This five-CD set (which also includes a bonus CD-ROM) is not the biggest, most massive box set that you've ever encountered -- back in the late '90s, Deutsche Grammophon had out something about the size of a cello case (with a pair of handles on it) that contained the label's entire recorded output of the music of
Johann Sebastian Bach, although, to be fair, that wasn't much more than a hyper-mega-packaging of existing CDs, CD sets, and box sets. This set, on the other hand, is very much an elaborately designed creation, specifically remastered and assembled for this release, and its packaging is custom-conceived from the individual song up through to the outer box. And in the context of popular music, this set is certainly in the running alongside some of Bear Family's most ambitious creations, for sheer size and weight -- (anyone on any kind of heart medication who decides they want this set and doesn't own a car or feel like springing for a taxi should probably order it and have it shipped to their home, rather than buy it at a store and transport it themselves, at least unless they check with their doctor first). Ironically enough, the very fact that this is, indeed, a "popular music" box set says something about the end of Elektra Records' history that is embraced by its contents,
Forever Changing: The Golden Age of Elektra 1963-1973, and a limitation in its scope and content -- you won't mind buying it, but you'll heartily wish (and would have bought it that much faster) there were a companion volume of some sort covering the label's history from 1953 through 1963, a time when the company's output included such curiosities as physician-turned-folksinger Shep Ginandes (who was to the postwar folksinging community in Boston the same kind of godfather that
Alexis Korner and
Cyril Davies were to home-grown blues in England) and the soundtracks to documentary movies by
Maya Deren, and when founder
Jac Holzman (whose participation was all over this set) would have been astounded to see Elektra's output designated as "popular" music.
On the other hand, the box at hand, opening as it does with
Judy Collins' "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and closing with
Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive" a decade later speaks volumes, not only about changes in the record company across that later time period, but also about changes in the society to which it was offering its music during that same era. Those buying the set will need a good-sized and sturdy table on which to open it, and to dig down, past a folder containing art prints of four classic album covers from the label, a package of postcards devoted to a larger handful of significant artists, a set of publicity shots devoted to
the Doors,
Love,
Queen, and
Tom Rush; a pair of Elektra emblem pin badges; and a 96-page hardcover book chock-full of information, essays, commentary, and more by
Holzman and the artists themselves (which is another reason one yearns for a volume covering Elektra's first decade -- those are the artists who are truly lost to time and very much need an account of this sort on their behalf). With all of that material inside, the set isn't really devised for convenience of use, a fact of which you'll be reminded in your inability to find the "numbered exclusive certificate of authenticity" supposedly included, which hardly matters -- to borrow from the title of
Holzman's autobiography, which is represented here on the bonus CD-ROM, one buys this to "follow the music," not to prize a numbered edition, or as an investment (the Mosaic Records boxes are wiser acquisitions in the latter regard). But following the music is made slightly difficult by the design of the set; why is it that the makers of all of these mega-boxes, from the joint EMI/Columbia
Pink Floyd set Shine On and RCA's
Duke Ellington career retrospective and on to this release, can't devise an easy way to store and access the CDs and, more importantly, include artist and song information on the individual CD packaging?
Some of the artists on disc one, such as
Judy Collins,
Judy Henske (whose "High Flying Bird" is one of the highlights of the whole set for anyone who doesn't know it -- and anyone hearing it for the first time may rightly wonder why she never got nearly as well-known or found as wide an audience as
Grace Slick or
Janis Joplin),
Phil Ochs, Richard Farina,
Tom Rush,
Fred Neil, and
the Doors are obvious, but many are far less so, and keeping up with it means dealing with a listing separate from the handsome CD package itself, either in the hardcover book or one of the other documents in the package. But in terms of the sound, it is mightily impressive, whether one is listening to the field-call of "Linin' Track" by
Koerner, Ray & Glover or the instrumental "The Even Dozens" by
the Even Dozen Jog Band; and the makers were clever enough to get such deserving figures as
Bob Gibson and
Hamilton Camp represented separately, on "Duke's Song (Fare Thee Well)" and "Pride of Man," respectively (of which the latter is one of several places where this volume brushes up against the folk-rock boom and the psychedelic era that followed in the wake of much of the music here). This CD probably straddles the greatest gap of the set, from reinterpretations of traditional folk to
the Doors' "Moonlight Drive," though the latter song doesn't convincingly belong on this CD, so much as on the next volume.
