BUMPING INTO GENIUSES

"I can't be objective about the music business. I know it hurt a lot of people; artists were often lied to, royalties weren't always paid, bad people sometimes got promoted while good ones were fired. Drugs, misogyny, and death stalked rock and roll. A lot of shlock was produced. A lot of pretense masked shallow, materialistic quests for fame and money. It's not like I don't know these things and it's not that I mind writing about them. It's just that the part of the music business I know best, the rock and roll business, also produced and popularized a lot of music that I love. And it gave me and a lot of my friends a place in the world."

Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside The Rock and Roll Business is the new book by Danny Goldberg.

I bumped into Danny yesterday morning during a visit to 101.9 WRXP in NY. REAL rock radio is back on the dial and on the internetsss. Matt Pinfield and Leslie Fram host the morning show at RXP and showed their true colors by inviting guests including Danny Goldberg, Patrick Wilson from Weezer, and Ray LaMontagne.

BAD times are always GOOD for Rock & Roll. Maybe the new, great depression opens the door for earth-skakin' new sounds.

Yesterday reinforced the power of the music to bring songfilled souls together. And Danny Goldberg inspired me to go buy his book.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/books/review/Rosen-t.html?ref=books

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FAREWELL TO DANNY

This eulogy was delivered by Bruce Springsteen at Danny's funeral on April 21 in Red Bank, New Jersey:

FAREWELL TO DANNY



Let me start with the stories.

Back in the days of miracles, the frontier days when "Mad Dog" Lopez and his temper struck fear into the band, small club owners, innocent civilians and all women, children and small animals.

Back in the days when you could still sign your life away on the hood of a parked car in New York City.

Back shortly after a young red-headed accordionist struck gold on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and he and his mama were sent to Switzerland to show them how it's really done.

Back before beach bums were featured on the cover of Time magazine.

I'm talking about back when the E Street Band was a communist organization! My pal, quiet, shy Dan Federici, was a one-man creator of some of the hairiest circumstances of our 40 year career... And that wasn't easy to do. He had "Mad Dog" Lopez to compete with.... Danny just outlasted him.

Maybe it was the "police riot" in Middletown, New Jersey. A show we were doing to raise bail money for "Mad Log" Lopez who was in jail in Richmond, Virginia, for having an altercation with police officers who we'd aggravated by playing too long. Danny allegedly knocked over our huge Marshall stacks on some of Middletown's finest who had rushed the stage because we broke the law by...playing too long.

As I stood there watching, several police oficers crawled out from underneath the speaker cabinets and rushed away to seek medical attention. Another nice young officer stood in front of me onstage waving his nightstick, poking and calling me nasty names. I looked over to see Danny with a beefy police officer pulling on one arm while Flo Federici, his first wife, pulled on the other, assisting her man in resisting arrest.

A kid leapt from the audience onto the stage, momentarily distracting the beefy officer with the insults of the day. Forever thereafter, "Phantom" Dan Federici slipped into the crowd and disappeared.

A warrant out for his arrest and one month on the lam later, he still hadn't been brought to justice. We hid him in various places but now we had a problem. We had a show coming at Monmouth College. We needed the money and we had to do the gig. We tried a replacement but it didn't work out. So Danny, to all of our admiration, stepped up and said he'd risk his freedom, take the chance and play.

Show night. 2,000 screaming fans in the Monmouth College gym. We had it worked out so Danny would not appear onstage until the moment we started playing. We figured the police who were there to arrest him wouldn't do so onstage during the show and risk starting another riot.

Let me set the scene for you. Danny is hiding, hunkered down in the backseat of a car in the parking lot. At five minutes to eight, our scheduled start time, I go out to whisk him in. I tap on the window.

"Danny, come on, it's time."

I hear back, "I'm not going."

Me: "What do you mean you're not going?"

Danny: "The cops are on the roof of the gym. I've seen them and they're going to nail me the minute I step out of this car."

As I open the door, I realize that Danny has been smoking a little something and had grown rather paranoid. I said, "Dan, there are no cops on the roof."

He says, "Yes, I saw them, I tell you. I'm not coming in."

So I used a procedure I'd call on often over the next forty years in dealing with my old pal's concerns. I threatened him...and cajoled. Finally, out he came. Across the parking lot and into the gym we swept for a rapturous concert during which we laughted like thieves at our excellent dodge of the local cops.

At the end of the evening, during the last song, I pulled the entire crowd up onto the stage and Danny slipped into the audience and out the front door. Once again, "Phantom" Dan had made his exit. (I still get the occasional card from the old Chief of Police of Middletown wishing us well. Our histories are forever intertwined.) And that, my friends, was only the beginning.

