Favorite poorly-recorded albums

The other two are:
Dead Can Dance - Spleen and Ideal ( pretty bad )
John McLaughlin/Paco de Lucia/Al di Meola - Passion, Grace&Fire. Acoustic guitar masterpiece but that digital recording of 1981 sucks big time. What a shame.

Indeed, Todd may be god, but he's a tin-eared god at best. All of the Utopia LPs are simply terrible recordings. My personal favorite is 'Adventures in Utopia' which is a fantastic bunch of tunes rendered nearly unlistenable by the screechy sound quality. As far as XTC's Skylarking is concerned, the recent 45 RPM remaster by Andy Partridge really brought this Rundgren hatchet job to life for me, fixing much of the terrible mastering EQ.

it may be useful to distinguish between really incompetent recordings and technically proficient recordings which may sound bad. for example, i don't like much of mitchell froom's or daniel lanois's stuff--too slick or too stylized--although they both work with great artists and know what they're doing. in general, i think the producer's role should be to capture the essence of the artist, not to give the artist the trademark sound of the producer.

BeBop Deluxe "Life in the Air Age"

Agree with JT Aqualung

Tomy Bolin "Private Eyes, Teaser"

All my Traffic "Traffic, Mr. Fantasy, John Barleycorn, Last Exit, Low Spark"

Agree with Yes "Yes Album, Close to the Edge"

Caravan "New Symphonia" (CD only)

Early Steely Dan (up to Asia/Gaucho) "Pretzel Logic, Countdown to Ecstacy, Royal Scam, Can't Buy a Thrill"

Inner Mounting Flame, Raw Power, Exile on Main Street. All terrific music, but audio quality is the worst.