Various Artists: A Deadly Sin: Gluttony

Many years ago, I committed the deadly sin of musical gluttony.

I'm Pavlov's dog for a good box set. I love Springsteen's Tracks. I can listen over and over to all 5 CDs in the Brubeck For All Time box set. (Which isn't really a box set. It's just five previously released CDs crammed into a box. I like it anyway.) I'm a sucker for box sets of label histories, like the 9-CD RCA Victor 80th Anniversary box set.

And yet...

I remember the early days of eMusic.com. For something like $15 a month, you got unlimited downloads. Yes, unlimited. We all knew that couldn't last forever, and it didn't. Anyway, at first I downloaded a CD a week and savored it. Then two a week.

Then I got greedy.

One day, I downloaded all 15 CDs of Monk's Complete Riverside Recordings.It was pure gluttony. I couldn't possibly digest it all. What's worse, after a while it all started sounding the same, and I love Monk. (And, of course, there were no liner notes, no booklet. I had no idea what I was listening to, other than the titles.)

Then I hit on a solution. Monk recorded a lot of single-LP albums for Riverside. What if I deconstructed the box set into its component parts? What if I discarded the "rare and unreleased" tracks and the outtakes and simply kept the individual tracks together as they originally appeared on Monk's albums?

Suddenly, I was enjoying my massive download. Suddenly, I had a whole bunch of Monk's most classic albums, just as he had recorded them—Monk's Music and 5 by Monk by 5 and Brilliant Corners, etc.—instead of an indigestible box. I liked that.

But did I lean my lesson? Not really.

Later, I found a cheapo, generic 10-CD Monk box at my local drugstore for exactly $10. How can you not buy a 10-CD set for $10? (How in the world can they even afford to offer a 10-CD set for $10? I don't get it.) So I bought it. No liner notes, no booklet, no idea in the world when the discs were recorded or with whom. And yes, I found myself choking on Monk all over again.

Later still, I bought the 10-CD Duke Ellington set The Private Collection, and it only cost $40. You can never have too much Duke. I bought it and I love it.

Now I'm greedily eyeing Ellington's 24-CD The Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings. The price is absurd: $400 used. And I already own some of the material. And yet... wouldn't it be nice?

Or would it? How much is too much?

I remember, years ago, ogling an absolutely absurd 100-CD classical music box set. 100 CDs! And I know very little about classical music. But the idea of owning all that great music, all at once, was intoxicating. But how much would I enjoy? Is it even possible to listen to 100 CDs? And if I did, would I even remember Disc 1 by the time I got to, say, Disc 30? How much could I possibly retain? And what pleasure could I possibly derive from it?

The pleasure of owning, yes. The pleasure of actually listening and hearing? Dubious.

So I continue to buy box sets, and sometimes they are impossibly large. I recently bought a 12-CD set by Yes, The Studio Albums 1969-1987. All their original albums, some of which I already had. And then I bought the 10-CD Chicago box set, The Studio Albums 1969-1978. (OK, my classic rock roots are showing.)

But these are bands I knew and loved in my youth. Many of the albums were LPs I knew by heart. It was a pure nostalgia binge.

So... at what point does owning a box set become absurd? Because I'm looking at a 14-CD Blue Note box set, and then another 25-CD Blue Note box set, and I'm thinking... but this is nuts.

Isn't it?