Disc two is devoted to Elektra's gradual switch in mid-decade from folk to more elaborately conceived and arranged (and heavily amplified) music, opening with
Love's "My Little Red Book" and intermingling the work of
the Doors,
Judy Collins,
Tom Paxton,
David Blue,
Tim Buckley,
Clear Light,
the Holy Modal Rounders,
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band,
the Incredible String Band, and
Earth Opera, as well as encompassing such less familiar names as the Zodiac Cosmic Sounds, Alasdair Clayre, and Waphphle -- it marks the place where the folkies and blues artists all added instruments and began stretching out what they did with them, and the label also signed rock bands that knew distinctly more than three or four chords, and about a lot else besides playing music (though the latter was true of virtually every artist that
Holzman ever signed up). And even though most of the performers here have their work represented on CD already, often in updated, audiophile-quality editions, the sound throughout this disc is still pretty damned impressive. Disc three is where it all blossoms, leaping the gap from amplified folk, blues, and pop variations to bolder messages and groups founded on harder sounds --
the Doors are still here, as are
Judy Collins and
Tom Rush, but
Collins' "Both Sides Now" is present as a representative of
Joni Mitchell's songwriting in the first acquaintanceship that most listeners had with it, and not entirely out-of-sync with
Love's "Alone Again Or" or
Tom Paxton's "Jennifer's Rabbit" in its rather elaborately arranged electric version. And surrounding them are
Nico,
the Doors,
David Ackles,
Rhinoceros,
David Stoughton, the
Stalk-Forrest Group, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends,
Crabby Appleton, and
Bread -- and the
MC5 and
the Stooges, both of whom carried the label into a crunchy, defiant music territory far from its roots, mining deep into a popular culture and an audience that was a world away from the one that had existed just three years before.
Disc four opens with
the Stooges' "Down on the Street" and weaves across the work of
Harry Chapin and
Carly Simon, as well as such label stalwarts as
Judy Collins (who was selling more records than ever) and
Hamilton Camp (who wasn't), and takes us down roads old and new, into pop music as well as eclectic obscurities such as
Cyrus Faryar,
Plainsong, and Courtland Pickett, until we get to
Queen, whose "Keep Yourself Alive" closes out the main section of the set. But in case that musical journey and the obscure musical notables included on the way aren't enough to satisfy the true music obsessive who would buy this set, there's a fifth disc, titled "Another Time, Another Place," which delves into a kind of alternate history of Elektra, and some of the important one-offs, blind alleys, and ultimately unsigned and lost acts that littered the company's history, as well as releases that somehow fit outside of the conception of the other discs here -- everyone from
Eric Clapton & the Powerhouse and
the Byrds in their early incarnation as
the Beefeaters to
David Peel & the Lower East Side, and
Joseph Spence, a Caribbean singer from the album The Real Bahamas, which helped launch what eventually became the Nonesuch Explorer label. There are also oddities such as the 1966
Judy Collins single "I'll Keep It with Mine" (presenting the singer in a fascinating but ultimately abandoned electric folk-rock setting),
the Charles River Valley Boys' bluegrass
Beatles stylings, and some of the company's very late signings before
Holzman's exit --
Simon Stokes' swamp rock "Voodoo Woman" and
Eclection's
Jefferson Airplane-influenced "Please (Mark II)" are the most interesting, but they're all well worth hearing -- when Elektra was absorbed into the Warner-Elektra-Atlantic corporate identity.
Each CD is mastered on a black-vinyl-style platter and re-creates one of the appropriate period Elektra label designs, and the whole release is an exceptional listening experience, but more to the point, it's all fun and enjoyable, mostly because the makers have avoided any obvious boundaries in doing their jobs: tracks such as
Judy Collins' "Both Sides Now" and
Harry Chapin's "Taxi," which were hated by many critics but sold millions of copies, are juxtaposed with pieces by
the Stooges, which sold in the thousands but were immensely important and influential on two subsequent generations of musicians -- and they're on the same box with
David Peel's compellingly subversive "Alphabet Song"; it's diversity in the name of completeness and telling a great larger story engagingly through the music, which ultimately matters more than the elaborate packaging or the visual paraphernalia. There's a good month's listening, at least here (plus the CD-ROM, which is Mac- and Windows-compatible and includes
Holzman's Follow the Music plus an Elektra discography) and a lot more reading to go with it if that's what one wants, and the only event that could make this release even better than it is in the listening would be a further volume devoted to the earlier history of the label, to fill in that end of the music. ~ Bruce Eder