Great Song/Horrible Production

BAD:
Cohen's version suffers from bad syth, and out of date production--
While the slick cover by Concrete Blonde does everything to make you fall in love with (the oh so fucking sexy) Johnette Napalitino--

I know it must have hurt you,
it must have hurt your pride
to have to stand beneath my window
with your bugle and your drum,
and me I'm up there waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.
Ah I don't believe you'd like it,
You wouldn't like it here.
There ain't no entertainment
and the judgements are severe.
The Maestro says it's Mozart
but it sounds like bubble gum
when you're waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

What thorns do you have in your side?

Everything C. Rayz Walz has ever done.

Early REM has got some pretty terrible production.

DING! DING!

Yeah-I (As a full fledged member of GEN X (See Secret Card here) Think that R.E.M. could have a complete overhaul on the mastertapes--which would only prove how much more they rawk then...say....the Sex pistols...

You know how Gang Of Four re-recorded their good stuff for no good reason? And how Randy Newman recorded his best songs sans orchestration / other instruments, and it was good? If REM did that, it'd actually be good. Probably.

I can't listen to their early stuff because of how bad the sound is. And it's disappointing.

I'd like to hear Eno and Byrne go back and re-mix 77 and a few other albums in the Talking Heads catalogue. Even the otherwise mind-fuckingly brilliant Remain In Light sounds a little un-EQ'd to me - it could have bigger bass and clearer treble. But if you turn it up loud enough, it sounds tops.

I've always thought that Ric Ocasek's production on Bad Brains Rock For Light was pretty bad.

Talking Heads is a must
OK label bitch here


SST

Oh, yeah-that shit is OK!
Greg Ginn-I will "out-bong" you until you re-master the catalog...Or I can bring it back to my studio...do NOT make me pull out my PICTUREPAGES pen....

BOO_YA
that LP could have been fucking rad....

The last God Lives Underwater is terrible. You can hardly hear anything on it with out turning it way up.

'Hymn I' by Ulver. Well the entire Nattens Madrigal album actually. I think that album might just have the worst production ever. Still, great music however.

[Edited on Mar 31, 2006 by Penfold]

I think the production helps the album - it creates some awesome atmosphere, in my humble opinion.

The production on Hüsker Dü's "Zen Arcade" irks me for the first two songs every time I listen to the album, but then I simply submit to it because the music is brilliant enough to make me overlook it.

That is a real case in point-Early Husker Du suffers from a technical stand point-yet the music just screams miles above anything else of the era....
on the flip side-an album like Modulate by Mould -has stunning production and horrible songs...

Most Sly and the Family Stone albums have some pretty bad hissing, and I generally never notice such things. Lately, though, I find albums are so overproduced that I actually enjoy a bit of bad production. I can't say that the first half of "Table of Contents" by The Roots isn't fun for being an intentionally badly produced song.

That is the other side of the coin-I mean--when I listen to say-Early Charlie Parker live, the production stinks but the music is so effing raw and underproduced because the talent level is so high-
on the Indie side-any of Lou barlow's 4 track shit is great-however, overproduce that shit and layer on gated reverb and compression and it would have sounded like every other bad college rawk band of the day

True. Part of Cody ChesnuTT's The Headphone Masterpiece's charm was its dodgy bedroom production. (Although there are moments when I really wish his bedroom was a fully decked out recording studio).

It's not exactly "bad" production, but I've always found that Black Sabbath's albums lack a certain punch that, say, Led Zeppelin has. Maybe it's mastering, maybe it's just the drum sound...but they just don't seem loud or dense enough to me.

i would say that some funkadelic albums suffer from that...namely "free your mind and your ass will follow"

First Chilli Peppers Album - Uplift Mojo wahtever....

I would love for them to re-do that album in the studio including re-recording everything.

I'll agree with that. There are times I wish an album's production was better, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying it. Whereas production that's too polished sounds bland, and potentially could ruin my enjoyment of a band.

This is my biggest annoyance. Ugh. I have a massive list of albums ruined by studios. A sampling:

Opal - Happy Nightmare Baby
Slowdive - Just For A Day
Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quintet
Pretty much all of the Talking Heads albums. I'm so glad somebody else said it before me.
The Stooges - Raw Power remaster
The Breeders - Last Splash

Another case of production not being so much bad as outdated: 'Til Tuesday, "Voices Carry". It's a great song, strong lyrically, and Aimee Mann's later work would prove what a brilliant songwriter she is. But there's a reason it gets consigned to those "Oh Those Wacky '80s" compilations: it's got Bad '80s Production all over it. The keyboard part is cheesy, and you know a producer said to Aimee Mann "Try singing like that chick in Missing Persons a bit more."

The video didn't help either, of course.

Tool's Aenima has really horrible production. A lot of the songs sound like they're underwater. The album isn't ruined by said production, but it could have been so much more fierce.

[Edited on Apr 02, 2006 by mr_gosh]

One of the few acts to come out of the eighties with any synth credibility would have to be Prince and the Revolution. When I listen to an album like Purple Rain, I do not hear many elements that would improve by leaps in technology or engineering. I agree with your assessment of Mann-and in my opinion, she is one of the veteran acts who has mastered the art of self-production for much of her later work. Back to another horrible production ascetic-- Why are all of Tom Waits albums for Island so horribly quiet and tinny; I have always found that these albums do in fact translate better on vinyl; the dominate “gated compression” sound of that era just squeezes the sultry vitality from the Waits and the band. For a label that made its bread and butter on introducing a technically challenging genre (reggae) to a mainly Anglo audience, they certainly lost any sense of groove dynamic in their recording/mastering practices.

If they had been able to capture the full sound of this rhythm section on this release, it would destroy me, considering it sounds like it was recorded on a cassette tape and it still blows my mind.

I have to disagree on the REM and Talking Heads albums. 77 and More Songs About Buildings and Food sound fantastic. They were going for a minimalist sound, and they got it. They were going for the anti-Boston, anti-Yes sound. But everything sounds clean and it's remarkably present. As for REM, I often marvel at the production on Murmur. Check it out again. Reckoning's production kind of sucks, though.

My votes would be for several Meat Puppets albums, most notably Mirage, which actually has some beautiful songs, but it's so compressed and tiny that it sounds like a drum machine and some kind of weird tiny bass/guitar machine too. The Minutemen's sheer power never came through because it sounded like they recorded onto a Walkman. I'd also say Bruce Springteen's Born in the USA. Good songs, but with that jackhammer snare, lame synthesizer tone, and overall echoey crap sound, it comes off like an 80's nightmare. Yes, I like Bruce Springsteen. Take me to Indie Rock court.