Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing weekly review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to discover! This week we've got Depeche Mode on vinyl...er, digital, Roxette in Spanish and Shel Silverstein in rare form.
Depeche Mode, Speak & Spell | The 12" Singles (Warner/Rhino) (iTunes / Amazon)
Issued in 2018 as the first of nine (and counting) box sets featuring 12" replicas of every Depeche Mode single from a particular album, this new-to-digital set captures long and alternate mixes of "Dreaming of Me," "New Life" and "Just Can't Get Enough" - all from their 1981 debut - plus their B-sides and a rare flexi-disc track.
Roxette, Baladas en Español (Complete Collection) (Parlophone/Rhino) (iTunes / Amazon)
A collection of 12 Spanish-language mixes of Roxette hits put out in 1996 (featuring versions of "Listen to Your Heart," "It Must Have Been Love," "Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave)" and more), Baladas en Español has now been digitally expanded to accommodate four additional versions released later in the '90s.
Static-X, Machine (20th Anniversary Edition) (Warner/Rhino) (iTunes / Amazon)
Industrial metal group Static-X scored their highest chart placement with sophomore album Machine in 2001, featuring tracks like "This is Not," "Black and White" and "Cold" (heard on the soundtrack to the action-packed vampire flick Queen of the Damned). This expanded edition features three live tracks recorded in 2019, when the band reunited after the passing of founding vocalist Wayne Static some five years earlier.
Shel Silverstein, Freakin' At the Freakers Ball (Expanded Edition) (Columbia/Legacy) (iTunes / Amazon)
Known to children as a gifted poet and author (Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, The Giving Tree) and to adults as a cockeyed lyricist who put his eccentric verses onto some enduring crossover pop hits (Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue," Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show's "The Cover of the Rolling Stone"), Shel Silverstein reconciled both halves of his public persona on his ninth studio album (and second of four for Columbia Records). In addition to favorites like "I Got Stoned and I Missed It," "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out" and "Don't Give a Dose to the One You Love Most," this expansion (released on CD by Collector's Choice in 1999) includes two sides of a single issued in 1971 - the delightfully demented concert travelogue "A Front Row Seat to Hear Ole Johnny Sing" (complete with a cameo from The Man in Black himself) and "26 Second Song" - plus the 1974 A-side "Everybody's Makin' It Big But Me."
Kool Moe Dee, Wild, Wild West (Jive) (iTunes / Amazon)
The most popular single off Kool Moe Dee's most popular album was an oddity, comparing inner city life to the rugged lawlessness of a younger America. Nonetheless, this Top 5 rap chart hit got its due with another generation when the chorus - complete with Dee's vocals - got interpolated into Will Smith's "Wild Wild West," the over-the-top theme song to his misfired film version of the classic TV show. This EP features two rare remixes of the track plus two of the non-LP flipside "Dumb Dick (Richard)."
The Supernaturals, It Doesn't Matter Anymore (Expanded Edition) (Parlophone) (iTunes / Amazon)
While this Scottish alt-rock group couldn't transcend the bounds of Britpop outside the U.K., they did exceptionally well for themselves on their own shores with their 1997 debut, which reached the Top 10 and spun off the Ivor Novello-nominated "Smile" plus favorites like "The Day Before Yesterday's Men" and "Lazy Lover." Now it's packed with a bonus disc's worth of 19 B-sides and rarities.
Ken says
Instead of throwing them out into the wild, it’d be nice if Depeche Mode/WMG would clean up and reorganize the remixes (this goes for all youse other guys out there!).