Box Sets - music, movies, whatever!

txa1265

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As sort of a split on the 'current listening thread', I thought it might be cool to look at the Box Sets people have gotten.

Some rules (as always)
- It can be 'good, bad or ugly' - you can love it or hate it!
- Describe what it is, and what you like about it.
- Post a link to something useful - could be Amazon, Wikipedia, whatever.

That's it!

I'll Start:

Box Set - Miles Davis: Complete Bitches Brew Sessions
Type - Music, remastered recording with 'extras'.
Genre - Jazz
Assessment - LOVE IT
Links - Amazon and Wikipedia and Discography Listing.
Description - Miles Davis changed music history more times than anyone else in the entire history of music, and is arguably the most influential force in music of the last century. Many of those changes were embraced, others were controversial. This was the most controversial of all - and some say it was the end of Jazz as we knew it. The fusion of jazz and rock didn't start here, it crystallized! Music was never the same afterwards, and I for one think that it was a great change - and this music is not just changing, it is pure greatness in and of itself.

Miles had a very free way of handling band members, to the point where Dave Holland said he felt that they were recording 'the process' rather than songs when making Bitches Brew. Regardless, there are 4 CD's chock full of amazing stuff here, close to 4.5 hours of music that is all part of the session - only two 'alternate takes' are present, accounting for less than 15 minutes. And those show how different the views of a song could be - particularly the different line-up interpreting Joe Zawinal's Double Image.

Bitches Brew is a fundamental piece of music history, like the Brandenburg Concertos, Beethoven's 9th, Gershwin's Porgy & Bess, and others. For those used to more structured music (e.g. most rock and pop sub-genres) it can be a challenging listen - there are usually two pianists, bassists and drummers playing - but it is somewhat like reading James Joyce in that regard.
 
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Okay...

Three DVD boxed sets:

Battlestar Galactica - complete series (original from the late 1970's)

Space: 1999 (the complete series)

Planet of the Apes (Complete TV series)

If you like retro (sometimes corny, sometimes goofy) sci-fi, you will love all three of these sets. They are great fun to watch, and with the complete series you will have hours and hours of sci-fi viewing pleasure.

It can be interesting to look back at what was on offer 30 years ago for the sci-fi viewer, and to see how far we've come (in some ways). And really, these sets can't be beat even today. For all the new technology and remakes of some series/movies, these series can still be quite interesting and they have a special feel to them.

If you watched them as a kid when they were first run series (like I did), or you never saw them at all, they are a great addition to your sci-fi collection.
 
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Cool - I *loved* BSG back then, found Space 1999 boring ... but had completely forgotten the Planet of the Apes series!
 
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Musically, the only box set I've got is Airiel's Winks and Kisses, a collection of 4 eps. Gazer/dreampop stuff, but spanning that entire spectrum (noisy to pretty). Sadly, even the band is sold out of copies. Since a portion of the individual eps were issued seperately as they were released, a couple of them are still available but the entire collection is out of reach without paying collector prices. I think cm may have gotten one of the last available box sets several months ago.

I had to buy that Bon Jovi box set for the Mrs a while back, but I do my best not to claim that.

Movie wise, I bought box sets of "Sex & the City" and "Amityville Horror" for the Mrs and the "Die Hard" trio for me. Oh, also picked up the Muppet Show 1st Season, and still waiting and hoping for season 2 to be released soon.
 
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Box Set - Miles Davis: Complete In A Silent Way Sessions
Type - Music, remastered recording with extra stuff from different sessions
Genre - Jazz
Assessment - Good
Links - Amazon and Wikipedia and Discography Listing.
Description - Before Bitches Brew, Miles had the first 'fusion' record with In A Silent Way. But it was a much quieter recording, certainly not anything 'in your face' like the later work. But it still hold up very well and is a truly great transitional recording.

As for the box set, someone at Columbia obviously saw the sales numbers for the Bitches Brew boxed set and thought 'hey, let's do the same thing for In A Silent Way'. The problem is that there isn't the same body of work - looking at the track listing, only the final CD is actually from the Silent Way sessions. The first CD is pretty much from the 'Filles De Kilimanjaro' sessions (a great CD in its own right), the second is half out-takes from Filles and half outtakes from Silent Way.

So you get the original CD remastered and two other songs *really* worth having - the unreleased Filles extra " Dual Mr. Tillmon Anthony Williams Process" and the truly awesome previously unreleased "The Ghetto Walk" from the Silent Way recordings. The fact that I already owned most of the music made it an even poorer value for me - I was blinded by the love of the Bitches Brew box and impulse bought.
 
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Couple of snippets:

- Miles Davis - The Columbia Years 1955 - 1985 (4 CD's)
- Verdict: OK
- These are pretty much the highlights of Miles 30 year recording period with Columbia. This wasn't bad - I had the majority of the music, but there were some new tracks, and the presentation format - one CD for 'Blues', 'Standards', 'Moods' and 'Electric' - made it great car listening in those pre-iPod days.

