Billboard has an encouraging story about 10 bands that made music while their members were (physically) distant. The Postal Service, innovators of long-distance recording, used physical mail as their communicative medium - hence the name. Superorganism - with musicians from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Japan - united in an indie pop group after connecting via various channels over the years and their debut single, 'Something for Your M.I.N.D.' came out before all eight members had ever been in a room together.

Ellis Marsalis, jazz legend, educator and patriarch of the Marsalis family of musicians, died on Wednesday at age 85, Billboard reports. Cause of death are believed to have been complications from COVID-19, according to his family. Harvard Law professor David Wilkins sent a moving text following Marsalis' death: "We can all marvel at the sheer audacity of a man who believed he could teach his black boys to be excellent in a world that denied that very possibility, and then watch them go on to redefine what excellence means for all time.”

"Incredibly rich, offering something different on every listen... It reminds us that sometimes things must fall apart for better things to emerge - Atwood Magazine says in a review of Sea Wolf's new album. Alex Brown Church has made a full album, but saw the songs as disjointed, so he discarded them, and made a new one - 'Through a Dark Wood' - "masterful illustrations of vulnerability and adversity affirm grief as a step towards growth", PopMatters says in its review. Listen to the album at Bandcamp.

Tribeca Film Festival has shared 'The Weekend', a documentary by Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb about two 20-year-olds from Phoenixville, PA who won a contest to party with Van Halen, then in their debaucherous prime. Tribeca will continue to share docs during the lockdown.

Live Nation has established Crew Nation, a new charitable fund to help support concert crews around the world impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, Variety reports. "Crew members are the backbone of the live music industry" - the entertainment company said, committing $10 million - a $5 million donation directly to the fund and another $5 million to match contributions by artists, fans and employees dollar-for-dollar. Live Nation president and CEO Michael Rapino's family will be personally donating $250,000. Crew Nation has been designed to help tour managers, production managers, riggers, sound engineers, backline techs, lighting directors/designers, special effects teams, carpenters and more.

Stephen Colbert shared a previously-unreleased performance video of folk singer John Prine, who is recovering from COVID-19 infection. Colbert introduced the four-year-old duet saying - “I’d like to share with you right now one of the happiest moments I’ve had on my show or any show. And that’s when John and I sung a duet in 2016 that we never broadcast, but we’d like to now. Happy enchilada, John". In a prophetic opener to their performance, Colbert said to his audience - “We’ll probably do this for the Internet. Unless, you know, something terrible happens and we have to cheer up the world on the TV show”.

"The original intention was to get your attention" - Chuck D said on Talib Kweli's weekly show People's Party about the public feud he had with Flavor Flav over Bernie Sanders. When Kweli noted that Flavor said he can't be fired, Chuck agreed - "He can't, he's a partner". To prove it, Chuck D announced their new album 'The Enemy Radio', made as a duo, and today they released the first single 'Food as a Machine Gun'.

Rihanna has collaborated with Jay-Z's Shawn Carter Foundation (SCF) for a combined donated $2 million to COVID-19 relief, All Hip Hop reports. This effort is to support New Yorkers and Los Angelenos who are elderly, undocumented, incarcerated, homeless and children of medical professionals.

Oliver Craske, "a biographer who understands the intricacies of classical Indian music and the labyrinths of a culture that believes there’s no enterprise that can’t be improved by being made more complicated", published 'The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar' about the great Indian sitar player. The exhaustive book, Guardian says, portrays the "restless workaholic, often melancholic genius... unassailable maestro and guardian of his country’s music". Craske handles the niceties of Shankar’s personal life with diplomacy - he married his teacher's daughter Annapurna Devi, which was an arranged and problematic marriage, had an affair with US concert promoter Sue Jones – with whom he had a daughter, the future star Norah Jones, and had another affair with an old friend Sukanya Rajan, whom he would later marry, and had a daughter Anoushka, who also grew into musical stardom.

Moses Sumney directed a video for his new single 'Cut Me', where he and dancers Emara Jackson and Malachi Middleton evocatively move through a landscape of hospitals, ambulances, and funeral homes. Moses calls the visual “a satirization of the medical industrial complex, and a chuckle in the face of black death”.

Swedish company Record Union has shared The Wellness Starter Pack, a new toolkit of resources to help artists manage their mental health. It focuses on five elements to maintaining good health: nutrition, mindfulness, positivity, exercise, and sleep. The company consulted a handful of doctors and other specialists for its articles and videos (below), which are intended as a starting-off point for artists.

