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  VULTURE: When Richie comes into the office at one point, he’s told that he’s missed calls from Lester Bangs and David Geffen. The episode doesn’t say whom he phones back first, but as Vinyl plays out, that choice will be key to the future of American Century. Who’s more important: A critic advocating for the raw poetry of primitive rock ‘n’ roll, or a music executive stoking the star-maker machinery behind popular songs? ___ The Zeppelin-poaching storyline piggybacks on a real piece of rock history. The band’s original Atlantic contract expired in 1973, and other labels scrambled to sign […]

  BY JONATHAN VALANIA Lee Fields may well be the slowest-rising star in show business — he’s certainly among the sweetest. At 63, an age when most artists of his style and stature have long since been put out to pasture, Fields’ career is just now catching fire, after decades of fits and starts — and even a premature retirement in the 80s — stretching back to his first recording in 1969. Which works out well because everybody knows that happy endings in show biz come to those who see it as a marathon, not a sprint. And by anyone’s […]

TECH CRUNCH: To create the video, the S7 Airlines plane flew up and down in a wave-like path. This parabolic motion created the sensation of zero gravity for the band members who were free-falling inside the plane. Parabolic flights have been around for decades. They’ve been used to train astronauts, conduct science experience, shoot movies like Apollo 13, and even conduct photo shoots like Kate Upton’s famous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit ZeroG shoot. During parabolic flights passengers experience periods of hypergravity (typically around 1.8 times gravity) and microgravity (close to 1 millionth the force of gravity you feel while standing on the surface of Earth). Typically, […]

  FRESH AIR: I’m Terry Gross. My guest, Zach Galifianakis, stars in the new FX comedy series “Baskets.” He co-created the show with Louis C.K., who’s also one of the executive producers. Galifianakis co-starred in “The Hangover” movies. In “Birdman,” he played the producer and right-hand man of Michael Keaton’s character. Galifianakis created the web series “Between Two Ferns,” a satirical interview show on the Funny Or Die website, in which he plays the disaffected host who asks inappropriate questions to his celebrity guests. The guests are real celebrities who appear as themselves. His most famous guest was President Obama. […]

Artwork by IAN KAY THE NATION: The love affair between black folks and the Clintons has been going on for a long time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president. He threw on some shades and played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. It seems silly in retrospect, but many of us fell for that. At a time when a popular slogan was “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand,” Bill Clinton seemed to get us. When Toni Morrison dubbed him our first black president, we nodded our heads. We had our boy in […]

Hall & Oates play the BB&T Pavillion — formerly known as the Susquehanna Bank Center — in Camden on July 10th. Tickets go on sale on Friday Feb. 12th. ROLLING STONE: The Blue Jean Committee then reveal they used to tease and prank Hall & Oates because they were from Philadelphia, but there is some lasting bitterness between the two duos. “The minute they hit it big, they just left us in the dust,” Honus says. “They don’t really talk to us anymore, and that was a real Philly thing to do.” MORE

  HUFFINGTON POST: If you want to dismiss the Sanders campaign, you can choose between two lines of attack. You can join Paul Krugman at the New York Times, asserting that governing is too hard for an idealistic democratic socialist: Sanders doesn’t seem built for compromise, and his proposals lack detail. And governing, as opposed to campaigning, is all about compromise and detail. Endorsing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, the Times editorial board marveled, “Mrs. Clinton has done her homework on pretty much any issue you care to name.” Homework, you see. That’s the ticket; not staying out after […]