We’re back with episode 3 of Vinyl, let’s see what Richie and his gang are up to right after some spoilers

Last week we learned a bit about Devon (borrring so far), the Nasty Bitz have a shot with Richie coming up, if Julie doesn’t wreck it with his stupid “All Day and All of the Night” (great song, NOT punk), Richie’s keeping the company and he’s after Lester Grimes who was hit IN THE THROAT while going through contract negotiations with goombahs. All caught up?

Side note: Lester was D’August (guess) on Girls in season 4! He was the genius writer with the faux-street-cred in the Iowa undergrad writing class, yay!

An extremely lame band with gratuitously wide lapels at the awards banquet for Maury Gold (guy that gave Richie a shot and stole Lester back in the day); Richie gets roasted for not selling his useless record label and it can’t have been a surprise, given how every other record company owner was made fun of…but we get manly jaw clenching anyway.

Ahhhhh because he hasn’t told Devon yet! What the hell is wrong with these TV husbands?? Walter White, Don Draper, Richie Finestra: THIS is why women end up on ID: subtitled the How To Kill Your Wife Channel: tell yo wife what’s going on!! She MAD and drinks defiantly, which is not the best way for a recovering alcoholic to deal with problems, but, you know, pretty expected at this point.

Richie jumps all over the comedian Jackie Jervais (Ken Marino), trying to find out his source for that info, but, I mean. His whole company knows and he just fired 40% of his support staff. Who would you wager has more time to gossip than unemployed people with a grudge? Anyone?

Jackie’s another record label owner, not a comedian, my bad, and he just stole Dusty Springfield and man! This show is gonna make me look up how artists are doing in early 1973!

Richie figures the BEST time to talk to Maury about Little Jimmy Little Lester is in the can; but it goes poorly, as most bathroom consultations do.

We’re back with Lester and Richie in Lester’s dive, he’s the Super there and I don’t get it. His voice is raspy, but it’s still good. Maybe better even. They have an emotionally charged cage match of a conversation, lots of things lobbed across the water. That was 8 metaphors in one and you’re welcome. At least Lester is still innit, somewhat, he’s managing a band and sending DJs out. Finally: what do you WANT Richie?

Richie’s got the tapes for his unreleased blues tracks back in the day, he wants to release and promote them and I’m wrong, Lester says he couldn’t even sing at his mother’s funeral, so it’s much worse than “raspy,” my bad.

Finally, the gloves are off and they yell and I can’t see Richie not getting his way, the silver tongued debbil with the giant brass balls, but he seems stressed reliving it in the bathroom and why, exactly, were seventies sinks made out of plastic fake-marble? For the love of

Devon is organizing a fundraising dinner to fix the roof of a barn for a dance company, headed by the mysterious and sexay Libor. I don’t understand any of that, but I’m sure it shall all become clear in the fullness of the next 45 minutes.

Richie’s back at the office, Joe Corso has called about a matter of mutual interest so Richie drinks: worst poker face in the business. A bump of coke later and he’s ready to roll!

A&R is going through their roster; they cut Terry Jacks?? Dafuq?? They’re keeping Grand Funk for the remaining 6 months and cut Johnny Winter?? I may be too emotional about these bands, need to take a step back; I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

The meeting is interrupted by Richie’s secretary CeCe (Susan Heyward – yay, finally has enough lines that I can find her on IMDB!) saying that a super-persistent accountant for Zak is on the line…?

Richie tells them to record a Christmas album with Robert Goulet (and Elliot Gould? Whet?) and Sister Mary Melissa and I’m a leetle surprised I haven’t heard anything about the random anti-semitism that runs through every episode so far.

Lester is supervising his DJ Herc at what looks like a retirement home mixer; the old dewds don’t understand: stop changing the music and let the whole song play! PREACH!!!

In the studio, two extremely similar-looking singers with matching handlebar mustaches and mullets are putting us all to sleep, but especially Clark; bet those Jamie Vine uppers would be AWESOME right now. He scoots to pee; running into Alice Cooper in the hallway. I bet AC was a huge get back then, go gettim, tiger!

Clark braces him about a solo career, maybe tweaking something, hmm, he gets to hold Alice’s can of Budweiser while he pees, awww.

Nasty Bitz is playing their nice, safe song; Jamie jumps in to tell them to stop, they don’t sound like themselves! Julie keeps being a misogynist ahole, though technically Jamie IS the sandwich girl, she’s been assigned to help promote these guys, not get 5 damn bologna sandwiches.

They’re at the bottom of a restaurant supply warehouse, in walks who must be Jamie’s mom, because Jamie starts hustling the gang out the door as fast as she can. Mom starts calling the cops, calling Jamie a “blonde prostitute” in the process. Families are tough, y’all

Back at Chez Finestra, Devon is wandering around her perfect home, staring at her perfect face in a Warhol portrait and flashing back to before, when she made her first run at working outside the home. Richie tells her to start her own theatre company (but not ballet because she hates ballet) and it’s all making sense up there! ^^^

Richie asks when they’re gonna have another kid…but she wants to start a cultural revolution in Greenwich and then moar improbable married sex.

Richie is working on how to spin the loss of the record label sale and 70% of their artists; so far they’re coming up with a new name and label; rocket and future related but not atomic or blastoff or anything else outdated.

