Surprises abound. This is especially so with the recent announcement of the upcoming MASSIVE Box collection for Harry Nilsson, a set leaving almost no stone unlifted. It leads me to wonder what other artists should be afforded this kind of in depth attention.
I have to say that while I love Harry Nilsson, I also have to wonder how many people are fans enough to pay the kind of dollars needed to acquire such an exhaustive set. AQnd there will also be fans who refuse to pay such a premium for the set. Believe me, Harry Nilsson is deserving of such a set. Hell, many, many other artists are deserving of such a set. The question is who, who else would be deserving of such a set in today’s tight money market?
I can think of many. Bands, singer-songwriters, and singers not songwriters. And we can now eliminate the excuse that any band of any note was not popular enough to warrant such a collection. Let’s face it. Some of us know well the music of Harry Nilsson. However, I would hardly call Nilsson a household name. Not like Led Zeppelin. Or The Rolling Stones. Or The Beatles. Or even John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and thousands of others.
With these thoughts firmly in place, and given a nice bit of extra room to roam catalogs once thought to be too obscure, let’s do the simple fun exercise of throwing around a few names that should be given the honor of a 17CD Box set that completely explores a career.
I’d like to start with Patti Smith. She’s on the right label for starters. With Legacy as hounds to uncover the goodies that are obviously in her vaults, both Arista and Columbia, I WOULD pay top dollars to acquire an exhaustive Patti Smith box. Of course, that’s for starters. I could think of many others. But let me turn it over to you.
I must point out that this requires there actually be a lot of “vault material” to begin with but since this is a wish list we’ll assume there is. One other question,,, groups like Cheap Trick/Heart/Iron Maiden have had a boxed set along the way or extra tracks added to remastered albums,,, are we to assume the well goes even deeper and there is more? With that question lingering, I will try to concentrate on groups that haven’t done a lot of re-issues and boxed sets (at least that I know of)…..
Alice In Chains
Bad Company
Boston
Dire Straits
Doobie Brothers
Eagles
Led Zep (of course, but deluxe editions are on the way,,,, right?)
ELO
Foghat
Foo Fighters (too soon?)
Green Day
Guns N Roses (no re-issues ever that I know of)
Kansas
Metallica
Steve Miller
Ted Nugent
The Pretenders
Scorpions
Bob Seger
Steely Dan
Styx
Supertramp
Tool
Robin Trower
Van Halen
I think Todd rundgren would be a good choice for a large retrospective,the man has definitely put out enough music for this
A couple years ago, sometime between the huge Miles Davis box and the beginning of their major “complete albums” initiative, Sony announced a Herbie Hancock box. It never came out, and I’m still mad. Besides classics like Sextant and Headhunters, he made a ton of albums that were only released in Japan and are impossible to find at a decent price (unless you go digital… bah).
Van Halen just came out with the first 6 album box. I would like to see a Hagar years box. They could throw in the Cherrone album, but then they would have to decrease the price. I echo most of Bill’s selections too.
Van Halen has got to have some vault stuff. That first box was just the first 6 albums remastered with nothing extra. For one thing, there has never been an official live album release of any kind for the original VH 1978-1984. It would be cool for a remaster with outtakes and some live cuts or whole concerts.
Scorpions
Wishbone Ash
Be Bop Deluxe
Mothers of Invention
Yardbirds
Al Dimeola
Agree about Bob Seger. It’s not just vault material though, there are many earlier official albums that were never released on CD. He basically disowns them, but they are still special to many of his fans. Maybe someday. I would also like to see a nice box set of Renaissance (second incarnation) in hi-res.
Prince!
Looks like Van Morrison’s “Moondance” gets in on it:
a href=”http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/van-morrison-moondance-4cdblu-ray-audio-deluxe-set/” rel=”nofollow”Moondance/a
They need to remaster the hagar era cd’s at least 5150 and ou812