Genre-based, Place-based, Time-based Box-Sets/Series

Found a few old "box set" threads, but none focusing on genre-focused or time-period-focused or place-based box sets, as opposed to artist-specific boxes. As there were a few that hugely influenced my listening as a young man, inspiring me to tackle making a few myself over the years (post-punk, Library music, singer-songwriter, Afrominimalism, etc), seems something worth discussing, to me. So--what are your favorites? I'd say thematically-coherent series (like the Ethiopiques series) are worth including, but that might expand things too far, so I'll focus on boxes.

https://img.discogs.com/apEfA-UzdU0G2HaXHYmkQLK0UOo=/fit-in/596x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-652964-1329594799.jpeg.jpg

When I was a teenager, a reissue of Harry Smith's 'Anthology of American Folk Music' I was given for Christmas opened up a whole world to me. The music itself gave context to the folk-revival and singer-songwriter music I was raised on by my parents, but the idea of Harry Smith himself as a collector-curator also fascinated me.

https://img.discogs.com/cscwLHXOFIZkvjoUdt8hfS7linM=/fit-in/600x1181/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-368136-1381878929-5750.jpeg.jpg

Around the same time, a box set sampler of the 'Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era (1965-1968)' and the story around the original series demonstrated the validity of post facto genre-cobbling, linking sounds that may or may not have been viewed contemporaneously as of-a-kind but that make a compelling case in the context of one another for a movement, a sound, an ethos.

https://img.discogs.com/4cmbA7i9GvPiZsL1vX5Igpm0Aqs=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-37857-1273908333.jpeg.jpg

I bought the 'OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music (1948-1980)' box when I was 20 or 21, having become a bit obsessed with Steve Reich's early work, Terry Riley, Brian Eno's 'Discrete Music,' and the box exposed me to so many I came to love like Bernard Parmegiani, Tod Dockstader, Raymond Scott, Pauline Oliveros, Jon Hassell, Morton Subotnick, La Monte young, Vladimir Ussachevsky, et al--and really opened my mind to appreciating sound itself without always looking for rhythm and melody. (The much more narrowly-regionally-focused 'Popular Electronics: Early Dutch Electronic Music From Philips Research Laboratories (1956-1963)' also thrilled me.)

https://img.discogs.com/8HrSdJgqnL6OSGjlgkVBFqvLUPQ=/fit-in/500x500/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1232218-1203145343.jpeg.jpg

[url-https://www.discogs.com/Various-One-Kiss-Can-Lead-To-Another-Girl-Group-Sounds-Lost-And-Found/release/1232218]'One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found'[/url] showed me the power of a box set to make you reconsider the place of music you'd mostly overlooked in the history of what you loved. It's narrow focus and mixing of very-well-known and totally unknown music was really powerful.

https://img.discogs.com/tZoc6-tlQDzed0v01RtB2cIdXqw=/fit-in/509x478/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3735347-1342296348-8963.jpeg.jpg

Despite being terribly named and terribly packaged, Masterpiece Volume 1-10: The Ultimate Disco Funk Collection (bought for something like $30) was a godsend for helping me realize that early-80s post-disco/boogie was as seemingly as great and as deep as disco before or house after, introducing me to a ton of artists I don't know if I would've discovered. [I see now it's blocked from sale on Discogs--making me wonder if the label that put it out was making money without paying the artists?]

https://img.discogs.com/Enn3PW_xcL59Z1efyAnMatSckSk=/fit-in/500x500/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2198777-1453389826-8672.jpeg.jpg

One of my favorite place-based boxes was a boxed collection of the first three volumes of the [b]'Next Stop. . . Soweto'[b] series. Soweto's history was particularly compelling, and its artistic fecundity surely above-average, but it is really cool to hear the breadth of sounds trans-genre that a particular place and its people can produce and hear how that place can have a feeling that transcends genre. (Hoping maybe somebody knows similar boxes for, say, Chicago or Detroit in the 80s/early 90s, or New Orleans across time, or some unexpected hotbed like Bloomington, Indiana or New Zealand in the early 80s or Louisville, Kentucky in the 90s...)