- Wagner Orchestral Music (3 LP's)
- Verdict: Excellent
- This was the first boxed set of music I ever got was a set of Wagner's Orchestral works on three albums that I bought in 1981. It has remained with me in one form or other ever since, and remains on my iPod to this day. I'm not big into opera, but lobe Wagner's stuff - so this was perfect.
 
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I'll just keep on plugging ... ;)

Box Set - Moonlighting: The Anthology - Roger Daltrey
Type - Music Compendium of 'hits' and other tracks
Genre - Rock
Assessment - Gawd-awful
Links - Amazon .

I wrote a blog entry on this one back in September of 2005, here is a quote:
Roger Daltrey is one of the truly great rock frontmen, encompassing a vocal power and physical presence that have become a fundamental part of the rock music landscape. Singers from Robert Plant to David Lee Roth and beyond have emulated that style over the years. One thing Daltrey wasn't - was a songwriter. So when he ventured out into solo territory, he used other people's songs, with mixed results.

There is some good stuff in this collection - but not many surprises. Some of the stuff I already had - I had 'McVicar' and 'Under a Raging Moon' on album and had already digitized 'Free Me', 'Bitter and Twisted', 'My Time is Gonna Come', and 'Without Your Love' from McVicar, and 'After the Fire', and the title song from 'Under a Raging Moon'. I had also gotten 'Say it Ain't So, Joe' and 'Giving It All Away' from iTunes courtesy of my enthusiastic Diet Pepsi drinking, and knew of his version of 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me' from the Lost Boys, although I never had a copy.

So what does that leave? Not very much - most of his 70's stuff is throw-away, tending to be slow and melancholy songs I found boring and uninspired. I found McVicar to be his best album, even if the movie never even made it to the US. But everything of quality was well played when the album was new - which was also true for 'Under a Raging Moon'. I had checked out but ultimitely not gotten anything newer, and the selections featured here merely confirm this - mediocrity abounds. There are a number of live songs here, some of which are decent enough, but none that are worth buying - and none that I even bothered ripping to my iPod. There was a previously unreleased song that left little impression on me. The one truly new addition to my iPod was 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me', which was even more powerful than I remembered.

So, I had 8 of the 37 songs already, and I digitized and replaced those that had come from vinyl. Add to that the one new song, and it is still less than 25% of the collection that I found even worth recording from CD.

... and I thought that it was the low quality percentage that resulted in collections in the first place?

I thought of this one flipping through iTunes yesterday (I tend to leave my iPod for the car and use my Pocket PC at my desk) - as of now I have 2 songs from this 'anthology' - Free Me from McVicar and 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me'.

There are collections like this all over the place - cobble something together to keep an artist on the shelves and feeding the name back to the public. Often the collections are marginal or done too soon (like a 2 CD collection from an artists with 3 released CD's), but in this case ... it really is just as good as it gets.
 
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Okay, I'll stay on my television series kick...

I'm a big Bruce Campbell fan and there are two great boxed sets available that are well worth your money and your time.

Jack of All Trades - The Complete Series

This is a great action/comedy series with Bruce playing the part of an American spy during the infancy of the United States (but the location for the series is not the US). It can be a bit slapstick(ish) at times, but it's really great. It has some adult themes so it's not always great for the kids. This series is a blast.

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. The Complete Series

This is another action/comedy series that takes place in the wild west. It mixes comedy/western/sci-fi together to make a great blend. This one is a bit more drama than Jack of All Trades, and overall it's a better series. It lasted longer also, so you get more out of this boxed set than the first (of course it costs more too).

You can't go wrong with these two great underrated TV series. They are really well-written and fun to watch.
 
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The Lord of the Rings - The Motion Picture Trilogy - Nice set, tons of extra stuff. I still havent really gotten into the extras yet, but re-watched all the films. Twice. Somewhat sappy and overwrought at times, but still some of my most fave films ever.

Samhain [BOX SET] Half of these cds are outta print and hard to get, and Ive had a few of them on tape but not cd, so it was worth it to get the whole set for once and for all. Got a VHS video of them with it. Looks like they are in high school or something, kinda funny in a way, since here they are these dreadful and malevolent characters in my head all these years. I see them now, and they look like theyre all 17 or something, I could kick all their asses pretty easily, prolly at the same time. That was punk in that era tho, look at any band, like Minor Threat or Black Flag or something and you'll be suprised how young they look.

Hammer Horror Series Lots of hard to find films in this set, most notably the "Brides of Dracula", formerly impossible to get on DVD. Good film too, except for the fact that it has in my opinion the most ridiculous Drac death of all the Hammer films.

