Today's thought by me: Jon Brion the producer ruins songs with his over the top, unnecessary meddling arrangements to otherwise decent songs.

Case in point: I remember being totally unimpressed with Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine when it was "released" unofficially a few months ago. It just flat out sucked. Somebody brilliantly described it as "Fiona Apple singing jittery songs on the hood of a car going to a circus sideshow performance." Then today, I read on a music blog that the her song Red, Red, Red was vastly improved by that Elizondo guy and I thought, "Yeah, right, it's going to be lame no matter who mixes it and lo and behold I'm listening to it right now and I'm really surprised to say that I have to eat my words. It's vastly improved and worth listening to.

Case in point: On Brion's album Meaningless one the readily more likeable songs, I Believe She's Lying is completely ruined with that frenetic, overpowering guitar strumming throughout. It's like someone shot a syringe full of Red Bull into his right arm and he can't stop. Blech.

havent heard the new mixes of Extraordinary Machine yet ,but I really like dudes work on When The Pawn... and the Magnolia soundtrack a lot; its a pretty refreshing sound circa 1999...............

Still, I'm feeling your point; his style is too much about him and not the artist.

As to producers though, I'm still bitchy about the hate ive felt for Brendan O'Brien; maybe I'm a dope or it just hasnt been properly explained. WTF?

I know how to spell an argument...

I swear to god, I feel like Charlton Heston, and this thread is my own personal Planet of the Apes.

How's that for escalating it?

I think he coaxes some interesting sounds out of bands, sounds they wouldn't ordinarily have chosen. My best example is King's X, who had this geeky metal sound prior to his involvement, and he was able to get some sludge out of them when he produced Dogman - and that's still probably my favorite all-around King's X album. They subsequently dropped the glossy production for everything since then, and those are all albums of theirs that I listen to quite frequently - the same cannot be said for those first four albums.

Not that most Obnerites care about King's X . . .

Oh, we're out here.

Some of us haven't been there for awhile, but if this were 1990 still, hell yeah.

Thanks guys for derailing my angst thread about Brion.


Hey, I have this King's X album...but haven't pulled it out in over a decade.




Still haven't heard Dogman yet.

How is Ogre Tones? I almost bought that one just a couple hours ago.