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Vince Levy


ARTICLES

Home is where the art is

Manya Scheps can't stand the rain. By 8 p.m. over two inches have drenched the city and begun to leak through the walls of her basement.

Drink of the Week

Brita Filter Triple-Distilled Banker's Club Vodka Ingredients: Banker's Club Vodka Brita Filter You look like a man of refined tastes.

If you build it, they will gather

It's close to midnight at the Rotunda on 40th and Walnut. On the steps outside, a cypher of about 20 hip-hop heads huddle in close as a ghetto blaster thumps old school loops and two emcees in the middle face-off: "Common nigga, you don't think that's a lie / That's like saying when I spit it I don't spit fly / That's like saying you ain't you and I ain't I / Like this ain't the Gathering it's a street word fight." The crowd goes nuts, leaning back like witnesses of a car wreck to reward the verbal beating.

Fresh and Funky

If there is a white picket fence along the rock-star trajectory, Chris Funk has likely found it. The Decemberists' jack-of-all-instruments (guitarists first and foremost; banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, pedal steel, glockenspiel, and hammered dulcimer follow suit) has a few weeks to spend with his family in Portland, Oregon before casting off on full tours of the U.S.

Straight Outta Heathrow

Lady Sovereign is a girl who knows how to take her criticisms with a healthy grain of salt. "They can fuck off," said the 20-year-old British rapper of her detractors.

A Long December

It's a brave new world for Decemberists fans. The release of their new album, The Crane Wife, marks the group's shift to Capitol Records from indie Kill Rock Stars.

Applaud and agree

The second coming of 2005's indie darlings Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is upon us. And while the alt-rock prophets will wait with baited blogs until the January 30 release date, don't expect lead singer and Philadelphia native Alec Ounsworth to indulge their rapture.

All things must pass

Scott Ansill remembers selling 120 copies of Radiohead's Kid A at midnight the night it was released.

I was meant for the stage

Heather Douglas left Penn in 1995 with a degree in English and dreams of one day becoming an actress.
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