I used to hate box sets, now I really like them. What are your favorite box sets? Also, what are your least favorite?

Some of my favorites:

Harry Smith Anthology
Atlantic Records box
Ray Charles: Birth of Soul
Johnny Cash: Unearthed
Johnny Cash: Essential
Also, if it counts, the two disc They Might Be Giants set that compiles their early albums and singles is awesome.

Least Favorite
Bruce Springsteen: Tracks (I really wanted to like this...I love Springsteen, and Darkness on the Edge of Town is in my ten favorite albums of all time, but there was just too much filler in this box for me)

Robert Johnson: Complete Recordings (I know I'm gonna take heat for this one, but I just don't find R.J. as compelling as other early blues guys. I'll take Son House or Mississippi John Hurt any day.

Great topic!

I'd pick No Thanks! (Rhino's punk box)as one of my faves. The Jam's Direction, Reaction, Creation is another great one. Also, both Nuggets sets rule, as do Not Lame's Jellyfish and Posies boxes. And the Joy Division and New Order boxes are both cool.

Bad boxes that I own include Sex, America, Cheap Trick which is poorly executed, and the Who and Clash box sets.

The Atlantic Rhythm & Blues that I suspect was the inspiration for this thread is a favorite of mine and set the standard for years for how to do a box set right.

I'll further echo pE's kudos for both Nuggets collections as well as Rhino's Punk and 80s boxes. Rhino sets the standard today.

For years, Mosaic has been producing limited edition boxes that collect great jazz artists lesser-heard recordings, lesser-heard jazz artists great recordings and everything in between. Like Rhino, they set the standard.

I think my favorite box set of all time actually came out last year and while I've thought about it a great deal, I've never mentioned it here, Albert Ayler's Holy Ghost on Revenant. It's beautifully packaged, provides excellent background materials, and fills some frustrating gaps in the career of a complicated and challenging musician. The critis at One Final Note did not share my overt enthusiasm for the set, but I think they tell the story well.

As far as least favorite boxes, I could name any of a dozen other jazz boxes from Verve and Columbia to name only two of the worst offenders. Beyond a cavalier attitude toward seeking out the best possible sources for sound quality, there is a long history of packaging great musicians' definitive recordings either so shoddily (Louis Armstrong) that the set falls apart when handled for the first time to so creatively (Bill Evans, if memory serves) that one has to live with a heavy, rusting steel box displayed on their shelf.

Now Playing: "Love in a Trashcan" The Ravonettes streaming on WOXY <-- okay, I don't recall liking The Ravonettes all that well, but this is the second time I've heard the single this week and I'm really looking forward to the new album

A weird box that I love...Lloyd Cole put out a box a few years ago called Collected Works. For a guy who doesn't sell a lot of records anywhere to put out a box is ballsy...this box featured the (longer) version of his most recent record with the Negatives, along with a record of ambient instrumentals, a "lost" record recorded concurrently with the Negatives record, and a live show.

Except for the live show, the other records have been released domestically, but this was truly an unexpected (and I can't imagine very profitable!) box set. Well worth having, though!

just picked up the Aretha Franklin box set 'Queen of Soul' over the weekend. It seems pretty great so far, although I can't comment on the packaging at all, I picked it up used for cheap without the slipcover or the liner notes. Still, you can't argue with the music on it.

Fav Box Sets(...but wish I could afford 'em all!!)
1. John Coltrane - Live 1961 Village Vanguard
2. The police - Message In A Box...come on everything is here.
3. Bjork - Live Box

The OKeh records rhythm and blues 1949-1957 set is really good. I picked it up a couple weeks ago, and have really been enjoying it since then. I had never heard most of the artists on the OKeh label from this period, in fact Screaming Jay Hawkins may have been the only one. For a bunch of artists who seem to have been largely forgotten, they made some great recordings. I think that on the entire set there are only one or two songs that I don't find really enjoyable.

On another note, I've had my eye on the James Brown box Star Time that is on sale at the used book/record store for a very reasonable price. Anyone on here have any thoughts on whether this would be a good purchase for someone who already has several James Brown albums and the 20 greatest hits comp. I'm wondering whether it has good enough liner notes/rare tracks to make it worth buying.

I've never owned a copy of the Okeh box, klt. I was looking down the track listing and aside from Screaming Jay Hawkins, I don't think I know many more of the arists than Chuck Willis, Big Maybelle, and Red Rodney (?!!). I'm pretty surprised to see him in the collection since he's best known as a bop trumpeter.

