VIA PRESS RELEASE | Following today’s worldwide cinematic release of Ozzy Osbourne & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning, music fans around the world will now be able to celebrate the historic final performances from Ozzy Osbourne (solo) and with the original Black Sabbath lineup via the official soundtrack release available December 11, 2026 on a variety of formats including 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, CD, and vinyl, as well as digitally. Pre-order HERE.

Presented in Dolby Atmos, as well as Dolby 2.1 and 5.1, the full-length Ozzy Osbourne & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning concert film will be available in a range of physical formats, including a 2-disc Blu-ray and CD edition, 2LP vinyl and a 2-disc Blu-ray collection with exclusive limited-edition coloured vinyl variants (grey splatter vinyl available at Ozzy’s store, purple splatter vinyl available at the Black Sabbath store and metallic vinyl at specialty/indie shops), along with a digital album.

A Deluxe Box Set, featuring an expanded collection of music, memorabilia and collectables, will be available to pre-order from October 28 ahead of its release in April 2027. This will include a bonus HD Blu-ray featuring all 35 Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath songs and covers performed by special guests. The soundtrack is set for worldwide release via Mercury Studios.

The July 5, 2025 Back To The Beginning show at Birmingham’s Villa Park marked Ozzy Osbourne’s last performance and farewell to his fans (in his hometown just 17 days before his untimely death) reuniting with his Black Sabbath band mates: Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler ,and Bill Ward marking the iconic group’s first performance together in more than 20 years and their triumphant final show. The sold-out show commanded more than three million requests for the 44,000 available tickets with the event watched by a record-breaking global live audience.

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Remembering Denny Laine in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

Though the music they produced was only fitfully successful, the Denny Laine-fronted incarnation of The Moody Blues deserves to be remembered for more than a momentary chart fling topped by a gem of a single. In ’65, they released an album at home and another in the US under distinct titles, both with a dozen tracks, and with a third of each LP unique. The better of the two, Go Now–The Moody Blues #1, was issued in the States by London Records.

Heavy on covers and by extension lacking in gestures toward originality, the ’64-’66-era Moody Blues are unlikely to be many people’s (I’ll stop short of saying anybody’s) most beloved component in the British Invasion. In fact, talk of the group today reliably focuses on the post-Denny Laine/Clint Warwick lineup, which saw new members John Lodge and Justin Hayward helping to transmogrify the Moodies into one of the leading, if artistically lesser, examples of Symphonic Rock. I won’t sully the Prog genre with an inapt association since there was hardly anything progressive about The Moody Blues Mk 2.

Instead, they exemplified the Middlebrow impulse, though that’s ultimately a separate discussion. This piece concerns a band that came together when the leader of Denny Laine and the Diplomats joined up with a bunch of nameless Birmingham hopefuls; their main desire was to hit it big or even just making a good living; they briefly played as the M & B 5, the initials an attempt at landing sponsorship from two local beer brewers (last names Mitchell and Butler). And, like many of their contemporaries, The Moody Blues’ method, at least initially, was the borrowing and alteration of Rhythm and Blues.

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When fans of British rock think of guitar heroes, the names Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and maybe even Peter Green often come to mind, and, even though he was American, Jimi Hendrix cut his teeth, made his name, and became the ultimate guitar hero in England. Another name that should be on the list is Alvin Lee.

Lee is best known for his band Ten Years After and their incendiary performance of “I’m Going Home” in the Woodstock film. While that commercial peak is iconic, the music Ten Years After made before and after is considerable. Though often pigeonholed as strictly a British blues rock band, the group went through many phases in a relatively short period.

Their self-titled debut album in 1967 was a psychedelic classic in that seminal year of the “Summer of Love.” The group’s 1968 Undead album was a live album recorded at the tiny, legendary London club Klook’s Kleek and reflects a wide variety of styles.

Stonedhenge, also in 1968, continued the psychedelic sound, with a grittier blues attack. Ssssh wasn’t necessarily the album that broke the group wide open, but it was already recorded and scheduled to come out after the group’s performance at Woodstock in late August of 1969.

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Harmonica man and hearty singer Walter Daniels has hit the studio with Jack Oblivian on more than one prior occasion, with the recorded evidence frequently giving Daniels’ bluesy heft an infusion of garage punk grit. There is some of that on their latest collab, the 4-song EP “Sailing the Concrete Seas,” but as the title illuminates, there are also two versions of vintage truck-driving songs that are downright swank as they hit the ear. This 7-inch vinyl platter is available now as a split release between Black & Wyatt Records of Memphis, TN, and the Ghost Highway label of Madrid, Spain.

This short player spins at 33 1/3 rpm, and in extending the teamwork of Daniels and Oblivian, it can’t help but bring to mind the stuff they kicked out with former Gibson Bros manic Monsieur Jeffrey Evans. This is because back in 1990 the Gibson Bros (at that point still a four-piece) released a collab Punk Rock Truck Drivin’ Song of a Gun with the Workdogs (that’d be Rob Kennedy and Scott Jarvis), the LP’s title a direct reference to country singer Dave Dudley’s 1965 album Truck Drivin’ Son-Of-A-Gun.