There was the time Danny quit the band during a rough period at Max's Kansas City, explaining to me that he was leaving to fix televisions. I asked him to think about that and come back later.

Or Danny, in the band rental car, bouncing off several parked cars after a night of entertainment, smashing out the windshield with his head but saved from severe injury by the huge hard cowboy hat he bought in Texas on our last Western swing.

Or Danny, leaving a large marijuana plant on the front seat of his car in a tow away zone. The car was promptly towed. He said, "Bruce, I'm going to go down and report that it was stolen." I said, "I'm not sure that's a good idea."

Down he went and straight into the slammer without passing go.

Or Danny, the only member of the E Street Band to be physically thrown out of the Stone Pony. Considering all the money we made them, that wasn't easy to do.

Or Danny receiving and surviving a "cautionary assault" from an enraged but restrained "Big Man" Clarence Clemons while they were living together and Danny finally drove the "Big Man" over the big top.

Or Danny assisting me in removing my foot from his stereo speaker after being the only band member ever to drive me into a violent rage.

And through it all, Danny played his beautiful, soulful B3 organ for me and our love grew. And continued to grow. Life is funny like that. He was my homeboy, and great, and for that you make considerations... And he was much more tolerant of my failures than I was of his.

When Danny wasn't causing chaos, he was a sweet, talented, unassuming, unpretentious good-hearted guy who simply had an unchecked ability to make good fortune and things in general go fabulously wrong.

But beyond all of that, he also had a mountain of the right stuff. He had the heart and soul of an engineer. He learned to fly. He was always up on the latest technology and would explain it to you patiently and in enormous detail. He was always "souping" something up, his car, his stereo, his B3. When Patti joined the band, he was the most welcoming, thoughtful, kindest friend to the first woman entering our "boys club."

He loved his kids, always bragging about Jason, Harley, and Madison, and he loved his wife Maya for the new things she brought into his life.

And then there was his artistry. He was the most intuitive player I've ever seen. His style was slippery and fluid, drawn to the spaces the other musicians in the E Street Band left. He wasn't an assertive player, he was a complementary player. A true accompanist. He naturally supplied the glue that bound the band's sound together. In doing so, he created for himself a very specific style. When you hear Dan Federici, you don't hear a blanket of sound, you hear a riff, packed with energy, flying above everything else for a few moments and then gone back in the track. "Phantom" Dan Federici. Now you hear him, now you don't.

Offstage, Danny couldn't recite a lyric or a chord progression for one of my songs. Onstage, his ears opened up. He listened, he felt, he played, finding the perfect hole and placement for a chord or a flurry of notes. This style created a tremendous feeling of spontaneity in our ensemble playing.

In the studio, if I wanted to loosen up the track we were recording, I'd put Danny on it and not tell him what to play. I'd just set him loose. He brought with him the sound of the carnival, the amusements, the boardwalk, the beach, the geography of our youth and the heart and soul of the birthplace of the E Street Band.

Then we grew up. Very slowly. We stood together through a lot of trials and tribulations. Danny's response to a mistake onstage, hard times, catastrophic events was usually a shrug and a smile. Sort of an "I am but one man in a raging sea, but I'm still afloat. And we're all still here."

I watched Danny fight and conquer some tough addictions. I watched him struggle to put his life together and in the last decade when the band reunited, thrive on sitting in his seat behind that big B3, filled with life and, yes, a new maturity, passion for his job, his family and his home in the brother and sisterhood of our band.

Finally, I watched him fight his cancer without complaint and with great courage and spirit. When I asked him how things looked, he just said, "what are you going to do? I'm looking forward to tomorrow." Danny, the sunny side up fatalist. He never gave up right to the end.

A few weeks back we ended up onstage in Indianapolis for what would be the last time. Before we went on I asked him what he wanted to play and he said, "Sandy." He wanted to strap on the accordion and revisit the boardwalk of our youth during the summer nights when we'd walk along the boards with all the time in the world.

So what if we just smashed into three parked cars, it's a beautiful night! So what if we're on the lam from the entire Middletown police department, let's go take a swim! He wanted to play once more the song that is of course about the end of something wonderful and the beginning of something unknown and new.

Let's go back to the days of miracles. Pete Townshend said, "a rock and roll band is a crazy thing. You meet some people when you're a kid and unlike any other occupation in the whole world, you're stuck with them your whole life no matter who they are or what crazy things they do."

If we didn't play together, the E Street Band at this point would probably not know one another. We wouldn't be in this room together. But we do... We do play together. And every night at 8 p.m., we walk out on stage together and that, my friends, is a place where miracles occur...old and new miracles. And those you are with, in the presence of miracles, you never forget. Life does not separate you. Death does not separate you. Those you are with who create miracles for you, like Danny did for me every night, you are honored to be amongst.

