Confessor mentioned boxed sets a little while back and it stuck with me. So the last two days I’ve been listening to the Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-74 box. I love the convenience and ease of finding stuff that steaming gives, but those big boxed sets were amazing.

Atlantic Rhythm & Blues is a desert island set for me.  Just incredible.  It also pairs pretty well with the Complete Stax/Volt Singles box, though there is some overlap, and the latter being complete instead of curated means there are misses as well as hits.

I still think a top 10 favourite/best retrospective box sets thread might be fun. We'd obviously have to set rules on what constitutes a retrospective box set -- minumum of three discs maybe?? Covering a period of at least 2 years in the artist/band/record lable/genre's existence??? Can it be a vinyl or CD box set or are we just focusing on CD?? Maybe it has to have been issued at least 10 years after the period of time it covers??? Would we exclude classical music???

I dunno, but once we get what constitutes a retrospective box set ironed out, I think such a run down could be a lot fun.

I'm up for it.  Let's talk rules.  I might have to balk at the 2 cd minimum though, because what I suspect would be my #1 choice was two discs and was one of the biggest releases of the year when it came out. 

I don't know that I have a problem with classical music...though I do think that it kind of skirts the outer bounds of what I think of when I think boxed set.  

I think I know exactly which release you're talking about.

If it is the set that I am thinking of, personally I sort of didn't consider that to be a bona fide box set at the time because it was just a double CD. But actually, having just looked on Discogs.com, I see that in the U.S. it was indeed released in a proper rectangular box set format. Over here in the UK, we just got it in a standard fatbox double jewel case.

So, maybe as a compromise we can say that a box set has to have two discs as a minimum, but it also has to come in an actual box, with a booklet – not just a double jewel case. What do you think?





I certainly don't want to exclude anyone or really care too much if we do include classical music box sets.

But like slam, I sort of feel that classical box sets are a very different beast to what I normally think of when I say a "box set". Not least because, unless it's modern classical, it won't feature the original composers conducting or playing as they will likely have been dead for a long, long time. Whereas box sets of 20th or 21st century artists will feature recordings in which the original artists themselves participated or that were at least released within the lifetime of the original artists and their listenership. I've not explained that particularly well, but I hope you sort of catch my drift?

But I really don't mind if we do include classical box sets, if you have some that you really want to talk about, @supercat .