Personally, I like the idea of a song that goes from Jazz to funk to death metal to jazz and finally a country outro. I thrive on mixing styles around.

The reason I think breaking away into smaller groups is a good idea is because I think things will breathe better that way. "Smaller group" could mean nine people, but only four or so play on a given part of the song, the song ends up being twenty minutes (max), and there's three such "Groups." This is as opposed to everybody working on everything at once and having a forty five minute peice or a 20 minute peice, but everybody only being able to interject just a little.

I think ed mentioned starting small... this could be a good thing. Maybe a three member "Pilot" group should set up a process and a working method to get this done, iron out the kinks, and generally smooth everything out.