Joe Corso has shown up in Richie’s label, with a short turn of the screw he presents Nora, who “got a voice like a gazelle” and I don’t think that means what he thinks it does, but he thinks she’s the next Petula Clark. Richie isn’t so sure, but Joe knows he has him by the short and curlies for the foreseeable future, so “fcuks like a dolphin” Nora is in. I don’t think he means that either, dolphins are noisy and take a dim view of personal space.

Alice Cooper and Clark are talking at Plato’s (where apparently all 70s business is conducted) and awwww it’s so nice to see more real bewbs! I’m no foobie-hater, but I like it when there are ALL kinds of body types around and all foobies do is make everything look exactly the same. And they bounce really strangely on Gigolos.

Clark is doing his best to keep a female orgy member off his junk, while pitching his deal to Alice, who’s been having trouble with his bandmates. They’re jelly and he’s Gwen Stefani , if you know what I mean but Clark has a plan: hire groupies for them too! And I don’t think that’s exactly groupie-ing, izzit? Alice insists that Clark drinks as much as he…no way this will go well

He manages to offend Johnny Thunder (?) by trying to high five him for selling out the Whiskey in 5 hours; he’s an Artist! You think he cares about box office? Whatever, ho. Alice calls Daddy Issues and I didn’t know MEN had those too!?!

Devon is asking for 10k (of the 20k Richie promised) and he’s dodging that bullet, offering free music or some shite and Devon is starting to get mad AND worried. I’m distracted by Bobby Cannavale in nothing but his ginch. It turns into one of those Marriage Arguments we got to see so often in Spotless (I miss Spotless); he minimizes her work (it’s NOT a dance troupe, it’s a group of world-renowed artists that she helped escape Russia with her “sponsorship”) and she throws him out of her bedroom (whut?) for not funding it while wee Jenna comes to find out why Mommy and Daddy are fighting again.

Alice and Clark are golfing now, in what? Day 2 of Clark’s solo pitch? He’s got a snake wrapped around his neck and I have a sneaking suspicion that Alice is just fcuking with him…Eve Marie Snake is squeezing and he’s holding another Budweiser and Clark. Cut your losses, man

Back at his apartment, Lester shows us that the hook has caught…he digs up his old guitar and whisper-sings some blues while he imagines how it could have been. Soooo raspy.

Devon said she HATED the ballet, is that what her world-renowned dance troupe is? She’s gone to Andy for money, huh. He wants to video her again, and she wants to sell the picture of her face to raise the money, so he needs to sign it. To give it value. It’s a very awkward meeting and there is a very strange vibe between them that I think is partially due to how John Cameron Mitchell is portraying Andy. Fey with barely-hidden malice. Odd

Richie is working on his new label name when Maury Gold and his goombah partners roll in; is he gonna get Little Jimmy Little?? SO MANY CASUAL RACIAL SLURS. They’re not here about that though, they want to know about the cop who came by looking for info from Richie. Did he rat about Jimmy Porter? Is Richie gonna use LJL as leverage for not talking?? They offer him money, but that’s not really an offer, izzit? And they’re out and he doesn’t get his Lester Grimes masters, if that is what he was after in the bathroom.

Oh hey, Buck’s been found and it isn’t pretty.

Alice is recording a video, and hey! This Alice sounds pretty good! But his crewmember has the best line of the show: “How many melons must give their lives to satisfy your ego?” and now it’s time for the denouement of the charade that has kept Clark going lo these past few hours. Alice carefully lays out every single promise that Clark promised him, starting with “bunch of schmucks standing behind Alice” and ending with Clark being shoved into a guillotine that he just saw eviscerate a watermelon.

The thing is, Alice Cooper, the BAND, got together 7 years ago and they had NOTHING, but somehow they got a meeting with Richie, spending their life savings to come across the country to make it, and…Richie never showed. Revenge, thy name is Clark’s pee-soaked pants.

Devon is showing off her signed Warhol and soaking up all the “angel from Heaven” praise and oh! They need another 20k and they tell her to go get Warhol to do another dyptych which only SOUNDS like dickpic. You don’t have the cash to play with these peeps, Dev.

Kip and Jamie are drinking at a pub

Before Nasty Bitz’s showcase, Jefferson Starship is there in Sniper? My friend Slim would KILL at this show, she was friends with a lot of bands for a loooong time. And Nasty Bitz are up! They start with the Kinks and they sound…okay, right? No raw energy. Richie starts flying off the handle at Julie, but Jamie steps in and takes the blame then runs to the stage to tell the band to play their own material, which is memorable if only for the line “prison bruised sweet box” bravo, lads. Um and then face carving while I was just liking it a little. Sigh. The 70s sucked for women.

Richie tells Julie to sign them and Julie wants to know what the FCUK just happened. I fear Julie won’t make it far into this new music scene.

Richie is home and drugging and reluctantly putting in the tape of Nora, she of the gazelle-like voice; Joe calls. They’ve found Buck and now go listen to the tape! She sounds…like a dolphin?

And we oot. Huh. Interesting story this time, outside of Devon. I can’t seem to get invested in her no matter how many things I can identify with in her life. The music is so compelling and I SO wanna hear Lester sing again! Totally aiming for raspy, away from completely and irrevocably damaged. Until next time, ScriptKiddies!