[78-L] Complete sets [was New Sons of the Pioneers box]

[Julian Vein]

Cary Ginell wrote:
Like just about every other BF box, the SOTP set is indeed for 
completists only. Even I'm having a hard time going through nearly 9 
hours of Sons of the Pioneers records. It will probably take several 
months to listen to it all. The other thing is that although there are 
many alternate takes in the box, none are really interesting. Alternate 
takes in country music, unless there are mistakes or lyric changes, 
aren't nearly as valuable as in jazz. The only variation you get from 
song to song is Hugh Farr's violin obbligatos, which, for all their 
technical expertise, are pretty limited musically. You begin to hear the 
same riffs over and over again (Farr had a fairly small bag of tricks 
that he used). The set is like an economy size box of rich chocolates. 
One or two at a time are plenty, but you can't eat the whole thing or 
you'll get sick.

Cary Ginell
====================
Complete box sets are a double-edged sword. You want them, but, on the 
other hand, you don't want to play them!

You might use them to play at parties, but then you're going to confuse 
party-goers after they've heard five near-identical takes of one tune! I 
find it difficult to find a single CD to play at parties--there's nearly 
always one track that destroys the mood. A few years back I played most 
of the Milton Brown Texas Rose set at a New Year's eve party. Normally, 
I would edit out the waltzes and sentimental ballads, but I was playing 
it on a DVD player through the TV, without easy edit facilities, so they 
had to stay in. The following year I chose tenor-and-organ records as 
the theme, and that worked much better.

Perhaps someone will invent a CD player with a memory, i.e. one that 
remembers which tracks you've skipped on a particular CD, and play it 
that way next time.

I notice Mosaic have started moving away from complete sets (e.g. 
Goodman and Shaw).

      Julian Vein


__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4389 (20090902) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com