#WhatsHappening for April 23, 2017

Good morning cats and kittens. Hope you're all having a great weekend. Me, I'm getting a whole bunch of nothing accomplished- unless you count housework.

Friday was the first anniversary of Prince's death. Morris Day remembered the day with a video for his song Over That Rainbow, his musical tribute to his late friend.

Let me just make this clear as I can: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is a joke. For every induction they get right, they get 10 wrong. 

That said, Nile Rodgers 100% belongs there. The Chic leader and super-producer is getting a little more recognition with the rerelease of Diana Ross' 1980 album Diana, which helped redefined the legendary singer's career. 

The set was originally engineered by Rodgers and his Chic co-found Bernard Edwards at Ross' request, but Motown- Ross's label at the time- didn't think the duo's treatment of the records had enough pop power to sell many copies and rejected the mix, preferring their own mix.

Diana is now available digitally, on vinyl, and on CD.

After fucking fans over with his Pono Music venture, Neil Young is trying to con fans again with  capture his own share of the digital market with a new streaming service. 

Separated at birth?

The new service, Xstream, partners Young with the Singapore firm Orastream for "an adaptive streaming service that changes with available bandwidth" for "complete high-resolution playback" according to an announcement on the Pono community website.

"For more than eight months, I’ve been working with our small team to look for alternatives. Finding a way to deliver the quality music without the expense and to bring it to a larger audience has been our goal," Young said. "Xstream plays at the highest quality your network condition allows at that moment and adapts as the network conditions change. It’s a single high-resolution bit-perfect file that essentially compresses as needed to never stop playing."

Personally, I've never understood streaming. I mean, it was a good idea in the beginning, and Pandora was pretty cool before they started pestering you to buy the service after every song, and I guess it's a great way to be exposed to new music- but radio is free (though, granted, with streaming there's usually on 30 seconds of commercials on the free side as opposed to five minutes or more on radio). Also, most of the music on radio is shit. When I look for new music, I tend to browse Amazon's up and coming section, and the weekly new releases updates on sites like AllMusic. A sample of the song is usually enough to tell me whether it's worth listening to.

Of course, I also have a pretty extensive personal collection, so I rarely listen to the radio. At work, I listen to my own stuff via the laptop. I put the player on "random" and then let it go. In the car, I have satellite radio. The no commercials part is awesome, but I don't do a lot of switching through. In fact, I tend to listen to "40s Junction" because I love big band and swing.

Birthdays today include: Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The Natural; Stan Frazier of Sugar Ray; Tommy DeCarlo of Boston; Simon Matthews of Jesus Jones; Narada Michael Walden; and John Miles. #MusicalBirthdays