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Overwhelming youth support for President-elect Barack Obama in battleground states kept this election out of reach for Sen. McCain, according to Eric Greenberg, author of “Generation We: How Millennial Youth Are Taking Over America and Changing Our World Forever.” “This race would have been extremely close had the youth vote not been so active. Nationally there was an a large increase in the youth vote turnout, but it was their massive turnout in college towns in the battleground states that kept this election out of reach for McCain,” Greenberg said. Exit polls show that the youth vote supported Obama/Biden over… Read more »

LOS ANGELES — In an election otherwise full of liberal triumphs, the gay rights movement suffered a stunning defeat as California voters approved a ban on same-sex marriages that overrides a recent court decision legalizing them. The constitutional amendment – widely seen as the most momentous of the nation’s 153 ballot measures – will limit marriage to heterosexual couples, the first time such a vote has taken place in a state where gay unions are legal. Gay-rights activists had a rough election elsewhere as well. Ban-gay-marriage amendments were approved in Arizona and Florida, and Arkansas voters approved a measure banning… Read more »

One of the first responders to a fiery South Carolina plane crash said Wednesday that a pair of musicians escaped the flaming wreckage by sliding down the wing. “They said the plane went down. They didn’t say how or if they knew,” said Lt. Jason Shumpert of the South Congaree Police Department. “Once it went down, they were able to slide down the wing of the plane, and they jumped on each other to put fires on each other out and rolled around on the ground.” Shumpert said he didn’t know until later that the two badly burned men were… Read more »

Record labels, music publishers, songwriters and online music services have reached an agreement on how to compensate music creators for online distribution of their content, they said. The agreement is designed to settle how the industry calculates royalty rates for limited downloads and music that is streamed online, including when it is provided by subscription and advertising-supported services. Fans using on-demand music streaming can select the songs they want to hear but do not keep a permanent copy. Under the proposal, providers of such services will pay a mechanical royalty of 10.5 percent of revenue after other royalties are calculated.… Read more »

Hours after performing for thousands of South Carolina college students, former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and celebrity DJ AM were critically injured in a fiery Learjet crash that killed four people, authorities said Saturday. Officials said the plane carrying six people was departing shortly before midnight Friday when air traffic controllers reporting seeing sparks. The plane hurtled off the end of a runway and crashed through antennas and a fence. It came to rest on an embankment across a five-lane highway and was engulfed in flames, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. Barker and DJ… Read more »

The first time Arcade Fire performed in Paris, Mathieu Saura stood outside the venue with his girlfriend, holding up a sign that read, “Please, we want to come to the show.” The band’s bassist, Richard Reed Perry, got them in, and ever since, Saura might as well have not left. Under the name Vincent Moon, he’s gone from a fan begging for tickets to an in-demand filmmaker who has revolutionized music video. His films are stripped down, intimate videotaped performances – shot in one take, often of an act simply strolling down a street or playing in a parking lot.… Read more »

While millions around the world spent Sunday watching the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, 7,000 fans lucky enough to score a ticket to Radiohead’s show at the Hollywood Bowl witnessed not only a band at the top of its game but also an act that at times seemed to be the best on the planet. Certainly that’s high praise, but during its two-hour set — the first of two sold-out nights at the Bowl — the quintet from Oxford, England, managed to cast a spell over the crowd without resorting to fist-pumping anthems like U2, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam… Read more »

The term “singer-songwriter” makes Gavin DeGraw cringe. “It makes you feel like a weakling the way all the singer songwriters are marketed, you know what I mean? … It’s not masculine enough for me. I don’t feel like I fall into that category in a lot of ways,” he said about his “typecasted genre.” Maybe it’s because he was seen as the sensitive songwriter dude that the gregarious 31-year-old is anxious to break out of that mold. DeGraw – who sings, writes his own songs and plays multiple instruments – debuted his skills as a pop artist on his 2003… Read more »

The 2008 Green Apple Festival won’t “change the world,” Green Apple founder/executive producer Peter Shapiro says, but this year’s third installment of the event will expand from three locations to eight U.S. city parks for simultaneous outdoor festivals on April 20. In an effort to raise the profile of Earth Day (April 22), producers of the Green Apple Festival, in collaboration with the Earth Day Network and presenting sponsor Chase, will set up free concerts in New York (Central Park), Washington, D.C. (the National Mall), Chicago (Lincoln Park Zoo), Miami (Bicentennial Park), Denver (City Park), Dallas (Fair Park), San Francisco… Read more »

Posters of scantily clad youths that were seized by police at an Abercrombie & Fitch store in a Virginia mall this weekend may be inappropriate for young children, but they are not obscene, according to legal experts. Virginia Beach police apparently have agreed. On Monday, they dropped charges against the clothing company that markets to prep chic teens through sexually charged imagery. The window displays went up in 363 stores across the country in mid-January, including the Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach. One of the posters showed three shirtless young men, one with his upper buttocks revealed. The second one… Read more »