Don Was channels his music straight toward your browser

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 at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup 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' 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 Love You."

"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 appearances by both Brian Wilson and Kris Kristofferson.