VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sony Music Entertainment and Hollywood Records are proud to announce that A Day at the Races, the fifth studio album by Queen, is to be celebrated almost 50 years to the day with the release of two special new vinyl editions.

Initially released on December 10th, 1976, the classic album, which features the transatlantic smash “Somebody To Love” and perennial live favorite, “Tie Your Mother Down,” will be issued on blue marbled vinyl and a Queen Store exclusive picture disc almost 50 years to the day on December 11th, 2026.

Queen recorded their fifth studio album between Summer and Autumn 1976, and it was their first self-produced album, engineered by Mike Stone. Like the previous album, A Night At The Opera, it took its title from a film by the Marx Brothers.

Brian May and Roger Taylor have often cited A Day At The Races as a continuation of the previous LP. It remains one of their most acclaimed records, reaching #5 in America (#1 in the UK), where it was issued a week after the UK release and became Queen’s first American album to reach Gold status before moving on to Platinum.

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Celebrating Ron Elliott on his 83rd birthday. —Ed.

The Beau Brummels are mostly remembered for the exemplary folk-rock of “Laugh Laugh” and “Just a Little,” both Top Twenty hits in 1965. But they also crafted one of the earliest and best examples of country-rock, the masterful 1968 LP Bradley’s Barn.

I find it hard not to be somewhat conflicted about The Beau Brummels. Not in terms of quality, for they were one of the USA’s finest (and earliest) acts to emerge in the wake of the British Invasion, but simply in defining their historical legacy. For starters, they were signed to disc-jockey Tom Donahue’s small Autumn label during their early period of widespread popularity. This circumstance limited the distribution of their two biggest hits (“Laugh Laugh” stalling at #15 and “Just a Little” at #8, respectively).

And yet they were considered legitimate teen idols of the time, appearing not only in two motion pictures but also on TV’s The Flintstones (as the uh, Beau Brummelstones). It’s enough to make a mind contemplate what might have transpired had the band been in the hands of a more capable label, for their first two LPs, Introducing The Beau Brummels and Volume 2, stand amongst the best records issued by American acts in the immediate post-Beatles aftermath.

But when the group switched to Warner Brothers, they were initially mishandled. Beau Brummels ’66 was an ill-advised (if not at all bad) covers-only LP conceived because the label didn’t initially control the band’s publishing. Their first “real” record for Warners, ‘67’s outstanding slice of baroque-psyche Triangle, remains one of the better psychedelic excursions of the period.

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The first time I heard “I Sit on Acid,” I was 20 years old, out on the dance floor at Club Metro in Riverside, and I had no idea what I was listening to, let alone who the Lords of Acid actually were. Nobody did. It was slow, dirty, and hypnotic, with lyrics you weren’t supposed to say out loud, let alone over a club sound system. Nobody around me cared. We just moved.

Not long after, I walked into my first warehouse rave in San Pedro, Krusty’s Funhouse, under a huge circus tent. Around 2 a.m., the DJ dropped Lords of Acid’s latest, “Take Control,” and the whole tent lifted off the ground. I’ve been to a lot of shows in the decades since, and I’ve photographed plenty of them. I can count on one hand the times a single record changed the temperature of a room like that. It was life-changing.

That was the beginning for me. Before the festivals, before EDM became a business, before anyone had a phone to film it, there was a guy in Antwerp named Maurice Engelen putting out records under a pile of different names, and they were landing 6,000 miles away in tents and warehouses full of kids like me. Praga Khan. Channel X. Lords of Acid. “Rave the Rhythm.” “Injected with a Poison.” To us he wasn’t a name on a sleeve. He was the source.

Here’s the part that floored me: he had no idea. No internet, no cell phones, faxes with sales figures coming back from America. He didn’t know we existed until a fan cornered him at a party in Miami and recited his discography back to him.

More than 35 years later, Lords of Acid is still doing what it has always done: pushing buttons, making people dance and laughing the whole way through. Mundo Bizarro, the band’s first album of all-new material since 2018’s Pretty in Kink, is out now on Metropolis Records, with the LP following November 9. It’s the first record with Carla Harvey, who grew up dancing to the songs she now fronts. It moves between English, Spanish, German, and Japanese. And true to form, the cover is already getting flagged by the algorithms: a woman holding a banana to her head like a gun. Praga Khan is still too much for the internet.