If you can swap out the James Brown you already have for the Star Time box, I don't see how you can go wrong. Coincidentally, I've been listening to it a bunch lately since Tom Waits named it to his Top 20 list of favorite albums. It's just a terrific box.

Just remember, it doesn't include Live at the Apollo, so if you have that on CD already, don't swap it out for the box.

Now Playing: NPR's All Things Considered

The Smashing Pumpkins, Aeroplane Flies High Box Set of MCIS Singles isn't a favourite. Mainly beacause Id already spent $$$ on importing all the European/American singles with the bonus tracks, and then they released them all in a box, with box set only BWBW tracks. Meaning I had to buy it as well. urgh......

I heard through the grapevine that there is work currently being done to release a My Bloody Valentine box set withen the next couple years, and that would take the cake as my favorite box set if it were to include any rarities what-so-ever

The Velvet Underground's Peel Slowly and See box set is quite nearly perfect (and it should be, considering how small the Velvets' discography is). Also, Rhino's box sets like Nuggets and No Thanks are almost always great.
One of my least favortites is the Who's Thirty Years of Maximum R&B. It contains way too much stuff that should have remained unreleased.

Has anyone heard anything about the upcoming box set for The Band? What little I have heard about it sounds promising, as it will include rare stuff from their early years as well as outtakes from all their studio albums.

You gotta get your hands on Star Time!, the great James Brown boxed set. It's friggin' James Brown! It does a good job of covering his early soul hits and ballads as well as trace his development into early funk and then his 10 minute deep-funk jams throughout the 70s and early 80s. Yeah!

Ahh sorry, LinnTate, I didn't see your mentioning of Star Time. My bad.

Actually, I kind of hate box sets. I have a bunch of 'em, and obviously they have great stuff on them, but usually it is just overwhelming to absorb everything in them, and then try to get through the booklet and liner notes. I can't actually think of many box sets I have bought where I have in fact listened to everything, and read all the material.

I would far rather absorb a band's output album by album, over time, than be swamped by a mass of discs and printed material at once.

And I tend not to be interested in demos, alternate versions and live versions of songs. I really don't care about the 11 versions of a song that a band played around with before it released the final version, and in most cases I can't be bothered to listen to the alternate stuff more than once, at a maximum.

This connects nicely to what I regard to be the three most HATEFUL consequences of the CD era:

1. CDs are TOO LONG. 35-45 minutes is the perfect length for most CDs. But now there is pressure for artists to fill up the 75 or 80 minutes, so weak tracks are added and good tracks are extended far beyond their welcome. (Is there a hip hop CD ever made that is less than an hour in length??)

2. Alternate tracks and bonus tracks. Otherwise known as "crap" and "filler". (Yes, there are occasionally good alternate tracks, but 97% of them are crap.)

3. Hidden tracks. Whoever was the first person who thought it would be clever and funny and cool to add a hidden track at the end of a CD, after 15 minutes of empty air -- well, they should burn in hell for eternity. It's the musical equivalent of publishing a book that ends on p. 350, and is then followed by 40 blank pages followed by a final page or chapter. What's the point?

I generally shy away from boxed sets as well, but they can work magnificently for artists before the "CD Era", who put out a lot of singles as opposed to albums. Boxed sets work great for the older R&B artists, such as James Brown and certain doo-woppers. I agree in wanting to get individual albums by artists and concentrate on those, but it gets difficult when you grab an older album and it has three outstanding songs surrounded by formulaic padding, which was standard fare back in the day.

You could probably thanks the Beatles and the Stones for eradicating the necessity of boxed sets for newer bands.

There's alot of great titles mentioned here. But I would have to say that the absolute best I've ever owned is...

Phil Spector Back To Mono

It was the first box set I ever got and it was like a work of art, to 15 year old ears.

Sancho Panza - that's an excellent point. Most of the boxsets I love are ones where the artist pre-dated the album era. I covet those Doo wop box sets but haven't yet picked one up. "Back to Mono" is a good example of this though -- great songs, and really, you're not gonna buy albums, or even greatest hits, by ALL of those artists.

"Metalogy" by Judas Priest
Emmylou Harris's latest - can't remember the name
"Left of the Dial" by various

Nuggets and Nuggets 2 beget a new Rhino box: Children of Nuggets (due August 30), a collection of artists from the 70's-90's whose music is stylistically similar to the Nuggets folk. INlcuded are the likes of the Cramps, the Soft Boys, the Bangles, Posies, Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream, Julian Cope, and more.

