We’re back with our dysfunctional gang at Vinyl, let’s find out what E.A.B. means after the break!

Last week Richie gambled away every bit of capital they had and let Zak think he was at fault. That’s it, now they are completely broke.

We open with The Beatles and Here Comes the Sun; Richie, Zak and Skip walk into a bank. Everyone’s laughing, it’s a great time! Zak went to school with Allen the loan officer, CCA alumni (his son is a legacy) who is trying not to tell them how little money they’re good for: nada. There are too many “imponderables” and he can’t do it, not even for old time’s sake.

This is their sixth bank and all Richie can think of is coke; anyone holding? He needs to focus! He built this company USING not ABUSING drugs and that’s what he needs. I mean. After all, such memorable people as Sigmund Freud and Thomas Edison and totally not a real person Sherlock Holmes THRIVED on cocaine! He takes Skip’s coke and abandons them, not even giving them a ride; he needs privacy to call Devon.

Andrea is reviewing Hal’s ideas for Alibi Records, the sub-label.

She doesn’t want to get a new shirt *meaningful up and down look*, they need to be “an assault on the past.” He does not get it. She wants drag queens, fashion models, midgets even, not balloons, cakes in the shapes of records, any of that tired old shite; they are sound, Andrea and he need to be picture. She invokes the Peter Principle: he’s risen to the level of his incompetence. Hal follows her out into the hallway and when she calls him a redundancy, he starts yelling about her fcuking Richie and she fires him. BOOM.

Nasty Bitz are recording and they sound very…Kinks-like. Richie says it’s a sea shanty and yeah, it’s not raw or primal or anything compelling at all. Too sing-songy. The studio owner comes in looking for money, and threatens to kick out the band for having food in the studio. They then throw the food.

Richie warns the band; they have a showcase with The New York Dolls in a month and they are NOT ready. He reminds them; their demo stopped him in his tracks, it connected him to their world, and it was REAL. Not this sea shanty shite. If they DON’T pull a new song out of their asses soon, there won’t be a new label to record it on. So write him a song. Now.

Zak is lunching with the Gary (Douglas Smith), the pianist from the sweet sixteen, dude is very zen, he plays the music so he can feel the kinetic energy connection with the office and as he’s talking, Scott slips in. “Where’d you come from?” “Where did YOU come from” hahaha

I had to go re-watch him sing Life on Mars, because I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. I am a little confused, because I can’t tell if Douglas Smith sang Life on Mars? or if it was Trey Songz, which seems to be all the credits. I don’t know; still gorgeous.

Scott’s brought a contract for Gary Giambetti; and goes right into a full court press. He wants to make him a Bowie knockoff (he says he doesn’t but he’s totally lying – dress for the job you want?) and he is trying to get Gary’s signature, but Gary, well, he’s an artist. He woke up and a song just flowed out of him! He sings it (Am I Human?) right there; his voice is like a bell. Everything stops and everyone listens, Zak going from embarrassed to blown away and then silence. All applaud this strange young man with the beautiful voice. I think Gary will eventually regret not having a lawyer present, should he sign, but there’s always a chance Lester will pick him up as a client as well.

There’s a better than even chance that Scott wants to pick Gary up too, and not as a client.

Richie makes it into the office, where there is no music (put on the radio!) but the Tanqueray has been restocked (thanks CeCe!); arriving at his office to find Joe Corso; he’s not there for Nora with the horrible fcuking voice like a gazelle! The cops came to see him about Buck Rogers. They know about the three of hanging out at the Oasis. Joe gets interesting, saying that Richie killed Buck, but I’m pretty sure that was Joe. Pretty.sure. And THEN he tries to take credit for saving Richie’s life, which involved killing Buck and good thing Richie’s coked to the eyeballs, or he’d be following this better. I hope they’re speaking loudly enough for the microphones the cops left! Speaking of coke, Clark is standing in the doorway just as they get super shouty (no, YOU KILLED HIM!! No, YOU kilt him!!) and how much did he overhear?

Richie doesn’t care though, he just wants more coke, so Jamie must have taken pity on him after all and gave him the lucrative side job as office pharmacist. He frisks Clark for the coke and now he can focus!

Nasty Bitz is not doing so well. Hey! E.A.B. is a chord progression! If I was a musician, I’d probably have gotten that sooner. Lester is tired of the boys whining about there being no notes left (I mean), so he asks them to play that and then SHOWS them what he means. He starts off quiet, still shy of his voice, but he’s trying to show them that a song needs a foundation that they can just throw anything on it, dirty it up, whatever. I knew he sang an original song, the “Woman Like You” at the end! There’s your skeleton, boys, write a song; it ain’t magic.

Skip and Richie are meeting and discussing selling off inventory to other labels, Richie protests when he sees Donnie Osmond (and SLADE!) listed in the deal as “sweeteners.” Skip has the balls to say maybe somewhere someone mebbe is skimming and Richie calls him on it; just as they start to throw down in come the exhilarated duo of Scott and Zak, high from signing Gary. Richie has no idea where the money will come from but Zak says he’ll mortgage his house and he’ll make it work. He wants to make it right and Richie can’t really say too much about that.

A loud noise brings them out of the office, it’s Hal, absolutely losing his shite and drunk off his arse. He smashes gold records while taking credit for musician’s work and hurls invective at Andrea and Richie. None of that is PG-13 or euphamiseable. I don’t think that’s a word. The final straw is when he pulls out a pentagram and curses Richie and everyone else, using the power of Hass and Zorn and anger reborn.