Of course we all grow up and we know "it's only rock and roll"...but it's not. After a lifetime of watching a man perform his miracle for you, night after night, it feels an awful lot like love.

So today, making another one of his mysterious exits, we say farewell to Danny, "Phantom" Dan, Federici. Father, husband, my brother, my friend, my mystery, my thorn, my rose, my keyboard player, my miracle man and lifelong member in good standing of the house rockin', pants droppin', earth shockin', hard rockin', booty shakin', love makin', heart breakin', soul cryin'... and, yes, death defyin' legendary E Street Band.

(video tribute to Danny at www.BruceSpringsteen.net)

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RIFFS

• Daily Grace - our new homepage feature from Grace Helbig - & we're turning over more DAMN to you - want sum? - email Grace@MyDamnChannel.com & say whatcha watcha watcha want on this site.

• THE ALPHAS will change the game...Harry Shearer already has...

Hillary & Barack look like they're both about to puke if the campaign goes another day

 

• Fri 4/25 opens up a new chapter in the book of "DONNIE" - amen

• Danny Federici is the newest member of God's best band
•  
• Steven shrunk smaller
• 
• HORRIBLE PEOPLE made history
• 
• Coolio uses too much balsamic
•  
• The Carnival needs more stuff
  
• 
• Was (Not Was) is coming to YOUR TOWN
  
  
• Andy Milonakis is going to turn up da juice
  
  
• Wainy Days - season 3 - is coming in JUNE
• 

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49 MILLION MORE HUMANS GET 'MY DAMN CHANNEL'

Dailymotion Features Exclusive Debut of My Damn Channel's Bedtime Stories Dailymotion, the world's largest independent video sharing site, and My Damn Channel, the entertainment studio and new media platform, today announced a partnership that will bring My Damn Channel's original, professionally-produced episodic video content to Dailymotion's audience of over 49 million users worldwide. New York, NY (PRWEB) March 11, 2008 - Dailymotion, the world's largest independent video sharing site, and My Damn Channel, the entertainment studio and new media platform, today announced a partnership that will bring My Damn Channel's original, professionally-produced episodic video content to Dailymotion's audience of over 49 million users worldwide. Beginning Tuesday, March 11, 2008, Dailymotion will host an exclusive premiere episode of My Damn Channel's newest web series, "Bedtime Stories." Written and co-directed by Steve Kerper, whose previous work includes infamous sketches such as "Raging Bullwinkle" for HBO's "Hardcore TV," each episode of "Bedtime Stories" will offer a provocative retelling of a traditional children's story. The show stars web video cult personality and one-time pole vault medalist Grace Helbig and features illustrations by Asterisk (Saturday Night Live's "TV Funhouse"). In addition to the exclusive "Bedtime Stories" premiere, Dailymotion will now feature My Damn Channel's original comedy and music videos including "Horrible People," a soap opera with an evil, comedic twist written and directed by A. D. Miles ("Wet Hot American Summer"); "Cookin' with Coolio," a production of Dead Crow Pictures featuring hip-hop star Coolio creating his favorite "funkalicious" dishes and "Wainy Days," an hilarious, fictionalized account of comedian David Wain's ("The State," "The Ten") search for romance. My Damn Channel artists also include Harry Shearer, Andy Milonakis, Big Fat Brain ("You Suck at Photoshop") and Don Was. Content from My Damn Channel will be programmed by Dailymotion's creative managers into the site's channels alongside licensed videos from Dailymotion's Official users as well as original videos from the Motionmaker program. This curatorial strategy enables Dailymotion to deliver the highest-quality viewing experience by providing content in a manner that is user-friendly and easy-to-navigate. "We're excited to partner with My Damn Channel, a company that shares our dedication to bringing the freshest and most creative entertainment to the largest audience possible," said Danny Passman, Dailymotion's senior creative director. "We are also elated that they have chosen our site for the premiere of 'Bedtime Stories,' and are confident that our high-quality viewing experience and global audience makes Dailymotion the perfect platform for this debut." "Dailymotion adds massive global reach and effective promotion for our talent and our original videos," said Rob Barnett, Founder & CEO of My Damn Channel. "We found solid partners at Dailymotion to help fuel our mission to rewrite old media rules by allowing major artists to reach tens of millions of fans without any corporate interference." About Dailymotion: A top 30 website worldwide (source: Alexa), Dailymotion is the world's largest independent video entertainment website (source: Alexa; comScore, December 2007). Every day, over 15,000 new videos are uploaded into Dailymotion's global network of localized video entertainment sites, where the site's creative directors turn the user-generated and licensed content into high-quality entertainment for its 50-plus million monthly unique users. In January 2008, Dailymotion registered approximately 800 million video views across its global network. The site's Motionmaker program is designed to identify and encourage the most creative users on Dailymotion. Using the most advanced technology for both users and content creators, Dailymotion provides high-quality video in a fast, easy-to-use Web site that also automatically filters infringing material. Dailymotion's mission is to provide the best possible entertainment experience for users and the best marketing opportunities for advertisers, while respecting content protection. For more information, please visit http://www.dailymotion.com. About My Damn Channel: My Damn Channel is an entertainment studio and new media platform created to empower filmmakers, actors, comedians and musicians to co-produce, distribute and monetize original, episodic video content. Programming is created for the My Damn Channel site (http://www.MyDamnChannel.com/) and for distribution on today's most heavily- trafficked online communities and social networks including YouTube (www.YouTube.com/MyDamnChannel), MySpace, Dailymotion, and others. My Damn Channel gives its artists creative control and produces a diverse array of programming from talent including Harry Shearer, Andy Milonakis, David Wain, Don Was, Coolio, A.D. Miles, Steve Kerper and Big Fat Brain ("You Suck at Photoshop"). My Damn Channel is supported by an advertising revenue model, and by licensing the studio's entire portfolio of content across all forms of digital distribution, including online, mobile, VOD and DVD. ###