Jazz great and trumpeter Wallace Roney, who studied under Miles Davis and played with Art Blakey and Herbie Hancock and more, died on Tuesday (March 31) due to complications from COVID-19, at age 59, NPR reports. Roney recorded 21 albums as a leader, performed with his idol Miles Davis at the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival (watch it below), and won a Grammy with the surviving members of the Miles Davis Quintet for the album 'A Tribute to Miles'.

"The likes of Biffy Clyro, Haim, Lady Gaga and Kehlani have postponed their album releases, presumably because they won’t be able to tour in support of them as planned... ‘It doesn’t seem appropriate,’ goes the standard delay line, but nothing could be more appropriate right now than giving music fans a brilliant, time-guzzling distraction from the world" - NME's blogger Mark, My Words writes longing for new music - "We’re losing a year of our lives, but we don’t have to lose a year of our music too".

Kesha, Finneas, DJ Shadow, Phantogram, Jessie Reyez, Earthgang, Noah Cyrus are partaking in two-day digital Fader Fort event, which will raise money for musicians and entertainment professionals impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. The event, boasting performances and content from over 100 artists, will air in nine-hour broadcasts set for Tuesday, March 31st and Wednesday, April 1st from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET. All performances will be available for a 24-hour window at the Fader Fort website.

"Los Angeles rap is governed by politics. If your favorite rapper’s neighborhood hates another rapper’s neighborhood, it is practically impossible for them to collaborate or even be on the same show bill. There is fake love and real hatred. To overcome those deeply rooted divides in both life and death is practically unheard of. Nipsey was the only one" - the Level looks back at Nipsey Hussle's legacy, one year after his death.

MySpace defined not just the previous era, but the way we continue to consume and discuss music online - Stereogum says in their long read about the music social network. In Stereogum’s oral history of Myspace Music, twenty artists and former Myspace executives discuss their experience both using and working on the site, living through the bubble years and why it couldn’t last forever.

"'Clockdust' is anchored by the singer-songwriter's cracked, idiosyncratic, and quintessentially English vocal tones – somewhere between the windswept warble of Robert Wyatt and weathered late-period David Bowie" - PopMatters says in a review of "hauntological, cultish strain of psychedelic folk pastoral" album. "It's catchy, carefully crafted, and tastefully arranged", PM adds.

"The USA will get through this in spite of the catastrophic shortcomings of the current administration. How? You. Your strength, compassion, smarts, cool, and tenacity will be what allows us to get control of this very real crisis" - Henry Rollins told Rolling Stone about the corona epidemic. While being alone, Rollins says he engages in "two kinds of listening. Protein and carbohydrate. Protein is records I’ve never heard before, where I have to lean in and focus. Carbohydrate is music that’s familiar to me. Right now, I’m in a 90/10 protein-carbohydrate ratio. New records by Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Coriky, Cold Beat, Wasted Shirt, Wolf Eyes, Crazy Doberman, Primo, and Lamps are all really good".

Lyricist Dana Jay Bein and vocalist Adrian Grimes remade Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' as 'Coronavirus Rhapsody' in light of the ongoing Covid-10 pandemic. Cheeky lyrics include nods to hand sanitizing and self-quarantining. Grimes describes the parody as an attempt to harness "some humor to see us through the COVID-19 crisis".

“If you’re going to be with someone who’s clearly an artist, who’s deeply dedicated to what they do, then you need something that you’re passionate about” - Jenny Boyd, former model, now a psychologist and an author says in her new book 'Jennifer Juniper: A Journey Beyond the Muse'. In the 70s, Boyd married Mick Fleetwood twice (and had affairs with some other rockers), each resulting in feelings of loneliness, jealousy, rage and, ultimately, a total loss of identity. In vivid, anxious and sometimes hilarious prose, her book chronicles a life at once privileged by its proximity to the starriest rockers of the 1960s and 70s, and plagued by her inner feelings of anxiety and doubt, the Guardian says.

The Tallest Man On Earth has been uploading solo acoustic videos to Instagram from isolation, including Bob Dylan‘s 'Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again' and Wilco‘s 'Jesus, etc'. He rearranged both songs to fit his usual complex fingerpicking style, but the vocals stay faithful to the originals. Ben Gibbard played his last daily live stream show yesterday after a two-week run. It was all covers, as usual - Neil Young, The Cure, Simon & Garfunkel, Spiritualized & more. Watch it - here. Starting this Thursday he'll be doing a weekly show.