The Lucio Fulci Collection Volume 1 If you like schlocky, totally incoherant Italian horror, then you need to hang out with Lucio. I already have the films otherwise, but there's some good extras including an interview with Lucio himself.

Dracula - The Legacy Collection Nice restored version of Dracula, and the equally-cool Spanish version. There's some other extras, but I havent went much farther with it.

Icewind Dale Ultimate Collection Lots of IWD still taking up shelf space. I'll get to it someday.

Seinfeld all seasons & Married w/ Children most seasons - my favorite shows ever! Never a "special episode", never a little melodramatic homily spouted over soft piano music, or some stupid lesson to learn. None of that bullshit. They did their one job well (which is making me laugh), and they still do to this day.
 
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i never saw jack of all trades but i used to watch brisco county jr. every week when it was on. who needed to go out on a friday when that an early x-files were back to back. i'm a big bruce campbell fan and would love for them to come out with an evil dead box set. i bought the collectors edition for the first one which was a spongy book of the dead (necronomicron) but i let someone borrow it and the ahole lost it...
the wierdest bruce campbell role i remember though was that disturbing 'doctor' from escape from la. bring on bubba nosferatu.
 
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I'm now the proud owner of another box set. While hitting the local WallyWorld, I stumbled on a box of the complete series of the old "Dungeons and Dragons" cartoon. There's a blast from the past. Better yet, the Wild Dogs seem to like it. We've completed 14 of tht 27 episodes so far. Good shtuff.
 
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OK, last one for a bit ... from an old blog entry:

The latest addition to my boxed set collection is a newly issued set called 'The Cellar Door Sessions'. This is a 6-CD set recorded live over a four day stint that Miles and his sextet of that time played at the Cellar Door Club in Washington DC. In these appearances, Miles was playing with a band consisting of Gary Bartz on saxophones, Keith Jarrett on keyboards, Michael Henderson on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Airto Moreira on percussion. Heavily edited sections of the final concert of the stint on December 19th, with John McLaughlin on guitar as a guest musician, were previously released as part of the Live-Evil album. But until now, the Bartz-Jarrett-Henderson-DeJohnette-Moreira band on its own had never been heard on official releases.

Now this is what a box set should be – ‘beyond the music’, as it were. The ‘Live Evil’ CD has always been a favorite of mine, as it captures so much of where Miles was going at that time. To take that vision, and expand it from 2 (album length) CD’s to 6 full-hour CD’s allows us a look into everything the group was doing at that time. Despite there being largely 5 songs repeated in each session, there is a huge variation in the music presented. The amount and level of improvisation – and not just solos, but actual twisting of the rhythms and themes and structures of the tunes from performance – is simply staggering. As Michael Henderson put it, "we were vicious. This band was on the edge and off the rails." And Keith Jarrett adds in the liner notes “His (Miles) playing is so strong here that I need not comment on it. If it doesn't knock your socks off, you aren't wearing any."

The songs features across the sets were: Directions, Honky Tonk, What I Say, Sanctuary, Inamorata and a few short interludes titled Improvisations. Yesternow – one of the songs from the Tribute to Jack Johnson – is featured on the first day only. While I have know of these songs from their various appearances on live recordings of the period – such as at the Fillmore East and West recording and the ‘Black Beauty’ concerts – it is amazing how much variety is put into them here. The band really is thrilling, and every minute of every CD is worth listening to.

This set has taken a high-listening spot on my iPod, and has reaffirmed my faith that the box set can represent the possibility to fill in the musical space in a way that single CD’s can never approach.

This set continues to amaze me over a year later, and I just spent most of the last week lavishing in it again ...
 
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I think I have a boxed set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy plus The Hobbit (books), with Return of the King missing. The box is gilded and covered with prints of royalty (and other) tiles from the series.
I gave the RotK book to a friend 25 years ago because the annex contained an exhaustive list of characters. I never got it back. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly which friend borrowed it... still better than what happened to my Elric anthology: it was there one day and gone the next. I never found it. Twelve years later my brother told me that he had given it to one of his friends who never returned it.
Right, several years ago I married a man with an Elric anthology of his own :p.
 
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I've got the Star Wars box set, but that's so far the only one, due to lack of money. There are several others I'd like to buy one day.

I've got in terms of music a feww more : The TB30 "box" - all Tubular Bells albums collected in one "box" (it's not really a box since you can fold it out), plus the Tubular Bells 2003 album.
I've got The Collection, the I think defibnitive box set for Enya now, since the music there is remastered.
What I'd like to buy one day is the "Elemets" box by Mike Oldfield, and the Platinum Collection, both because of the rare tracks (I'm a fan ;) ).
Of Genesis I've got both "Archive" box sets.

All of them were bought in shops when the prices were low, I couldn't afford them for the full price. Furtunately I've developed kind of a "seventh sense" (as I call it) for low prices. ;)
 
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