When I bought that set the only Springsteen song I even particularly liked was “The River”. I thought the set was amazingly good ... and if it had been a single-concert set I would probably never have bought it. The grounds on which you criticise it would probably also apply to the Grateful Dead So Many Roads set. Again, maybe not much to see there for the fan who collected live recordings but it was a big step for me towards becoming a GD fan.
Personally speaking, I love all the little oddities like Little Book of Sheep in box sets, but I do appreciate that not everyone does, especially if they Just Want The Music. From Little Book to replica tickets & flyers (Venus & Mars, WATSOS, Floyd sets, Appetite for Destruction SDE), recipe extracts & fan club magazine reproductions (Flaming Pie) , I find it all delightful. I’m still hunting down the Wings Over America set, the last one I’m missing, mostly for the ‘stuff’ in the set. If I have a beef with any of Paul’s sets, it’s the lack of the vintage quad/DTS-CDs for Band on the Run and Venus & Mars. Would be the perfect place for them, especially given the price of the sets. The vintage quad mixes of Atom Heart Mother, Echoes, Dark Side and WYWH on their respective Floyd sets were a joy to hear, something of a missed opportunity with Paul’s sets. As for any other box set beefs - there have been a number of sets that ought to have been a shoe in given my interest in the band/artist but I’ve passed on due to poor masterings, by far the biggest obstacle to paying out box set prices.
Almost every time they played a song it was different (even over a three day period). The Complete Matrix is a lot more worthwhile boxset then the third album box.
My Complete Columbia 1965-1968 box chewed a disc in the same way . It’s my all-time favourite set so I bought a new one , listening to disc two right now . The metal spines look great but I prefer the top loading sleeves as per the Complete In a Silent Way box (my all time second-favourite...)
Fat 12" boxes containing cds in the cheapest imaginable packaging are my personal bete noir. The Streetwalkers set being the worst offender. A more or less worthless book and a load of other tat (including sub acceptable bootleg quality live recordings) in a very fat box with lot of air in it. If they had just done a box of the four studio albums on vinyl (and maybe the book but really, why bother?) then that would have done just fine for most serious fans. Sadly the ELP box gave that monstrosity a serious run for its money. After the excellent two disc sets containing the remixes tackled by Steven Wilson et al I expected a lot better. Once again very basic versions of the original cds (and some "rarities") in cheap as chips packaging rattling around in a too-big 12" box with a slightly more worthwhile book and again an awful lot of empty air. The vinyl album that is thrown in with that lot feels like little more than an excuse to go to the 12" format.
Putting CD and vinyl together. I moved from vinyl years ago and won't be going back, whatever the record companies are doing to try and create this upsurge. The prices are ridiculous for vinyl now. It's just a money making exercise. Having said all that, lm awaiting the Who Sellout box set, which includes 2 vinyl singles, anymore and l would've given it a miss. But with 5 CDs of good stuff in there l broke my rule.
This goes to the record companies, regarding CD box sets: DITCH THE F'N CARDBOARD, GIVE US JEWEL CASES. Please and thank you!
Preach brother, preach. My buying habits have shifted back to CD's at about 80/20, except if I'm buying used vinyl in a shop. You pay a premium for a new record nowadays and hold your breath when you open the shrink, hoping there aren't any issues with the record itself. For the most part with CD's there are no worries. A couple of months ago on a total impulse buy I was in a Target and rolled the dice on the Target exclusive colored vinyl of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Paid around $28 for it (something I NEVER do) but I said you know what, I deserve it. Luckily it turned out to be a nice little copy. But those purchases are few and far between for me nowadays.
I coudn't see any reason why the stripped down Double Fantasy couldn't be inlcuded in the John Lennon Signature box set, which was released simultaneously.
Don't call a box set "complete" when it isn't. ie The Smiths - "COMPLETE". No it isn't and it would have taken very little to make it so.
In general I love box sets .... In more recent times I have become annoyed at box sets that lock in bluray concerts and 5.1 mixes, to make those big fans of those items have to buy the box or do without, and as someone pointed out earlier, the want to lock those things in with cd and vinyl versions of the album, so the price is up in the stratosphere is really annoying. We aren't all millionaires and there are only so many 12" x 4 or 5" boxes one can comfortably fit in the house ... I can see a time soon where I will need to buy a house with an extra room just for box sets .... and then I will need to spend even more hours at work and listen to less .... it is a conundrum
The more music the better so no beef with box sets...just wish there were more and that the Zappa’s release one per month or weekly.
Artists who release deluxe edition box sets for single albums, and then leave out material that was on previous editions, meaning you still need both.
I had to 'pimp' my Shamen 'Complete Singles' with a couple more to finish it off The MK2A single wouldn't fit
Bo Diddley - didn't need to be a boxed set, or they could have added a third disk. Two CD's in an LP sized box, and a huge plastic tray to keep them in.
Do the Rhino Handmade Super Deluxe Editions of Monkees albums count as box sets? I never bought one, but a friend played me a lot of the Birds and Bees set. Can't remember if it came in an actual box per se. I love the band and the album, but hearing endless variations of tracks was wearying. I think this set had four versions/mixes of "Magnolia Simms." Kind of robbed the music of its magic to hear this. Sometimes less is more.
Ten to twelwe missing songs, if I remeber correctly. Really incredible that they couldn't put those on Louder Than Bombs or one of the other complations. Or better yet, make room for an additional disc containing those. Ah, checked wiki and there's even more Complete (The Smiths album) - Wikipedia
mosaic i think has a Don Cherry box like this, such a waste of space for 2 cds. Even the three cd ones are annoying
Their 3 CD / 1 DVD Once In A Lifetime set from is even worse. Hardly any rarities at all, with an even worse ratio of released to unreleased material than their fine 2 CD Sand In The Vaseline set from about ten years prior. And it’s packaged in an awkwardly unwieldy hardcover book with some of the ugliest and graphically confrontational shock art ever released on a major label’s legacy artist compilation. Its only redeeming quality is the first release on DVD of their video compilation Storytelling Giant, which at this point could easily be released on Blu-Ray and make this set completely superfluous.