I got on the phone with the man who started it all for me, on the eve of the Cheeky Freaky Pt. 2 tour, to talk about the new beat accident that launched a genre, why he still trusts an ARP 2600 over a laptop, and what he’d say to the kid on the dance floor.

Before there was Praga Khan, there was Maurice Engelen growing up in Belgium. What was the first record that made you think, “I need to make sounds like that,” and how far was it from the music you ended up making?

I started out in my early twenties as a booker for international bands, bringing acts like Soft Cell and Cabaret Voltaire over from England to the continent. In 1982 I started my own record label, Antler-Subway, and it became a very influential independent label for electronic body music, with bands like Klinik and A Split-Second. In America, most of the best bands from that scene were on Wax Trax! at the time.

I started making records myself in 1987, when Atari came out with its sequencing software. Before that I’d been working with a Commodore sequencing system. I’ve always been in love with technology and in love with music, so combining the two was the perfect thing for me. The very first record I made was a song called “Blow Job,” and I honestly didn’t know what the word meant. I thought a blow job was a bad job, when somebody does something wrong. Only later did I find out what it really was.

Back then I was influenced mostly by German records like 16 Bit, and by the bands on our own label: A Split-Second, Klinik, Poésie Noire, The Neon Judgement. But that music was a little too dark for me. I wanted to make something less depressive and show the funnier side of it.

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Live at the KiMo Theater, Albuquerque, 1979, throws a fabulous wrinkle into the discography of Cecil Taylor, uncovering an impeccably recorded quintet performance as remarkable in its ensemble energy as anything in the great pianist’s extensive body of work. Black Editions Archive has released this discovery as a 2LP set in a deluxe heavy tip-on gatefold jacket, with a color-printed 12-page listening guide featuring words by Taylor expert Ben Young.

To borrow from boxing parlance, Cecil Taylor is often characterized as a bruiser, indeed an utter pummeler of the ivories, and while that’s certainly true, he’s also as fleet and fascinatingly unpredictable as a featherweight, unleashing artistry that blossomed into a quickly recognizable sound. Easily the most singular pianist to have arrived on the jazz scene post Thelonious Monk, Taylor’s uniqueness was immediately apparent even as his style developed gradually.

Listening to Taylor’s discography in chronological order is one of the most rewarding adventures in modern music, at least for those who are amenable to his approach. This blend of studio dates and performance recordings begins in 1957 with Jazz Advance, released by the Transition label, capturing Taylor as already something of an iconoclast, if one with a tangible connection to modern jazz. The set fittingly opens with a version of Monk’s “Bemsha Swing,” Taylor situating himself at the vanguard of jazz piano and then spiraling out from there.

Taylor’s quartet for Jazz Advance featured Steve Lacy on soprano sax, Buell Neidlinger on bass, and Denis Charles on drums, an aggregation that also comprised one side of At Newport, released in 1958 by Verve Records (the Gigi Gryce-Donald Byrd Jazz Laboratory gets the other side). For the 1959 Contemporary Records’ set Looking Ahead!, vibraphonist Earl Griffiths replaces Lacy.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Fratellis critically acclaimed fourth studio album, Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied, is now available for the first time on limited sunburst vinyl.

After the release of 2013’s We Need Medicine, the band spent a year touring the world. At the tail end of 2014, they decamped to LA to work on album number four with Tony Hoffer (M83, Depeche Mode, and Belle & Sebastian), who also produced their first album smash Costello Music.

That unique, bright clarity of California sunshine seems to permeate the record and the band channelled it to create an album that represents what they do best. At the heart of Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied there’s a fun, energetic soul reminiscent of their 2006 debut. With recognisable nods to ’70s Cali-rock, rockabilly, and glorious hints of Americana and country layered high, it’s a glorious homecoming with roots in both Scotland and LA.

