..when you're producing someone like The Dame, nothing goes past without his approval.
It's very easy to blame the producer, but I don't recall anyone complaining about those particular sounds at the time..any bad reviews for "Tonight" were concentrated on its lack of inspiration.

was certainly a bit over-earnest, but as an example of the hi-fi stadium grunge thing is actually, musically, very nice indeed. The production, however, is horrible. If ever there was a band who could've done with Neil Brockbank in their early days, it's PJ. They kind of got it with Yield, which is a fabulous album and sounds like what it is - some great musicians playing together in a room - but it was also their creative peak. They've never been as good since. So if Ten could've sounded really good, we'd now have four really top-flight albums on our hands.

Also, still on the Seattle thing, Nevermind could've been close to a masterpiece with Albini or Scott Litt at the helm, and a clause preventing Andy Wallace from doing the mix.

Sucks all the air out, fills the vacuum with syrup. IMHO.

Hmm.

Anything produced by Jeff Lynne.

I do wonder if Youth buggered up Crowded House on Together Alone.

Was Martin Birch right for Blue Öyster Cult? I'm not sure. He made them more commercial but, at the same time neutered them. His was the sound of Classic Metal. But BÖC were just that bit different.

I'm just getting to an interesting bit in Greg Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever dealing with just this sort of stuff. If he's got any brilliant insights, I'll alter them a bit and pass them off as my own.

is almost anything produced by Thomas Dolby in the 80s. It may be true to say the production was of its time, but even then I thought Joni Mitchell's Dog Eat Dog and Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen sounded horrible. In the case of the latter it's a particular shame, as it was otherwise such a wonderful record.

Do You Like Rock Music? Great songs with a tinny, unsatisfying sound and no bottom end whatsoever. They should have stuck with the team who handled the sublime Open Season. Breaks my heart to listen to it sometimes..

Frankie Goes To Hollywood have been without that meddling Trevor Horns interference?

Not even sure if anyone really remembers them (although I did hear them in a pub recently), but I wish someone different had produced everything by them (think the band might have done most of it themselves). Minx, Mush and various bits of their other albums are absolutely fantastic punk records which - in all honesty - I always listened to far more than I did anything by Husker Du. Like the best bits of HD, Motorhead etc put together with really interesting, complex lyrics.

But pretty much all of it sounds like it was recorded on a blank tape, with sleeping bags wrapped round the speakers; no bottom end, no dynamic range, vocals lost in the middle somewhere... They were a great band live and on record who never got the recognition they deserved. And unlike most punk bands, they could absolutely play the arse off their instruments.

Fingers crossed that somewhere in Sunderland there's some master tapes just waiting to be dusted off and brightened up a bit...

It just sounds too fat. Maybe ruining is too strong a word, but it could (should, damn it, first E Street Band album in eighteen years) have been more hard hitting. Brendan O´Brien later lost some weight and did a good job with Magic so I´ve kind of forgiven him.

No matter how big a fan I´m of Springsteen´s I do feel he is yet to make an album with a great production. Nebraska sounds great but wasn´t produced at all. Guess Born To Run comes closest.

Produced by Joe Thomas who I don't know much about.

Try 'Lay Down Burden'

http://open.spotify.com/track/7xqeTI4lROXSrQ7AMrZAx9
or
http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Lay+Down+Burden/2yZ5L0

Horrible 80s synth pads, cheesy spanish guitar, tinkly pianos and 300 more tracks of Pro-tooled studio mush. Sounds like some soul-destroying incidental music from a low budget afternoon TV Soap Opera.
Quite nice Brian Wilson song buried underneath somewhere.

Frustratingly there was talk, at the time, of Brian working with Sean O'Hagan from The High Llamas which could have been amazing.

Let It Be and Let It Be Naked. Discuss.

Phil Spector made some great records, but he also made some that I find unlistenable. Talk about ordering the syrup and forgetting to say when. Take this from the River Deep Mountain High album. A great singer, Tina Turner. A potentially great Ellie Greenwich song. And, for me anyway, it's just ruined by the over-the-top sound.

http://open.spotify.com/track/0Rsomw88A4wRFuWJSO0DCU

His last two albums were overdone, in different ways, by stylised production, and ruined.