Anyway--enough from me for now, though there are many others. Hope we can have some new discoveries in this thread!

“One Kiss...” is excellent for sure.

I wonder if that “Disco Funk Box” is the same thing as the (obviously unlicensed) 10-CDR “Disco Box” that was being sold on eBay in the early 2000s?

off the top of my head...

Dust On The Nettles: A Journey Through The British Underground Folk Scene 1967–72
Still In A Dream: A Story Of Shoegaze 1988-1995

a box set of louisville in the '90s would be nice

Tougher Than Tough: The Story of Jamaican Music was a seminal set for me when it came out.

A couple of years ago Dust To Digital put out a box of Moroccan music, recorded by Paul Bowles in 1959. The physical version cam with an incredible book detailing the story behind the project and Bowles' life in Morocco, and the music's great, obviously.

That Morocco set is a joy.

Yeah, I've had 'Music of Morocco' and the book out as just beautiful objects since I got them--for packaging, among the very best.

https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/the-organist/episode-72-baptism-of-solitude-paul-bowless-morocco-tapes/17MusicOfMorocco_photo_02.jpg/@@images/4d1ceb6e-5eaa-4aef-a331-5318cb8e606a.jpeg

Another set I really like, because it opened up a whole world that I had no idea existed, was the 4CD An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music 1992-2008, on Sub Rosa.

That one's on Bandcamp, too.

In fact, they have a ton of great historical compilations of that type that are worth checking out.

“One Kiss...” is excellent for sure.

I wonder if that “Disco Funk Box” is the same thing as the (obviously unlicensed) 10-CDR “Disco Box” that was being sold on eBay in the early 2000s?

― i stan corrected (morrisp), Saturday, January 5, 2019 4:55 PM

Hmm, not sure. Per the discogs page for it, the series has been coming out in individual volumes since 2004, and there are another 16 volumes since that boxed collection. Plus you can buy them on Amazon, not that that guarnatees anything I guess. So, perhaps a box to download digitally and then use it as a source for buying albums (which is essentially what I ended up doing, having bought the box used). I obviously personally understand making box sets as a thing you give away to try to get people to hear/buy albums, as a labor of love. But selling the compilations for a profit unlicensed? Why?

x-post: Wow, that sounds fascinating, thanks for the Bandcamp link!

That would be another great thing in this thread--if boxes are available via Bandcamp or direct from labels or the like, to include links to buy. . .

My all-time favorite is Stars of the Apollo, gleefully following the development of R&B through vaudeville, swing and jive up to the early 60s

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Stars-Of-The-Apollo-Theatre/release/2831186

Similar breadth and eras, but covering the influence of Yiddish culture on American pop is From Avenue A to the Great White Way

https://www.discogs.com/Various-From-Avenue-A-To-The-Great-White-Way-Yiddish-And-American-Popular-Songs-From-1914-1950/release/5357813

Burning Ambitions is my favorite comp of first wave UK punk, and because of contemporaneous licensing, focuses on early indie releases. Which makes it much more interesting in retrospect

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Burning-Ambitions-A-History-Of-Punk/release/424574

Document - New Music From Russia - The 80s.
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Document-New-Music-From-Russia-The-80s/release/918897

Leo Feigin put this out in 1989 on his Leo imprint, it's an 8 CD set of Russian experimental music that blew a lot of assumptions wide open for me when I heard it. Apparently a lot of the music had to be smuggled out of the country on cassettes, spy-movie style, which puts the 'oppressed' whining of most US/Euro musicians to shame. Featuring the late Sergey Kuryokhin, the Ganelin Trio, Sainkho Namtchylak, Jazz Group Arkhangelsk and loads more people I'd never heard of.

https://img.discogs.com/IFWB7lcSPSeUNWPpDwlfwivobLk=/fit-in/600x594/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-918897-1172765520.jpeg.jpg

This thread is going to cause some money-spending. . .

> New Zealand in the early 80s

The Flying Nun 25th box set is really well selected, spills into the 00s.

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Flying-Nun-25th-Anniversary-Box-Set/release/1038214