So You Wanna Be a Rock Star? Here’s a Show for You

“FarmClub.com,” which premieres tonight on the USA Network, is a quirky hybrid of a show--at one moment “Club MTV” meets “Star Search,” at another “American Bandstand” and publisher’s sweepstakes.

Or, suggests participant Glenn Rubinstein outside the show’s industrial-spaceship set on a Universal Studios sound stage before taping Friday, “It’s a little ‘Behind the Music,’ ‘120 Minutes,’ ‘Club MTV’--and maybe ‘Queen for a Day.’ ”

That’s queen as in Freddy Mercury and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” not as in big hats and Buckingham Palace. Before the night is over, Rubinstein’s band, Headboard, will be the first act to be crowned on the new venture and the first to get a shot at fulfilling “FarmClub.com’s” game-show-like slogan: “Somebody’s gonna get a record deal.”

The Petaluma rap-pop quintet was on the verge of breaking up just two months ago despite a relatively high presence on the Internet via the MP3.com site. But then it was hand-picked by the FarmClub staff and its Universal parent, the new music-Internet firm called Jimmy and Doug’s FarmClub, to be highlighted on the debut of the weekly, hourlong showcase, which got a prime spot following USA’s popular World Wrestling Federation “Monday Night Raw.”

So here’s Headboard in a taped bit with show co-host Matt Pinfield (ex-MTV) knocking on their door Ed McMahon-style. Here’s the band making its national TV debut--its anywhere TV debut--performing in a lineup on tonight’s show that also includes hip-hop superstars Dr. Dre, Eminem and Xzibit, boy-band heartthrobs 98 Degrees and rising dance music singer Sonique the first signing to the FarmClub label. And here they are hanging out with Pinfield and co-host Ali Landry (current Doritos bombshell). Off screen, the band gets a real look from the record label, which holds a short-term option for a contract.

It’s the American Dream, a la rock ‘n’ roll.

“This is about some guy in the Virginia hills writing songs and has no interest in or knowledge of show-business agents or lawyers but can say, ‘Hey, maybe I can get someone at a major label to hear my music,’ ” says Doug Morris, chairman of Universal Music Group and with Jimmy Iovine, co-chair of Universal’s Interscope labels group, founder and head of the FarmClub enterprise.

Simultaneous with the show’s debut, is the official launch of its Web site, a place where musicians anywhere in the world can upload music and have it assessed by FarmClub talent scouts looking for new acts, as well as by consumers, whose voting will determine some of the performers getting a shot on TV. The site, stresses Iovine, also includes a sort of personals section for musicians looking for collaborators.

But if the Web site is about artists being able to make direct connections to a major record company, the TV show is about the record company making a direct connection to consumers--while maximizing the synergy of today’s multifaceted corporate arrangements.

“We said, ‘How do we start a record company that seems like tomorrow’s record company?’ ” says Iovine.

Part of the answer was to give it its own mass-media vehicle. So this show is very much an infomercial for the FarmClub and Universal Music.

“Record companies are heavily dependent on radio promotion and publicity,” says Andy Schuon, former Warner Bros. Records general manager and MTV programming executive, who has been appointed FarmClub president.

“We’ll take bands who are on the TV show and on our site to the public directly, and we’ve also got a deal for them to be featured on America Online,” he says.

At the same time, the show, if successful, will bring revenue to the FarmClub via advertising.

“We develop these stars and they go on ‘Letterman’ or ‘Leno’ and generate advertising for them and we never see any of it,” Morris says. “This way some of it comes to us.”

Though the first show’s acts are all--save for Headboard--Universal acts, future ones will also feature artists from competing companies. Still, expect an emphasis on Universal music. And that means Universal can make up the rules. For example, next week’s show will feature the world premiere of Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” video, which Morris says MTV has declined to air because it is “a little too hard for them.”

So it seems a case where potentially everyone wins. Unless, of course, it turns into a rock and rap version of “The Gong Show.”

“FarmClub.com” premieres tonight at 11 on the USA Network.