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.