Music Monday: Styx/The Complete Wooden Nickel Recordings

After allowing some of the early Styx songs to be on the Come Sail Away anthology, Wooden Nickel then remastered all of the old albums and released them as a set together in 2005. This was The Complete Wooden Nickel Recordings.

Music Monday: Styx/Come Sail Away Anthology

In 2004, Styx released yet another "greatest hits" album. This one was called Come Sail Away - The Styx Anthology. Now the main difference between this and the 1995 Greatest Hits is that it actually contains songs from the Wooden Nickel albums.

You get "Best Thing" (their first released single) from Styx I, "You Need Love" and "Lady" (the original, not the Lady '95 version) from Styx II, "Winner Take All" from The Serpent is Rising, and "Rock and Roll Feeling" from Man of Miracles.

It contains most of the hits in between and songs as recent as "One with Everything" off Cyclorama. The most interesting nugget in the whole thing though is a never before released extended version of "Man in the Wilderness" from The Grand Illusion.

I could not find a version of this one YouTube, so like before I just made one. Enjoy.

********************************************************************************

Music Monday (Styx/Man of Miracles, Side Two)

After covering the first side here, it is time to take a look a the flip side of Styx's Man of Miracles. This was the last of the Wooden Nickel albums, so it was also the last to have an alternate cover from a re-issue. The 1980 cover looks like this:

As with the other re-issues, there was a minor name change and this album was shortened down to just Miracles.

Music Monday (Styx I, Side 2)

The opening side of Styx I was basically the one extended "suite" followed by a bluesy number. Not much to get into there, but the flip side finally gives us something to grab onto. But before that, remember in the last post I mentioned the Wooden Nickel albums? They were re-issued in 1980 with alternate covers, and sometimes names. This is the Styx I that I had. I actually prefer it over the original cover.

Damn classy!