Universal Music Group announced a multi-million dollar initiative UMG All Together Now Foundation intended to support its artists, songwriters and employees over the next several months while the coronavirus shutdown is in place. UMG employs 8,800 workers around the world, with the foundation offering enhanced HR offerings and other programs, as well as a commitment that any employees who cannot work remotely will not see their pay change through at least June 30. The company is also offering a suite of economic flexibility initiatives to its artists and assorted companies, including interest-free royalty advances and fee waivers, Billboard reports. The company is also donating directly to MusiCares’ COVID-19 Relief Fund (a source says UMG has made the largest contribution there of any record label) and the Help Musicians UK charities, and has committed to matching donations that U.S. employees make to those organizations as well.

The co-writer and original singer of 'I Love Rock 'N' Roll', Alan Merrill, has died at age 69 after contracting coronavirus, Ultimate Classic Rock reports. 'Love Rock 'N' Roll' became a global hit for Joan Jett in 1982 and has been covered by artists ranging from Britney Spears to Weird Al Yankovic. The song was written by Merrill and guitarist Jake Hooker as "a knee-jerk response" to the Rolling Stones' 'It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)' in 1975. Merrill was well just a few weeks ago when he played several shows a few weeks ago. Coronavirus also claimed the life of country singer Joe Diffie over the weekend, while the family of Nashville legend John Prine said he was critically ill on a ventilator and being treated for Covid-19 symptoms.

Torres covered Portishead's 'Wandering Star', made quite a different song; string arrangements on Ladybug Transistor’s 'Giovanna Please' sound like open spaces and countryside; Brutus slowed down their metal on 'Sand', but keep the intensity and melody; Channel Tres' 'Weedman' is a funny song about a “notoriously unreliable” weed dealer; another funny one - Chai's 'No More Cake' about too much make-up; Bizou features former and current members of Light FM, Smashing Pumpkins and Glaare - their new single 'Crashing Sky' puts them between pop and dark; Htiekal is a music project by the actor Lakeith Stanfield, and 'Fast Life' is his step into leftfield pop; Jessie Reyez released a retro-soul song 'Coffin' featuring Eminem; 'Only Children' by Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit is a lovely sombre song.

In the March 13-19 week streaming in the U.S. was down 7,6%, although more or less everyone is at home, so it was to be expected for streaming to jump. However, label executives are neither startled nor concerned by the drop, as the Variety reports - they say it’s down to focus on news and other televised options; the loss of daily commutes, where many people stream music; and multiple people at home together streaming the same things.

Fielding Hope, a senior producer at the London-based venue Cafe Oto, published a list of experimental musicians who are available for lessons and consultations. Having to stay at home - a perfect time to learn new stuff, right?!?

Sir Elton John assembled some of the biggest names in music - Billie Eilish, Dave Grohl, Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong, Mariah Carey, Sam Smith, and many more - to perform live from their homes last night in a televised concert to raise money for the coronavirus relief effort.

The Weeknd’s latest album 'After Hours' has topped the Billboard 200 with 444,000 equivalent album units, which made it the biggest debut week for an album in 2020 thus far, Billboard reports. 'After Hours' had 275,000 album sales, and 163,000 SEA units, which amounts to 220.7 million on-demand streams of the project's tracks in its first week. There was a chance that The Weeknd's album wasn’t going to release during the coronavirus pandemic - TMZ reports that music executives wanted the singer to hold off, fearing the album would flop.

Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the world's leading composers, died Sunday at the age of 86. The Polish-born composer established himself while still in his 20s with jarring atonal works such as 'Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima', and came to be widely admired by music fans and musicians far outside traditional classical music circles. He was an influence on musicians such as Aphex Twin, Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood, Portishead's Beth Gibbons, as well as cineasts such as Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch.

Consequence of Sound shared tips on how to help musicians in the time of the big lockdown:

Social media - the most direct way for musicians to let fans know how they can help during these thin times

Live streaming - can be a revenue source for independent and smaller acts thanks to Venmo and PayPal, or simply by pointing viewers towards online merch and music shops

Merch - if you’re fortunate enough to still have some disposable income, put that money towards a T-shirt, a poster, pins, badges, a shot glass

Music - buying it is the best way, Bandcamp is much more generous towards artists than Spotify

Crowdfunding - can be a vital way for fans to promptly support artists in their time of need