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TOM GREEN, ANDY MILONAKIS, & the awesome sandwich is ruined again

Andy Milonakis did the Tom Green show the other night. Tom is a consistent hero. It's likely our damn thing may never have evolved without people like Tom who paved the way. WATCH HIS SHOW - linked below. You'll see Andy as the real man behind the mic. He's an honest, good-hearted, comic rebel. We're lucky to have him on our side. You'll see Milonakis give the nod to Andy Kaufman. See him rap freestyle. See him eat a carrot. See him give the other guest more respect than this blog can allow. An "awesome sandwich" is ruined again as one-note Danny Bonaduce finds it completely impossible to shut his mouth. No guest, no story, no anecdote is safe from interruption as Danny recounts the millionth telling of the same five stories in his repertoire. It's a career built on mocking his own failures. Sad. He nearly wrecked the Adam Carolla show with the same desperate vibe you'll see here: TOM GREEN: http://www.tomgreen.com/?video=944 THE SANDWICH REFERENCE: http://somedudefromjersey.blogspot.com/2007/12/shit-in-my-awesome-sandwich.html ANDY MILONAKIS - "LOVE VEGAS": http://www.mydamnchannel.com/channel.aspx?episode=369

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GAME - SET - MATCH

pop art credit to Colin72

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ADAM CAROLLA

Last weekend, I googled the man I hired for the awesome little job called "replace Howard Stern." I found an anonymous blog that smelled like something rotten was stinking up the kitchen at CBS: http://somedudefromjersey.blogspot.com/2007/12/shit-in-my-awesome-sandwich.html Adam Carolla has a playbook filled with more options and winning strategies than any idiotic morning zoo or any hack program directors can ever hope to create. Danny Bonaduce was a desperate hail mary pass thrown by people too short-sited to see that it took Howard decades to build his radio empire. When Stern first syndicated, it took four years for him to lay waste to the competition. Adam was always first to say that Howard was irreplaceable. I couldn't have agreed more. But when 'the KING' departed for a new throne, someone was left having to figure out how to start over. That someone was me. I went home the night that I was given the ball and told my wife there was good news & bad news. The good news was that I was made President of CBS Radio programming. The bad news is that I had to figure out how to replace Howard. We'll skip the long stories here about who the REAL choice was for NY & save all that for later. The ONLY choice for LA, and for the west coast Stern stations was the man who'd been on Howard's show for scores of LIVE appearances - the man who rocked THE MAN SHOW with Brother Jimmy Kimmel - the man who made LOVELINE a latenight hit - the man with unique comic skills to improv and create immediate compelling content out of every scrap of raw material - the man who can build a house with his bare hands - and you get the drift: C-A-R-O-L-L-A. We gave Adam a new start in a new format called FREE FM. Our mission wasn't complex. Hire BIG talent and give them the support and freedom they need to build better radio on their own terms. People are sick of over-formatted radio with too many commercial interuptions. No breaking news there. Talent is the only answer to better ratings and revenues. But old media doesn't have a terrific track record backing talent. The current writers' strike is front page news that tells the same story in Hollywood. A great drama seems to be unfolding. Morning radio fans in LA, Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, Sacramento, Reno, Fresno, Palm Springs, Portland (Oregon & Maine), Boise, and Pittsburgh wait to find out if Adam Carolla will be back on January 2nd. I'll lay down this bet with a song: Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying 'Tis you, 'tis you must go.

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