He shakes his pentagram at everyone while leaving, while John Denver’s “Country Roads” plays oh so loudly in the background. Richie yells at Andrea; HE wanted to fire Hal! She defends herself and he calls her “Mussolini with t*ts”; she retorts with “more like a steward on the Titantic” and more door slamming. Skip tells her the honeymoon’s over, that’s so helpful, Skipster!

Kip finds Lester contemplating the universe from the top of the building; they talk and bond a bit while smoking. Lester did write that song, but she was a long time ago. He apologizes for not paying attention to what they were doing, he was just focused on fcuking over Richie and wasn’t really helping them that much, until he was able to let that go. He heard a lot of rage and pain in Nasty Bitz’ early work, what’s that about? Kip also had a Women Like You, that’s why he moved, to get away from his former biggest fan Jane. He asks Lester if he can rearrange and record the song?

Clark and the lone un-fired mailroom guy are fighting again; Dwayne and Rico got fired but Jorge is still there and is stealing records. Jorge suggests they do coke to make the day go faster and I’ve never done coke but the idea of doing it while working a mailroom job sounds like a special kind of hell.

Jorge has been giving the records to a DJ friend and all of a sudden, the music is just so inviting…

What.the.Sam.Hill…Devon and Richie’s kiddos THREW A CAT DOWN THE STAIRWELL because they thought nine lives and just as Delphine the very angry, very skinny artist has all my ire up by screaming that Devon isn’t a fit mother, Estrella the maid walks in and Devon jumps on her to go after the children. She’s staying at the Chelsea. With her children. And the nanny. She has her nanny / housekeeper in an artist’s hotel to take care of her two children while she? The manager says she has to go, but she will have him a cheque that morning! He says it’s the Chelsea, sweethawt, you’re in an artist’s room and with that Greenwich cheque, why aren’t you at the Plaza?

Richie is seeing Maury Gold and how could he work with these guys again?? I know he’s desperate, but it gets worse when he asks about Corrado Golasso, that is straight up TV mafioso caricature right there. We getta watch Corrado strangle someone to death with a lamp cord (use your legs, you’ll never throw your back out!) to show us just how much one shouldn’t mess with Mr. Golasso, Richie knows better than to fcuk around. He feels really bad that Zak mortgaged his house it what it is.

Peter Tosh and Bob Marley are playing!!! Quick backstory; my mom was a hardcore reggae fan (for a white Canadian in flatlander territory) but I never heard anyone else’s reggae music, like Bob Marley, growing up, it was all Peter Tosh. In fact, when I heard Chuck Berry singing “Johnny B. Goode” I thought he had SERIOUSLY messed up the song I knew, which I still prefer.

ANYWAY, Devon and Ingrid are drinking and listening to the music; Devon watches a pushy photographer and Julie from American Century watches her.

Richie got his meeting with Mr. Golasso; he’s brought Zak along for…why? Corrado isn’t interested in their solid repayment plan, he’ll give them their 100k for five points, it’ll be delivered tomorrow and now Richie’s in it as much as Zak. Oh yeah, and the other part of the deal is that Maury Gold and Rondelay will be moving into the ACR office and what can Richie say?

Moar Peter Tosh…Devon’s tracked down the photographer and it was John Lennon he was trying to get a picture of just then. Yoko sent John out with a little orchid named May Pang to get some randiness out of his system but what Devon really wants to know “is that a Hasselblad?”

Devon and Ingrid pretend to not know who John Lennon is and ask him for “just one picture” which he grudgingly assents to, but they pretend they meant they want him to take a picture of THEM, and not him. Hilarious hijinks ensue, “what, do you work here or something?” “I’m in charge of keeping the ice cubes cold” and Devon and Ingrid get tonnes of shots of The Lennon and his little orchid (I’m uncomfortable with that entire characterization; from a racial or ladyparts angle: that ain’t right). Aww, she’s found a way to pay the rent! By using her sexuality and pretending to be stupid, yay! So ingenious.

Zak and Richie are all sore after all the bending over in the meeting with Corrado Golasso.  Zak just can’t get over the fact that he screwed the company so badly with his larcenous prostitutes, but Richie finally gets through I think; they’re partners. Zak goes home to his family while Richie gets picked up by the police for questioning.

Devon and Billy (Richard Short) the photographer are developing her pictures; he comments on her talent and offers to give her credit for the picture of John and May, but she doesn’t want her name on that. She chooses another, saying it will pay her rent, just as he cuddles up behind her and it gets all humpy in the darkroom.

The cops have Richie tucked away in the most fancy interview room ever and this must be pre-Miranda because they not only don’t read him his rights, they don’t stop when he says “lawyer” and they don’t let him call one either. Phones are down. As an FYI, all of my legal information comes from TV, which was actually a problem when I had to testify in court one time. I thought I had to keep to the point and not elaborate and I was terrified I was going to be in contempt of court. It turns out that they EXPECT you to elaborate while in court in Canada, once we got that settled everything was fine. Except that I was testifying against someone I was sort of dating and he didn’t know I was going to be there. Talk about complicated!

The cops say, sure! But do you really think Joe would stand up for you? While Richie tries to absorb that they play the tape they got the other day of the “You killed Buck! No YOU killed Buck!” push-fight and press him again. He.wants.his.lawyer.

Nasty Bitz is recording a profane version of Woman Like You to take us out, while Scott stares at Gary’s picture next to his tiny orchid, Richie is arrested and booked and Zak works on Gary’s image, scribbling Xavier across the bottom of Gary’s picture. We end with Clark at a hip party with Jorge; I’m guessing he’s never been this far downtown before because he looks EXCITED. And we oot.

Not much extry to say here, it’s a pretty clear path we’re on and ehhh. Until next time, Script Kiddies!

All my gifs were made by the awesome Veronica!