Music Boxes

I have some sound advice for anyone who wants to build up their record collection (provided they own records and don't use streaming or the Cloud) . . . never get a box set.

I have four box sets in my record collection, and despite the good cuts between them, I wish I hadn't gotten them.  Well, except for Bob Dylan's 1991 inaugural Bootleg Series three-CD set, if only because it's comprised entirely of previously unreleased songs.  But the other three are mainly greatest-hits compilations on steroids, filled out here and there by a couple of unreleased songs and alternate mixes.  I really don't listen to them that much.  In fact, there are two that I don't listen to at all - because they're both on cassette.

Let me explain.  The first two box sets I ever got were Bob Dylan's Biograph from 1985 and Elton John's To Be Continued . . . from 1990, both retrospectives of their careers with a couple of alternate mixes and unreleased tracks thrown in for good measure.  Both of my copies are on cassette, because that was the only format I could play at the time.  I got my first compact disc player for Christmas in 1990; the following year, I got as a Christmas gift the Crosby, Stills and Nash box set on CD.  All of these box sets are entertaining enough, though I was always left with a pang of rue over the Crosby, Stills and Nash box set - mainly because, while many of the songs included were among the trio's best, most of them were in fact from their solo and duo projects, because as a group,  Crosby, Stills and Nash didn't put out many albums because they spent more time arguing than recording together.

Well, I don't have a working cassette player any more, the second one I've had since 2019 having broken like the one before it.  So I can't play the Dylan and Elton collections.  And the 1991 CSN box set?  That set led me to seek out Crosby and Nash's mid-seventies releases and the first album from Stephen Stills' group Manassas, as well as some of Stills' and Graham Nash's solo albums.  The box set seems less essential now.   

As for the cassette box sets . . . yeah, well, one of the four cassettes from Elton John's To Be Continued . . . is homemade, recorded off other sources, because the original one broke.

I'm thinking of just selling the CSN box set to a local record store, and I don't know what to do with the Dylan and Elton sets, because who's going to buy any cassette recording these days anyway?  Besides, in 1992, after the release of To Be Continued . . ., Polydor, which acquired the rights to Elton John's pre-1976 recordings, put out the two-CD Rare Masters, a more concise and compact collection of rare Elton John singles and B-sides, plus his and Bernie Taupin's contributions to the soundtrack for the movie Friends, and that is the essential big-time Elton retrospective.

One other thing.  I kept my box sets in a plastic crate in my bedroom, but both the box sets and the crate got so dusty that I put the box sets I put in the living room credenza with all of my old vinyl records (which I can't play because I have no working turntable) and condemned the crate to the basement.  I really don't think it's worth keeping them, especially when they all may be out of print anyway and no one likely cares about them anymore.  I remember that David Bowie threw Dylan a launch party at the Whitney Museum in New York when Biograph was issued in 1985; the party was probably more enjoyable than the box set.  (And, truth be told, some critics found Biograph to be too conservative in offering too many familiar tracks and not enough unreleased material from the vaults.)  

Box sets, in a word, are ridiculous.  They're nicely packaged but rarely offer anything essential.  Most of the essentials are in the packaging - the rare photos, the interview with the artiste, and the like.  But life is too short to get them just to hear an alternate mix of  CSN's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" or an awful dance mix of Elton's "I Don't Want To Go On With You Like That" from house/dance pop producer Shep Pettibone (best known for his work with Madonna!).   Who needs any of that, really?  I did once say that box sets are worth it because it's always fascinating to hear alternate takes and unreleased songs, as it leads to a lot of second-guessing as to whether an artiste made the right call in rejecting them, but the novelty of such tracks - and box sets in general - has since worn off for me.

So yes, I was once into box sets, but my enthusiasm for them has long since waned.  I don't know what I'll ultimately do about the box sets I have mentioned here, but I will keep my set of the Beatles' Anthology, because that is essential.  Yeah, yeah, the three Anthology albums were released separately over a year and change, but to me they're really a box set, only without the box.       

The Beatles On CD . . . Again

When the Beatles' catalog was first issued on compact disc in 1987 - seems like a long time ago, huh? - EMI righted a wrong that had long gone uncorrected, restoring the Beatles's first seven albums to the way they had been issued in the United Kingdom (Capitol in the United States padded them out to ten titles). Paradoxically, the Beatles were among the last artistes from the vinyl age to be reissued on CD. And although posthumous releases of previously unreleased Beatles material in the nineties and two thousand zeroes made the most out of the format (especially the Anthology series), the original catalog was never remastered with the most advanced technology, making the audio quality of the 1987 issues seem stale.

Until now. Apple Corps has announced that on September 9, 2009, the entire Beatles catalog will finally be remastered for a new generation of fans. The CDs will be packaged with the artwork from the original U.K. releases (plus the Capitol-compiled Magical Mystery Tour album, which gathered all of the tracks from 1967 outside Sgt. Pepper), along with new liner notes to complement original album notes, rare photos (there are Beatles photos we haven't seen yet?), and, for a limited time, embedded documentary films about each of the original albums. The Past Masters CDs, which gathered the 33 nonalbum tracks the Beatles recorded, will be merged into one.

The albums were remastered by of engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London over four yeas, using the latest recording technology and 1960s vintage studio equipment to maintain the sound of the original releases to ensure the highest fidelity possible. All fourteen albums will be issued in stereo, hence the first four Beatles albums (Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale) will be in stereophonic sound for the first time. The stereo releases will be gathered n a box set along with a DVD compiling the miniature documentaries. A second box set will compile the original Beatles mono releases as well, for those who prefer the mono sound of the earlier records (and truth be told, audiophiles prefer the monophonic versions of the first four albums and the earlier singles).

This is the most ambitious issue from Apple since the Anthology series, maybe even since the original Beatles CD issues. A splendid time will indeed be guaranteed for all. :-)

The release date - September 9, 2009 - is appropriate. It's the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the century.

John Lennon always considered nine a lucky number. :-)