Half of the contents of “Sailing the Concrete Seas” are versions of songs from that Dudley record, “I Got Lost,” written by noted country singer-songwriter Tom T. Hall, and “Two Six Packs Away,” a song credited to rockabilly cat Ronnie Self. “I Got Lost” works up a big-guitar groove halfway between a Nashville honky-tonk and an all-night Bakersfield diner, and that’s just killer. There’s a touch of Daniel’s mouth harp in the mix, but the blowing is harder and longer in the midst and also in the waning moments of “Two Six Packs Away.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Greaser, hippie, glam rocker, punk… Larry tells some amazing stories. And I’m stoked he’s my friend.” —Billie Joe Armstrong

Don Giovanni Records has announced the second edition of Spy Rock Memories by Larry Livermore, out March 2, 2027. The new edition features words from Aaron Cometbus, an interview with Tre Cool about growing up on Spy Rock, reflections from the author, and 22 added photos.

In 1982, Larry Livermore, an ex-greaser, post-hippie, burnt out and disillusioned by the Bay Area punk scene, journeyed north into an off-the-map, off-the-grid mountain wilderness at the heart of California’s Emerald Triangle, in search of something “real.”

Things got way more real than he’d bargained for. He confronted blizzards, droughts, floods, fires, marauding bears, skunks, rattlesnakes, and a posse of ornery pot growers, all while launching a magazine, a solar-powered punk rock band, and the DIY record label that introduced the world to Green Day, Operation Ivy, and Screeching Weasel.

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Celebrating K. K. Downing on his 75th birthday. —Ed.

Six Six Six/My Judas Priest tix/I’m out in the parking lot/And I’m looking for kicks!

What am I supposed to say about Judas Priest, Birmingham, England’s contribution to heavy metal, that hasn’t already been said by those three great music critics, Bart Simpson, Beavis, and Butthead? Judas Priest has received the imprimatur of the greats for being the guys who put out “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight” on their groundbreaking 1980 LP British Steel, and what’s more, introduced plenty of your basic heavy metal tropes (S&M gear, operatic vocals, the twin guitar attack) that we now take for granted.

In short, I’m going to have to reach to find anything original to say about Judas Priest, and I’m not sure I have the cojones. Beavis and Butthead’s rendition of “Breaking the Law” captures the essence of the band better than any critic ever will.

But I’m nothing if not intrepid, and Judas Priest has released 17 studio albums starting with 1974’s Rocka Rolla, which leaves me with lots to natter on about. Like the infamous civil action following the suicide of one young man and the attempted suicide of another, which their parents alleged was the result of a backward masked message on a Judas Priest album saying “Do it.”

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With roots in the psychedelic ’60s and stature as a key punk antecedent, Roky Erickson stands as one of rock’s great cult figures, inhabiting the fringe partly due to personal struggles that kept him from maintaining his true potential. He did hit some significant high points, and anybody desiring an entry point into the man’s post-13th Floor Elevators work should get acquainted with The Evil One, the debut album from Roky Erickson and the Aliens, originally released by CBS Records in the UK and 415 Records in the US, and freshly reissued in a 15-track 2LP 45rpm edition by Fire Records, out October 30.

In the days prior to the internet, there were numerous avenues that could lead inquisitive young ears to the doorstep of Roky Erickson. Most prominent was his third band, The 13th Floor Elevators, formed after Erickson left The Spades, that band having released two singles including “We Sell Soul” and the original version of the Elevators’ hit “You’re Gonna Miss Me” (prior to The Spades, Erickson was in The Roulettes, an unrecorded outfit later known as The Missing Links).

Debut album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, released in October 1966 by Texas label International Artists, is one of the essential rock albums of its decade. Its follow-up, Easter Everywhere, from the next year is also unmissable, and in fact, everything recorded by the band prior to disbanding is worth hearing, even the exploitative Live album (that’s really not a live album).

Back in the day, the Elevators’ records were sought out by anybody whose interest in psychedelic rock expanded beyond the US West Coast, the UK, and Jimi Hendrix. The inclusion of “You’re Gonna Miss Me” on the original 2LP Nuggets comp also meant that anyone with a jonesing for garage rock was hip to the Elevators.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Big Mama Thornton was rock & roll before rock & roll. She had the energy. She had this rawness. There was electricity when she would perform. I actually think she inspired a whole lot of singers but nobody could really hit like she does.” —Brittany Howard

Celebrating Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and Blues Hall of Famer Big Mama Thornton’s centennial and coinciding with the new documentary about her life, I Can’t Be Anyone But Me, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is reissuing Thornton’s essential first two Arhoolie Records albums In Europe (originally released in 1966) and Big Mama Thornton with Muddy Waters’ Blues Band (1967) on vinyl LP. The LP reissues arrive December 4, one week before her centennial on December 11.

Both albums were remastered by Don Godwin, with In Europe restored to its original mono and Big Mama Thornton with Muddy Waters’ Blues Band in stereo. Both show the rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm & blues architect in full command at the front of all-star blues bands.

In Europe, recorded in London in 1965, finds Thornton backed by a band that featured nine-time Grammy Award-winning guitarist and Sinners film actor Buddy Guy alongside Blues Hall of Famer Eddie Boyd on piano and Fred Below—the legendary Chicago blues drummer and veteran of Chuck Berry sessions—on drums.

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