Box Set Bloat

I know the record industry is in trouble, and I understand that the number of people who buy physical product these days is very small, but increasingly over the last few years the size and price of box sets has become insane. To be honest, half of the ‘bonus’ material could be white noise and I would imagine half of the buyers wouldn’t even notice. Perusing the Autumn release schedule, it is absolutely mind boggling how much some of these leviathans cost.

First, though, an example of something done well: New Order’s 1987 double CD compilation Substance has been doubled in size. The first two discs remain the same, the others feature B sides of the period that were left off due to space considerations, most notably “Mesh” and the original (and superior) version of “Ceremony”, and a live album taped in 1987. The cost? A very reasonable £20.

Similarly expanded for two to four CDs is Bob Dylan’s 1978 Live at the Budokan. It has never been considered a particularly key work, and the bonus CDs contain, by and large, the same songs. Books, posters and facsimile memorabilia bump the price up to an eye-watering £200. For basically two CDs of unreleased stuff.

Cherry Red does these things well. A Lene Lovich box containing everything she recorded for Stiff retails at £30 for four CDs, and if the label’s usual standards apply, will be in a sturdy little box with a little 50 or 60 page book bursting with information. For three times that price you get one CD extra in Joni Mitchell’s third archives box. That’s £30 more than the second volume released two years ago, a fity percent hike.

In Utero: five CDs, £180. The bonuses are just live recordings from 1993 and 1994 shows (oh and the B sides).

The vinyl boxes are even more ridiculous. Who the hell is daft enough to pay £130 for a five record version of the Darkness’s Permission to Land (a 50p charity shop staple)? £300 will get you a copy of Rick Wakeman’s The Prog Years, 1973-1977, and for a mere £566 you can get the Japanese version of the Who’s Next / Life House box. I mean, why wouldn’t you.

This ridiculous fetishism of old records, raising them up to the heights of the Holy Grail is just ludicrous. I remember when the first ‘super deluxe editions’ came out a couple of decades ago they seemed to be the definitive statements about particular albums. The Pavement reissues, for example, were packed to the brim with all the material you could possibly need on two CDs with a decent booklet and for no more than twice the price of a standard issue. I own the London Calling and Dirty [Sonic Youth] editions which are equally as comprehensive. I think the bloat started with Pink Floyd whose Early Years box now fetches around £500, but was at the time, I think, the first to breach the £200 mark. Like football transfer fees, you just wonder at what point people will just say “no, this is just getting stupid”. The first £1000 box set can’t be far away.

Age is just a number

Unseasonably warm these last few days, hence the lack of updates. Lots of outside things to do before the Scottish autumn arrives. The big hoo-ha in the music world, of course, is the announcement of the new Rolling Stones album. I’m not a huge fan, but the new song “Angry” is better than I expected. Not many eighty year olds can sing that well. But it seems that there are more and more people who go on way beyond what anybody did in the past. Think of David Attenborough still making programmes at 97, Henry Kissinger flying on diplomatic missions to China at 100. In music the granddaddy of them all was Elliott Carter. Much of his best work was composed after he passed ninety, and no fewer than twenty works were published after he turned 100. Epigrams for piano trio was completed in 2012 when he was 103. You can hear them here.

Albums of Year 2010-22

Here are my albums of the year for the years I wasn’t posting:

2010: Black Dog – Music for Real Airports (Soma)
2011: Kronos Quartet, Samuli Kosminen & Kimmo Pohjonen – Uniko (Ondine)
2012: Bersarin Quartett – II (Denovali)
2013: Jon Hopkins – Immunity (Domino)
2014: Aphex Twin – Syro (Warp)
2015: Alva Noto – Xerrox Vol.3 (Raster-Noton)
2016: David Bowie – Blackstar (Columbia)
2017: GAS – Narkopop (Kompakt)
2018: Chris Carter – Chemistry Lessons Volume 1 (Mute)
2019: Fennesz – Agora (Touch)
2020: Snowdrops – Volutes (Injazero)
2021: Altin Gün – Yol (Glitterbeat)
2022: Tegh & Adel Poursamadi – Ima (Injazero)

A Musical Chronology of the British Isles

Shameless self-promotion time. The first four books of seven covering the history of British music are available now from Amazon. The fifth, covering the years 1919-1949 will probably appear early in the New Year.

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Altin Gün

Good to see that the first two albums by the sublime Turkish-Dutch folk-funk act Altin Gün are readily available again after being hard to track down for a good while. Thoroughly recommend all of their recordings.

So I’m Back

An old man raging against the world. Never thought I’d be that guy. I’m not really, but I would never have thought that popular music would be quite as stuck as it is when I quit this blog thirteen years ago. I’m still finding great music that I like, but very little of it is particularly mainstream. I glanced at the album chart to see what’s happening to find its just full of old stuff. Liam Gallagher at number one? The Hives, Bowie, ABBA, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Eminem and no fewer than six Taylor Swift records. That’s just the top twenty. I know that few people actually buy music any more, but you’d think they might be streaming stuff that is a little more current. What on earth is the nostalgia industry going to do in twenty or thirty years time? All these people (bar Swifty) will probably be long dead. Maybe people will be still going to ABBA, Queen and Fleetwood Mac hologram shows.

Pop music in the past has always undergone radical reinventions when it got stale – from New Orleans jazz to swing to rock ‘n’ roll to funk to pychedelia to punk to rap to rave to drum ‘n’ bass. And all points in between. Optimists are forever promising a new one round the corner, but this century has simply been more of the same in slightly different ways. Radical hasn’t happened. It probably won’t, either, because all musical history is just a thumbprint away, so why do anything new. New acts are so weighed down by history that they cannot help but imitate rather than innovate. While what’s left of the music press applauds from the sidelines and awards everything four stars. It’s all a little depressing.

However, and thankfully there is a however, this ennui does seem to be a Western problem. Where making music is hard, sometimes dangerous, and not a career move, then astonishing stuff still comes through. An example that comes to mind (and my favourite album of 2022) is Ima by Iranians Tegh and Adel Poursamadi. Something I stumbled across on Bandcamp (my favourite place on the web). So I’m still optimistic that there is new stuff that will blow me away.