Littered with standout tracks: the foot-stomping “Baby Don’t You Lie To Me!,” the spiraling riffs of “Getting Surreal,” and “Thief”—all big choruses and live crowd pleasers. “Dogtown” parades along with its strident brass section and funk-driven bass line; and an early-seventies Stevie Wonder cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together.” While the delicate, drifting layers of “Moonshine” bring us to a reflective, poised ending.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Set against the backdrop of a global rock phenomenon, The Vampire Lestat follows Lestat de Lioncourt as played by Sam Reid on an electric multi-city tour while he’s haunted by “muses” from his wild and rebellious past. Preorder the soundtrack here.

As his band’s popularity and star power rises, so does Lestat’s influence over vampires and human’s alike, leaving others to contend with Lestat’s power in the face of The Great Conversion, an unnatural surge in the vampire population. In addition to Reid, The Vampire Lestat star Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, Delainey Hayles, and Jennifer Ehle, and is executive produced by Mark Johnson, creator, writer, and showrunner Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, Christopher Rice, and the late Anne Rice.

Daniel Hart is a composer and performer based in Los Angeles. He made his feature film debut with the critically acclaimed Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, beginning an ongoing collaboration with filmmaker David Lowery, and has since composed the music for all of Lowery’s films, including Pete’s Dragon, A Ghost Story, The Old Man & the Gun, and The Green Knight.

His recent projects include A24’s Mother Mary, AMC’s hit series The Vampire Lestat, and The Dutchman starring Kate Mara and André Holland. Recent work also includes An Almost Christmas Story, Sunny, and Peter Pan & Wendy, reflecting Hart’s approach to scoring that blends orchestral writing, experimental textures, and an intimate emotional perspective.

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Celebrating Wanda Jackson on her 89th birthday. —Ed.

When it comes to vocalists—male, female, whale, Sasquatch, you name it—it’s hard to top Wanda “The Queen of Rockabilly” Jackson. For a couple of years at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, Jackson recorded a bunch of truly hair-raising vocal performances that generated every bit as much feral excitement and raw sexual energy as the ones being recorded by Elvis Presley (whom she dated for a brief spell), Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, and Little Richard. The very much alive Jackson possesses vocal cords made of barbed wire, and has never met a tempo—most of them played back in the day with lethal intensity by a relatively unsung young guitar slinger named Roy Clark—so raucous she couldn’t rein it in. And she can yodel up a storm, too.

There were other women singing rockabilly during its golden age; Janis Martin, for example, who was unfortunate enough to have the moniker “the Female Elvis” hung around her neck like an albatross. But Martin had a more staid vocal style that came up short in the barbaric yawp department.

For the most part, the same goes for Lorrie Collins of novelty act the Collins Kids, who had her moments of inspiration (check out her wonderfully frenzied take on “Mercy”) but who rarely roamed into the realm of the possessed. Jackson was a full-grown woman, and her voice was a force of nature in 1961, and still is; listen to the 73-year-old Jackson kick up a rockin’ ruckus out on such raunch’n’roll numbers as “Shakin’ All Over” and “Rip It Up” on 2011’s Jack White-produced The Party Ain’t Over if you have any doubts about the matter.

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The sole studio album (thus far) by Willis Alan Ramsey was released in 1972 by Shelter Records, the label of musician Leon Russell. The lack of a follow-up should hopefully provide adequate insight into the album’s commercial reception, although it did inspire numerous other artists through better-known cover versions. But Willis Alan Ramsey holds up in its own right as yet another undersung artifact of folky, country-tinged singer-songwriter goodness from an era abundant with the stuff, the early 1970s. A first-time vinyl reissue is freshly out by Superior Viaduct subsidiary Antarctica Starts Here.

Some of these rediscovered folky singer-songwriters are total obscurities that cut records for small, often regional labels, or even self-released their stuff. Even when the albums have an aura of excellence about them, the chances these musicians would’ve found “success” in an already overcrowded field were infinitesimally small.

Willis Alan Ramsey’s percentages were much higher. That he cut a record for Shelter in itself is evidence of a considerable level of achievement. It’s just too bad the album didn’t sell. That a few of the LP’s songs were recorded by other artists, and with “Muskrat Love” a sizable hit for Captain & Tennille, underscores that Ramsey could’ve easily sold some records had the chips fallen just a little bit differently.

