Favorite poorly-recorded albums

I have always thought Todd Rundgren's albums often sound poor, but I really love the music. I can remember bringing around Nearly Human, a (live in studio) digital recording. I couldn't have any system that wouldn't allow me to enjoy this wonderful , though hard and thin sounding music.

Recently, Springsteen's Magic had to be one of the worst sounding modern major recordings (where the artist wasn't looking for a distorted, low fi or garage sound) His next album, Working on a Dream got a little better. Bad mastering, I think on both. Earlier Springsteen on LP can sound quite good. Shame we are going backwards, though the relatively unprocessed Seeger Sessions sounds pretty good.

interesting you should mention todd rundgren--i was listening recently to "an elpee worth of productions", which is a best-of his outside productions and was struck by how crummy much of it sounded--compressed, flat and congested. on the other hand, his "skylarking" (xtc) and badfinger productions are great.
some other notoriously botched productions of good records:
marshall crenshaw, field day (steve lillywhite). his production of the la's was also roundly skewered, tho i kinda like it.
the specials (elvis costello)
graham parker, stick to me (nick lowe)
husker du, zen arcade. there's a great record buried in all that murk.

One more for Todd.

"Nearly Human" is IMHO an utterly fantastic album, one of my all-time favorites. The SQ sucks.

Really odd. Given that so much of his career has been spent producing other artists, coupled with his penchant for technology, you'd think that he'd be on top of it.

Go figure.

Marty

I was just listening to Todd Rundgren, too. Maybe I'm just drawn to badly recorded albums?

Interesting comment about Springsteen. I'm always mystified by big differences in recording quality between an artist's albums. Beck is my prime example. Sea Change and Mutations are amazing recordings. Modern Guilt is just plain bad.

Doesn't every record that was recorded at Rundgren's Bearsville Studios sound like junk? Like they use a DAT machine and a Radio Shack mike.

Then again, there is truth in adverstising, all you have to do is listen to Rundgren's "Sounds Of The Studio" off of "Something/Anything". He pretty much gives you the blueprint for all of the garbage that you will get to hear. Ya gotta love it!