The Press Release:
More than 30 years after its release, OZZY OSBOURNE’s sixth solo album–the Top 10 (#7) and quadruple platinum NO MORE TEARS will be celebrated with an expanded digital audio album due out September 17 (Sony). Two special editions–a 2LP black vinyl version and a special yellow and red 2LP vinyl version with a specially created booklet (exclusively at www.towerrecords.com)–will be released simultaneously. Pre-order the album here.
In its release, NO MORE TEARS yielded four top ten singles on the Billboard Rock Tracks chart, “Mama, I’m Coming Home” (#2), “Road To Nowhere” (#3), “Time After Time” (#6) and the title track (#10). In addition, the album’s “I Don’t Want to Change the World” earned OZZY his first Grammy for a live version of the track that was featured on his 1993 LIVE AND LOUD album. The Grammy-winning track was one of the album’s four songs co-written with OZZY’s longtime friend and colleague Lemmy Kilmister; the others include “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” “Desire,” and “Hellraiser.” The album has remained an OZZY classic, earning a spot (#22) on Loudwire’s “Top 90 Hard Rock + Metal Albums of the ’90s” with Ultimate Classic Rock including No More Tears on their list “Top 100 ’90s Rock Albums.”
Continue reading Ozzy Osbourne To Celebrate “No More Tears” 30th Anniversary with Special Editions →
In 1986 I was finding myself getting far more broad in terms of my Metal appreciation and this was thanks to many of the influential artists that had released works during the previous couple of years. I was an active musician at the time and since one could count on Metal music videos being showcased on MTV around this time, it was easy to let the Heavy Metal genre take you over and to worlds of heavy that you had only dreamed of. Thirty years ago on this day in music history, Ozzy Osbourne would release his fourth solo album with “The Ultimate Sin”; it was produced by Ron Nevison and had some stunning cover art by the legendary Boris Vallejo (who many might visually recall from paintings of Conan the Barbarian and Doc Savage). The album would be the second with guitarist Jake E. Lee and he wrote most of the compositions on this one and he and Ozzy were joined by a completely new rhythm section with Randy Castillo on drums (who came from Lita Ford’s band originally) and bassist Phil Soussan. Historically speaking this would be Soussans only album with the group and Lee’s final recorded work with the Prince Of Darkness. The video for “Shot In The Dark” was a mainstay on MTV and you would see it broadcast at various points of the day as opposed to how it might only be shown in the evening but of course MTV rarely shows videos these days and instead gives us marathons of “The Real Mob Housewives of Slobovia” instead (not a real program of course but you get my drift). The release came care of Epic Records which was founded by Columbia Music. In today’s music geography both are a division of Sony Music Entertainment.
Continue reading Ozzy Osbourne’s “The Ultimate Sin” Is Thirty Years Old Today →
Artist: Ozzy Osbourne
Title: “Live & Loud”
Label: Epic Music Video
Release Date: 10/1/1997
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 2.75/5
“Live And Loud” is the DVD follow up for the live Ozzy Osbourne album that bore the same name and was released in 1993. The film follows his “No More Tours” tour and these shows were ones that supported his “No More Tears” release. The clever naming of the gigs was based on this supposedly being the retirement party for the legendary singer who had finally decided that he exit stage left. The film comes a few years after the CD’s initial release and the video is delivered a little bit differently than the album with the first thing one notices is that a couple of the songs are juxtaposed from where we expected to find them. For example, the CD opens with “Paranoid” but on the DVD this is in the second section of songs in the film. The footage is solid but clearly comes from a number of different nights across the tour as Ozzy looks one way in a part of the song and then different at another portion of the same song. For instance we see him with wet hair once and then at a later verse it’s dry and tied back. Given the closeness of these verses there is no way that this was done at the same show. This type of thing happens all over the film and there are also a lot of weird camera tricks done as opposed to it being a straight filming of the full performance which is more commonplace in live video concerts nowadays. The random scattering of footage takes a little bit of the consistency of the film away. Ozzy’s band for the tour was a much younger Zakk Wylde on guitar, Mike Inez on bass and Randy Castillo on drums and each member performs incredibly.
Continue reading “Live & Loud” (DVD) by Ozzy Osbourne →
Where Heavy Music & Pop Culture Collide