That “Muskrat Love,” which was titled “Muskrat Candlelight” on the original pressing of Willis Alan Ramsey, should reinforce a level of soft-rock in its composer’s disposition. And that’s alright. Before Captain & Tennille skyrocketed the song, America had a smaller hit with it as it landed on their 1973 album Hat Trick. That Waylon Jennings chose to cut a version of this album’s “Satin Sheets” for his 1977 album Ol’ Waylon highlights the country side of Ramsey’s personality.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “This book is an amazing chronicle of the colorful & adventurous life of Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who has been a great friend to me for many years and actually one of the few people in the music business I can say that about. The smartest person in the room, he is a wealth of knowledge about a great many things, technical, historical and philosophical. Reading his book was quite the ride. And man, that f*cker can play!” —Slash

From a founding member of Steely Dan and former guitarist with the Doobie Brothers, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, comes the astonishing true story of one of the most fascinating lives in American music, tracing his extraordinary journey from legendary rock and roll guitarist to a highly successful second career as a Subject Matter Expert in the world of defense, space, wargaming, and counter-terrorism.

Harper Influence, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced today the publication of Baxter’s long-awaited memoir, From Rock to Rockets: My Life as a Hall of Fame Guitar Slinger, Mad Scientist of Sound, and Citizen Warrior for National Defense. SVP and Publisher of Harper Influence, Lisa Sharkey, negotiated the deal for World rights with Jud Laghi at The Jud Laghi Agency, with Senior Editor Maddie Downing editing the book. Publication in the US and Canada will be on January 26, 2027, with preorders available now.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Six-time GRAMMY-winning musician, producer, and composer Don Was announced Live Dispatch Vol. 1: Blues For Allah ’26, a new live album from Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble. Honoring Don’s longtime friend and collaborator Bob Weir, the album features performances captured along The Ensemble’s recent tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah. Releasing November 20 via Verve, the album announcement comes with the first single “The Music Never Stopped.”

In 2018, Don joined Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir to form the Wolf Brothers, a band that continued to tour in the US and overseas until Weir’s passing in 2026. “Playing with Bobby Weir and The Wolf Bros drew me deep into the music of the Grateful Dead,” says Don.

“The songs became way more than lyrics and a chord chart—they became more like ‘friends’ that I looked forward to hanging out with night after night. We hope that this record conveys our deep respect and love for this music and for the fans who have made it such an important part of their lives.”

The Pan-Detroit Ensemble features top-tier jazz musicians from Don’s hometown, including longtime collaborator Dave McMurray on saxophone, and additional members include drummer Jeff Canady, trombonist Vincent Chandler, vocalist Steffanie Christi’an, trumpeter John Douglas, guitarist Wayne Gerard, percussionist Mahindi Masai, and keyboardist Phil Whitfield.

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Remembering Peter Tosh, born on this day in 1944. —Ed.

Live at My Father’s Place 1978 offers crisp audio of a Peter Tosh performance originally broadcast live on the radio via New York’s WLIR FM. While it’s unlikely to alter many opinions, positive or negative, of Tosh’s work at this stage of his career, it does accurately represent the man’s musical direction during a commercially productive and musically transitional period. 

Flash back to 1978, and Peter Tosh was in the midst of his most fertile commercial run. That year saw the release of Bush Doctor, his first album for Rolling Stones Records, a set that found him duetting with Mick Jagger on a Temptations tune. If Tosh wasn’t reggae’s biggest star at the time, he was sitting pretty secure in the number two spot.

While album-focused listeners might disagree, Peter Tosh’s early recordings endure as his strongest work, cohering into an unimpeachable stretch of singles both solo and as part of the Wailers; alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston, the Wailers eventually cut a string of crucial LPs in the early ’70s, before Tosh and Livingston’s departure and the Wailers effectively shifting to Marley’s backing band.

However, the appraisals of Tosh’s post-Equal Rights LPs are decidedly varied. This is partly due to an increased attempt to score crossover success, which, as detailed above, was fully realized. Although he’d been frequenting studios since the mid-’60s, Tosh didn’t release his full-length solo debut until 1976, after signing with Columbia. The record, Legalize It, remains his best-known, and for reasons that should be obvious: for decades, its title track was an anthem for folks who were tired of being hassled for their stash.

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