Damon Pampolina

Damon Philip Pampolina (born April 6, 1975) is a former actor, singer, and DJ working in the Los Angeles and Houston area of the United States. He is currently selling real estate in the Southern California area.

Early life

Pampolina was born in 1975 to Philip Pampolina, a popular DJ in the Galveston Bay Area of Houston, and Ginger Pampolina, a real estate agent in the affluent Houston neighborhood of Clear Lake. He has one sister, Carla.

Pampolina attended school in the Bay Area including Weber Elementary and Clear Lake Intermediate. His public and higher education has been interrupted several times throughout his life due to the demands of working in the entertainment industry. Growing up, Damon showed clear musical talent, especially with percussion instruments and had a 36 piece drum set his father bought him for Christmas. He constantly performed and won talent shows throughout his youth. In his early teens he helped his father DJ parties and soon began the practice himself.

Mickey Mouse Club and musical career

In the late eighties, the Pampolinas encouraged Damon to try out at several auditions in the Houston area. One led to the "The All New Mickey Mouse Club", shot by Disney Studios in Orlando, Florida. Damon passed all auditions and became a mouseketeer.

In the early nineties, Pampolina along fellow Mouseketeers Deedee Magno, Tiffani Hale, Chase Hampton and Albert Fields formed a band, The Party. Disney recorded and distributed four albums featuring productions by such notables as Dr. Dre and cover tunes from such bands a as The Who. The group garnered considerable success during their existence and a greatest hits compilation was released in 1997. A tour followed each album that had "The Party" opening for such acts a Vanilla Ice and Color Me Badd. In 1993, Disney canceled The Party's contract despite growing record sales other popular like-minded bands like The New Kids on the Block. The band dissipated, seeking separate fortunes.

Twenty-first century

Pampolina returned briefly to the Houston area to DJ again before going to the L.A. area to find work. He landed several TV commercials, including a popular Saturn commercial that featured Damon as a satisfied Saturn owner going to all the dealerships for free donuts.

After 2000, Damon returned to the Houston area again to work as a DJ, modifying and updating his own and his father's equipment for digital music. Philip Pampolina remains a very popular DJ in the Houston area and is busy with parties ranging from weddings to club raves.

In 2005, Damon gave up the music biz for real estate, a trade he learned from his very successful mother. Intelligently his first stint was in Florida taking advantage of that area's unprecedented boom, he did quite well. He learned the trade and in a short while became a top producing sales manager and manned a Real Estate/Real Estate Finance department in Hollywood, FL based Vesta Home Loans. He took this experience and once more moved to the Southern California area to work for a childhood friend in the expensive West Coast market.

As he continues to work in real estate, 2007 could be a return to music and the entertainment industry in some respects. Damon was personally interviewed by E! for an "E! True Hollywood Story" on "MMC", which first aired on June 10, 2007. He talked about a new MySpace-like service for hopeful actors and artists that he just launched, called Street Network TV (StreetNetworkTV.com). The site allows artists with any kind of talent to create a profile, display their work through video and sound clips, with the chance to network with other artists. Anyone's material has the chance to be included on a rotation of distributed DVDs sent out over the entire nation, in hopes of attracting talent agents, among others.

Pampolina has also reunited, professionally, with long-time friend and fellow mouseketeer/Party member Albert Fields, for a new hip-hop project called Ndecent Proposal. The two have already started promoting their new venture, especially on MySpace (with videos later showing up on YouTube) which features clips from the upcoming album's cornerstone single "To The Bed". Currently, Damon and Albert (who just adopted the new monikers "Snoman & the Bandit", respectively, for album purposes) are working on an indie label, but this could change if they decide to meet with other record companies.

Citations

*The Wonderful World of Disney Television by Bill Cotter, ISBN 0-7868-6359-5
*The Mickey Mouse Club at the Internet Movie Database
*MMC at the Internet Movie Database
*Classic TV - The Mickey Mouse Club
*The New Mickey Mouse Club Renaissance Project
*Walt Disney Treasures: The Mickey Mouse Club at UltimateDisney.com
*Mickey Mouse Club: Best of Britney, Justin & Christina at UltimateDisney.com
*Karen's New Mouseketeers Page
*New Mickey Mouse Club.com
*Original Mickey Mouse Club
*www.allmusic.com
*Weber Elementary Yearbook, 1985-88