel with a few of patron saints in mind. Johnny Rotten is usually painted by critics with such a simple brush. Most miss the point. John may often be brutal - but he's alway honest.



During the "Rotten TV" run, we walked the red carpet, as a goof on the way into that year's VH1 Fashion Awards. Out of the corner of his eye, John spotted four important looking humans standing a few feet away from all the action, surveying the scene.

"Who are they!?" - he challenged.... I looked over my shoulder to see Sumner Redstone, flanked by Tom Freston, Judy McGrath & John Sykes. "Don't - just don't," was my hapless request, knowing full well I was screwed. Rotten headed straight for Sumner. He grabbed his hand first. Then he shook the rest & asked the group one simple question: "How much money are you lot all making on this tonight?"

As we turned to walk on, Freston grabbed my arm and offered, "I love that show." It was one of the moments that was supposed to go horribly wrong, and somehow went surprisingly well. Probably just luck.

As we head to Vegas to try to haplessly explain why My Damn Channel trusts our talent - here are a few of our gold-plated rules - we'll think of a few more before tomorrow's event - Wed 4/16 - 2pm - here:

Never lie
Don't hold back bad news
Don't use 'creative input' as an excuse for 'J J" (Job Justification)
Make decisive decisions
Never bait & switch
Communicate constantly
Avoid the 'handlers' - go direct
Be specific
Move fast - no waiting
Work the press
Pay on time - every time
Pick up the check - almost every time

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NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN

Sex Pistols coming back for more this summer. Enjoy!

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JOHN SYKES

Do you remember your first secret Rock & Roll moment? You're in your room, with the door closed. The music's up loud. You're fairly sure you've got at least a few minutes of privacy before one of your parents barges in to shout: "turn it down." Pre-iPod, Pre-Guitar Hero. In that room, in that moment, the music moves you to the mirror. You strap on the imaginary air guitar - for a moment you are the singer and the song.

The rock beast born inside you is a hungry monster that has to be fed. Few take the brave path of opening up that bedroom door and walking out into the world committed to life as "the artist."

Most grow to a certain age where they ignore the hunger long enough to starve the monster to death. These secret settlers head for a straight path to adulthood without causing too much damage. Others have a wellspring of sacred angst that eats them up inside.

Certain rock disciples choose a middle path. This is a road traveled by souls who never stray far away from their original rock inspirations. These souls find careers as DJs, A&R execs, MTV execs, VH1 execs, concert promoters. JOHN SYKES has done ALL of that.



Along the way, he's honored the music; celebrated it; televised it; played it; inducted it; he took us BEHIND THE MUSIC; he POPPED it up; he backed STORYTELLERS, saints & sinners...he even dedicated himself to SAVE THE MUSIC.

It's easy to forget that all the music you love takes at least two steps to get into your head. First, it has to be made - and then it has to have a champion. John is a lifelong fan and champion of great music.

In a world full of bad guys, John's raw enthusiasm and force of will have always overcome mountains. If you're a rock soul looking to lead a life in tune, you're lucky to cross paths with this guy. He's both leader and cheerleader - driven - soulful - smart - and fearless.

Thanks for every help along the way John. The future is damn full of fun. Syked to see your next great vision.

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COOLIO DOES CAROLLA THIS MORNING

live stream at www.971FreeFm.com - Past/Present/Futures about to collide this morning when Coolio does the Adam Carolla Show LIVE instudio at 97.1 FreeFM. Sarah Silverman is also scheduled to appear - also Stuttering John from Howard Stern (& the chin). Pritty good for a Wednesday.

Just picked up the new Newsweek with Michelle Obama on the cover - Coolio is on pg. 14 - opposite the Pope! We're cookin' in the Vatican now.

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WHO IS MY DAMN CHANNEL?

We're still a baby - just six months old - but today's the day we reintroduce ourselves to you.

 

I'm Rob Barnett. The driving idea behind my company gives musicians, filmmakers, actors and comedians the respect they deserve but rarely get from old media. We built an oasis and a launching pad for our stars to create and distribute original, episodic video series on a network of channels here: www.MyDamnChannel.com. We also send the videos off to YouTube, MySpace and into mass syndication on dozens of key outlets.

It's all free to you & our talent is free of corporate interference. Our artists do what they want. We're trusting them to trust their instincts. We're trusting you to tell us when we're on the money and to attack and slap us around when we suck (at photoshop). When you find clips you like - spread 'em & support the cause.

We call this blog, "The Night Feed," because I'm awake in the middle of every night helping my wife feed our 4 month-old twin babes. I'll steal minutes most nights to keep a dialogue going with you about what this is becoming & to thank you for the chance to co-create, communicate, embrace a little freedom, and dream up a very fun gig.

Tonight marks the launch of a whole new look and functions on My Damn Channel to make it easier to play with us. Mega Gigoonda thanks and respect go to Warren, Big Fat Brain, Reborn, Harry, Don, David, Andy, Steve, Coolio, Miles, Jon, Asterisk, Elan, Dead Crow, Karen, Wheelhouse, Paul, Kate, Matt, Matt, Maria, Brad, Kym, Kim, Jahnavi, Lindsey, Eric, Marc, Gary, John, Elinor & Bernie, Mike & Joan, Joan & Mike, Bob & Ruth, Sue, Julia, Jessie, Dylan, and Sara.

...shutting up now.

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SIX MONTHS OLD

Next week, My Damn Channel turns six months old. I'm still awake in the middle of every night feeding two more babies...our twins just passed three months. THE NIGHT FEED blog was born on the night of the writers' strike to add more interaction with the humans behind My Damn Channel. We're about to add a slew of interactive features to all of the channels in two weeks. We're continuing to build this machine to last. We dreamed up the business to get free of as much old thinking as possible about how media is supposed to behave. My Damn Channel has patron saints like John Lydon, still young enough to get in the ring with anyone - still too honest to put up with even a hint of corporate crap. The artists and producers of our 5 channels and everyone who works to put our original videos out every day have touched over 5 million people in the past 5 months. Mark Wednesday, February 6th as the date to check the channels and the blog. The new look will debut. Then the following week of Feb 11 -- 3 new channels join the line-up.

 

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