Favorite poorly-recorded albums

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.

A lot (not all) of classic Allman Brothers recordings have not always been the greatest over the years for whatever reason.

I used to think many of the original classic 7 Moody Blues albums were not the greatest recordings (murky mellotron) despite being perhaps my absolute favorites otherwise, however, recent advances in digital remastering and higher resolution playback gear and improvements to my own system seems to have corrected that situation and they are now often quite stunning.