Having called for Lillywhite, the man I'd love to see fix Morrissey's next album should be Mike Mogis and he needs bring in Conor's mates to play the instruments. Won't happen though.

a great job of 'Your Arsenal'.

strings overkill

Monster.
Supposed to be rocking and trashy and glam. Sounded flaccid and stale and tinny. The live recordings of the songs on the Road Movie DVD, however, are great and are what the LP should've sounded like.

never forgiven, by me, for ruining Generation X's first album - so many great tunes, so much flat sound

bastard

The man without whom Alice Cooper would be but a footnote in the Frank Zappa story got hold of The Jayhawks in 2000 for their Smile album.
Country twang was replaced with pop sheen, which to my ears was a change for the worse.

Pentangle were arguably the besy musicians available for a group of its kind at the time. And okay, Talmy had produced You Really Got Me and Friday on my Mind and My Generation. But who the hell had the idea of putting them together?

The dread words "A Shel Talmy Production" (pompous twat) merely emphasised the fact he didn't know what Pentangle were about. In his world, vocals belonged way up front, the musicians were back-up. The first three albums could have been so much better without this overbearing oaf skewing the music like a hall of mirrors. Now Gus Dudgeon, on the other hand, would have been ideal. Maybe he only worked for Island though. Pity.

and 'Tommy' - he made Keith Moon's drumkit sound like it was made by Peak Freans, not Premier...

Her later albums, produced by Steve Lillywhite who i think was her hubby, are horrible 80s productions, absolutely the wrong sound for her

..debut has some nice touches and the arragnements are superb but is it me or does it sound a little bit tinny?

It's well documented they weren't happy with the production , and it's a great album but imagine how good it would have been if Stephen Street had produced it.

Funnily enough, the end of Status Quo as a lean, mean, boogie machine came with the album that spawned possibly their signature hit - "Rocking All Over The World". Pip Williams absolutely sucked the life out of the band with his Quo calling card, snorting them out of an oak barrel before sneezing them into an aluminium vat.

Up until "Rocking All Over the World" ver Quo had produced some absolutely terrific LP's and they were really reaching their peak with 77's "Live". Somehow Pip made this peak a squeek, and his tinny production was the beginning of the end. Though I wouldn't just blame Pip for what happened. The old white powder played a role, and the subsequent loss of sticksman John Coghlan a couple of years later was the final straw.

There are a couple of gems on "RAOTW" but with someone different at the helm - Steve Lillywhite worked on "Quo Live" the same year they started recording - it could have been much better. As it is, it sounds like Rossi and Parfitt's guitars were made bu Fisher Price,Lancaster is barely there on bass, whilst the normally fluid Coghlan may as well have been playing with wet tea towels.

For me, practically unlistenable although I know it has a lot of friends. And reading gig reviews highlighting the power and grace of some Kid A songs that have grown and developed since the album, doesn't that suggest a need for a producer who could tell them 'great song, but keep trying' ?

listening to this on the ipod last week
sounded really thin

i've always wondered what it could sound like with production somewhere between 'the clash' energy and london calling clarity

listening to this on the ipod last week
sounded really thin

i've always wondered what it could sound like with production somewhere between 'the clash' energy and london calling clarity

Sounds just horrible. Was anyone involved who actually does this for a living ?!

What was Rubin thinking of? Potentially a really good album ruined by over-compressed nasty, clipped bottom end. I know they wanted to get away from that polished Bob Rock sound to something more elemental like their roots, but Rubin dropped a rare bollock on this.

was how they wanted it to sound but they have gotta be kidding. The songs sounded infintely better live.

Then again 'And Justice For All' has no bass on it. Why Newstead stayed around so long after that indignity always puzzled me.

than on the album. This version of I Took Your Name off a 2005 live Dublin album/dvd being a case in point:

I like Monster, but I more often listen to the BBC from Milton Keynes show where the same songs sound better.

Mark Knopfler#s production is probably what was asked for, but to me it ruined it. And it failed to make Roddy Frame a star, so it didn't work either. Shame.