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Louder Than War’s Banjo looks at the many joys of Box Sets, taking in examples from Play Dead, Theatre of Hate, Suede and Joy Division.
I love a good binge. Recently I worked my way through the whole 177 episodes of House, seeing Hugh Laurie’s character crash and burn in what seemed like one continuous storyline, meaning the characters worked their way into my consciousness as if they were friends and family.
But bingeing isn’t just reserved for visual media. During lockdown I worked my way through the entire recorded output by The Fall, including live albums and Peel sessions, all in chronological order. Again this was a highly enjoyable task to take up, albeit one that I completed without ever wanting to embrace Mark E Smith into the family bosom.
Lately I have been getting increasingly hooked on another way of binge listening – the box set.
Box sets are issued for a number of reasons. They can be an in depth look at just one album, expanded to many discs. These extra discs can contain demos of songs that made up the album in question, live versions, remixes, outtakes and more. These can all provide a fascinating peek behind the curtain at an album’s genesis and make for essential listening for fans.
Box sets can also bring an artists collected works together in one handy package, deep diving into a band or artist’s career, looking at one or a whole career. Lots of these come with booklets or extensive sleeve notes, fold out posters and other extras.
Then there are the box sets that can focus on a particular genre or record label, such as Cherry Red’s sets taking in Shoegaze, Trojan Records and indie dancefloor classics.
There is something deeply appealing about these box sets, something comforting and tactile about holding an entire discography in your hand. They also give us a chance to revisit a band or an era with minimal effort, all we have to do to relive part of our youth is work our way through the box set in whatever order we please.
I suppose I have picked up box sets infrequently along the way in my record and CD buying life, but it is something that seems to have stepped up recently. It has come to be something quite addictive and acquiring them that seems to have propelled box sets into becoming my latest hobby.
Perhaps the catalyst for this was pre-ordering the recently released Play Dead box set, Complete Works. For some unfathomable reason, Play Dead were never a major name, but were loved beyond measure by their fans, who often followed the band for entire tours. They were, and remain, one of my favourite bands, and one I return to often. But, having given away my record collection a few years ago (I know, I know), and with their CDs commanding fairly outlandish prices, I had to resort to downloads to listen to them again. As a result, the Complete Works box set was something of a godsend for me, costing less than a copy of their debut album goes for these days.
It is a fully comprehensive collection of their recorded output, missing only one posthumous live album as far as I am aware, with each album given multiple extra tracks that take in singles, B-sides and remixes. There is also a disc that consists of their Peel sessions and last recordings. Playing these discs, I am reminded of both my love for the band and of just how good they actually were. A powerful mix of post punk, tribal beats and dirty funk basslines, they sound as good now as they ever did and I am again at a complete loss as to why they never achieved Cult or Killing Joke levels of success.
Staying with my Goth roots, the next box set I picked up was Theatre of Hate’s Omens, which claims to present their studio work from 1980 to 2020, but in reality focuses on the band’s early days apart from a cheekily included album from singer Kirk Brandon’s post Theatre of Hate band 10:51.
Again the beauty of a good box set is demonstrated in the in depth look at a band who figured hugely in my musical evolution. Disc 1 gathers together Theatre of Hate’s singles, presenting them in order of release, while disc 2 gives us their Mick Jones produced debut album, along with 8 extra tracks.
Disc 3 is the most interesting of the lot for me, looking at Theatre of Hate’s versions of songs that went on to form the first Spear of Destiny album. The fourth disc collects the band’s BBC sessions, from John Peel and Kid Jensen’s shows and even includes the Top of the Pops version of Do You Believe in the Westworld for good measure, complete with introduction from John Peel.
The inclusion of the 10:51 album feels like a bit of a cheat when we could have had one (or both) of the band’s He Who Dares Wins live albums, although these have been released in their own extended box set. That said, Stone in the Rain is a strong album in its own right and if it wasn’t for its inclusion in this box set it might have passed me by.
The collection is brought up to date with a CD of 21st century remixes that round things up nicely.
I also had a bit of a run on a few picks from a series called the Original Albums series, which contain 5 albums from a single band or artist, with no frills, no extra tracks, just the albums presented in their original form, which is sometimes a blessing. I have sets from Patti Smith, Echo and the Bunnymen, Orbital and New Model Army. Other sets are available from the likes of Faith No More, Peter Tosh, Soft Machine and Roberta Flack, which gives you some idea of the diversity of this series. The fact that they cost less than the price of a single new album also adds to their appeal.
Another habit I seem to have acquired lately is filling in any gaps in my CD collection, picking up albums I missed by Nick Cave, Radiohead and Chemical Brothers. My latest project in this vein is Suede. Perhaps foolishly, the first album I bought in this project was the triple CD version of their debut album, meaning that my OCD then kicked in and dictated that I get the box set versions of all their albums, where available.
This is all fine, as the box sets for the debut and it’s follow up, the wonderful, sprawling Dog Man Star, contain a disc of B-sides, something which Suede are known to excel at. The Suede album also contains a DVD with two full lives shows, containing 24 tracks and interviews.
A speculative, cheeky eBay bid bagged me the box set of their recent Autofiction album for less than half the retail price, again comprising the album, B-sides and a live disc, while a similar bid got me the recent Antidepressants set.
Maybe it should be time to take breath for a while and listen to all of these, but then along came Joy Division’s Eternal box set, giving the dedicated fan 14 discs and two DVDs worth of live material, which should hopefully see the end of the previously constant run of low quality bootleg releases.
Showing more self-control than you might credit me for after reading this, the Joy Division set remains unopened until I have the time to pay it the attention it deserves, especially the two gigs that I was lucky enough to have attended. It is however, a thing of beauty, pointing out another benefit of a good box set, they are beautiful objets d’art to have in their own right, even before we play a single note of the music they contain.
It is fair to say that my appetite has been whet rather than sated by these box sets and I am already getting itchy fingers when it comes to looking for what to buy next. But I will probably wait, as the real joy in a good listening binge is exactly that, the listening. I have hours of pleasure in front of me taking in the music that makes up these wonderful artefacts, delving deep into one band, one album or one era at a time.
As happened with my binge watching of House or Buffy, I can see the character of bands and albums develop and unfurl as I go and take in the music, I can chart the progression and develop genuine affection for the characters involved once again.
In fact the more I go on about this, the more I want to buy another box set.
Now look what you’ve done to me.
Buy Play Dead Complete Works here
Buy Theatre of Hate’s Omens here
Words by Banjo, you can find his Louder Than War archive here
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