Could be really, really cool...or a big dud.

Edit: track listing (alphabetical) here:

For those interested, here is the track selection for Children of Nuggets:

1 Aardvarks You're My Loving Way
2 Bangles The Real World
3 Bangs Getting Out Of Hand
4 Barracudas I Can't Pretend
5 Barracudas (We're Living In) Violent Times
6 Biff Bang Pow The Chocolate Elephant Man
7 Chesterfield Kings She Told Me Lies
8 Chills Pink Frost
9 Church The Unguarded Moment
10 Cramps New Kind Of Kick
11 Crawdaddys I Can Never Tell
12 Creeps Down At The Nightclub
13 Cynics Cat And Mouse
14 dBs If And When
15 dBs I Thought You Wanted To Know
16 Dentists Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden (And It's Wintertime)
17 Died Pretty Out Of The Unknown
18 DMZ Busy Man (EP version)
19 Dream Syndicate Tell Me When It's Over
20 Droogs Ahead Of My Time
21 Dukes Of The Stratosphere 25 O'Clock
22 Dukes Of The Stratosphere Vanishing Girl
23 Flamin' Groovies I Can't Hide
24 Flamin' Groovies Yes It's True
25 Fleshtones The Girl From Baltimore
26 Fleshtones The World Has Changed
27 Funseekers Welcome To My Love
28 Fuzztones Bad News Travels Fast
29 Green On Red Death & Angels
30 Green Telescope Make Me Stay
31 Hoodoo Gurus I Want You Back
32 Hoodoo Gurus Like Wow - Wipeout
33 Hoods You Keep On Lyin'
34 Inmates Mr Unreliable
35 Inspiral Carpets Weakness
36 Jigsaw Seen My Name Is Tom
37 Julian Cope Sunspots
38 Laika and the Cosmonauts Psycko (Themes From Psycko & Vertigo)
39 LA's There She Goes
40 Last She Don't Know Why I'm Here (45 version)
41 Last LA Explosion
42 Leopards Psychedelic Boy
43 Lime Spiders Slave Girl
44 Lipstick Killers Hindu Gods Of Love
45 Long Ryders And She Rides
46 Lyres Help You Ann
47 Lyres Don't Give It Up Now
48 Milkshakes Please Don't Tell My Baby
49 Milkshakes It's You
50 Miracle Workers You'll Know Why
51 Mummies Test Drive
52 Nashville Ramblers The Trains
53 Nerves One Way Ticket
54 Nomads Where The Wolf Bane Blooms
55 Opal Northern Line
56 Optic Nerve Ain't That A Man
57 Pandoras It's About Time
58 Pandoras Stop Pretending
59 Plimsouls Everyday Things
60 Plimsouls Hypnotized
61 Point All My Life
62 Posies Apology
63 Posies I May Hate You Sometimes
64 Primal Scream Gentle Tuesday
65 Prisoners Whenever I'm Gone
66 Prisoners Far Away
67 Rain Parade One Half Hour To Go
68 Rain Parade You Are My Friend
69 Raybeats Tight Turn
70 Revillos Motorbike Beat
71 Revolving Paint Dream Flowers In The Sky
72 Salvation Army She Turns To Flowers
73 Screaming Trees Transfiguration
74 Sinners Barbed Wire Heart
75 Smithereens Beauty And Sadness
76 Smithereens Strangers When We Meet
77 Soft Boys Wading Through A Ventilator
78 Soft Boys I Wanna Destroy You
79 Spongetones (My Girl) Mary Anne
80 Spongetones She Goes Out With Everybody
81 Stems Love Will Grow
82 Stems She's Fine
83 Sting-Rays Don't Break Down
84 Sun Dial Plains Of Nazca
85 Swingin' Neckbreakers I Live For Buzz
86 Teenage Fanclub Metal Baby
87 Teenage Fanclub God Knows It's True
88 Tell-Tale Hearts Won't Need Yours
89 That Petrol Emotion It's A Good Thing
90 Three O'Clock With A Cantaloupe Girlfriend
91 Times I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape
92 Unclaimed No Apology
93 United States Of Existence A Scandal In Bohemia
94 Unknowns Not My Memory
95 Untamed Youth Pabst Blue Ribbon
96 Vibrasonic Kingsley J
97 Vipers Tears (Only Dry)
98 Vipers Cheated And Lied
99 Watermelon Men Seven Years
100 Wondermints Tracy Hide (Cover version)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: philosopherEric,