The boxless box set starts to take shape (possibly in the shape of a box!)
KeithHandy posted in Composing, Lists on December 9th, 2006
Assuming I can continue to stave off demons, dragons, and other disasters with the same level of tenacity that I have thus far, I foresee the assembly of a “boxless box set”, possibly titled “Everything I’ve Ever Done” or something equally cryptic.
It has to do with organization. In a way, I’m not sure why. On the one hand, if you collect 100 songs into one place you can guarantee them a “life raft” for the day when the body finally surrenders to entropy. On the other hand, depending on how things are organized, certain things will still manage to be drowned out by the rest of the collection. If they were “lost” and then “found” they might attract more interest than if they were sandwiched between a few unpopular obscurities. But then again, isn’t “sandwiched between a few unpopular obscurities” just another form of “lost”? Bottom line, I can’t guarantee them all a bright future with a two-car garage, but I can at least make sure they all make it onto the school bus.
They will be sorted vaguely by what phase of my life they were initially written in, regardless of when they were recorded or remixed. There are just too many songs that I’ve put away for a few years, done revisions and touch-ups on, put away for a few more years, done more revisions and touch-ups on, and so on. Bottom line is, whenever they first came out, no matter how crude they were, that’s when they’re from. And that’s a loose rule, because if something just “goes with” something else, it stays with it.
The general categories (what could be “discs” if the crazed fans insist on having a physical object in their hand) could be:
- Pre-historic (anything written before Insomnic Hallucinations)
- Unfinished Business (mostly songs written in high school)
- Through Forbidden Black Doors (started just after graduating high school)
- Open the Window/Leave of Absence
- Broken Wheel to Rival Big Bang song cycle (title?)
- Orphan songs (never been included on an “album”)
- Stuff with/by other people that I made significant contributions to
At least two of the items on that list would take up 2 discs each, which would be a total of nine discs. The Open the Window/Leave of Absence thing I’m not sure how to sort out, because they overlapped. I dumped Window on principle (because I didn’t like the “why” behind it), but then most everything on it was actually pretty good, so I remixed most of it for Leave of Absence and felt perfectly fine about it.
“Pre-historic” might not be enough material to fill a disc. Since I have working versions of several songs from a childhood album idea, I figured I’d assemble them into a skeletal mock-up of that, to give my inner thirteen-year old a “thank you” gift, as well as setting some kind of foundation for everything else. The “stuff by/with other people” might be thin too, so maybe they can share a disc. I guess I’d really only feature things I played lead guitar on.
Maybe I could have a disc of nothing but sketches, things that never got turned into full-blown songs but ought to be. I could call it You Finish The Damned Thing or something like that.
