Help! I'm A Box Set Junkie!
There is something lurking at the back of my record collection that makes me feel sick and ashamed every time I think of it.
The item in question is a hardback glossy book, 2 feet tall and a foot wide, diluting the two solo albums Freddie Mercury released in his lifetime across ten CDs and two DVDs of out-takes, interviews, remixes and instrumental versions: the grisly apex of a marketing machine wringing cash from those fans who would willingly buy anything and everything embossed with the Queen logo.
Freddie Mercury: The Solo Collection remains in my possession only until financial straits dictate otherwise. However, I'll never even consider parting with the 7-CD Stooges-a-thon that is The Complete Fun House Sessions, despite never having quite managed to audition all 28 takes of "Loose." It stands on the shelf, a lurid, totemic Objet d'Punk announcing to the world my unhealthy devotion to the Iggy Pop, just like that tattoo I'm still too chicken to get.
There's obviously something seriously wrong with me, but I'm not alone. While the music industry ails due to a nasty case of download fever, Box Sets continue to thrive, selling to a core of dedicated music fans, those unlikely to purchase their albums in Asda or Wal-Mart. They... (ahem) we all fall prey to what Frank Zappa once called the "Fondlement fetish*," suckered in by luxurious packaging. Corky McCoy's lurid '70s sleeve cartoon, embossed onto the copper casing of Miles Davis' The Complete On The Corner Sessions, coquettishly begs the caress of all passers-by.
But my obsession goes deeper. I'm the kind of loser for whom the promise of "previously-unreleased tracks" guarantees instant arousal, ever craving the archaeological thrill of discovering demos, alternate takes and other detritus. It's not just the nuggets such expeditions occasionally offer up--say, Neil Young's haunting acoustic demo for "Out Of My Mind" from 2000's Buffalo Springfield set, or Flo Ballard's atypically smutty ‘Buttered Popcorn' from the pink-velvet-fringed Supremes box. There's the voyeuristic thrill of imagining oneself slipping unseen into a late-night recording session, and also that not-entirely-healthy need to hear everything recorded by certain artists, their dandruff as much as their diamonds (explaining the presence of no less than five Guided By Voices box sets on my shelf).
The more excessively-packaged boxes almost discourage listening to their contents. Goodbye Babylon--Dust-To-Digital's anthology of 20th Century spirituals, encased in etched wood--and Revenant's 10CD faux-ebony "Spirit Box" of unreleased Albert Ayler recordings, Holy Ghost, are both sumptuous artefacts containing truly revelatory sounds, but require the traversal of a welter of replica memorabilia, photographs, hard-back tomes, pressed flowers and actual buds of cotton to get to the CDs themselves.
Cumbersome then, intimidating perhaps, space-hogging for certain--but too precious to part with. The truth is, I'm a box set addict, with no hope of a cure. Anyway, Iggy Pop rolled in broken glass and mainlined skag to make Fun House; in such a context, owning seven hours of his session tapes hardly seems quite so insane...
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* The Real Frank Zappa Book, Frank Zappa & Peter Occhiogrosso, Picador, 1989--wherein Frank also presciently predicts the rise of little gizmo-boxes that play musical computer files
