I have questions, but who the F&*^ am I gonna ask? I know, I'll ask the folks at TSIS. It's regarding the actual production of albums.

PJ obviously wasn't happy with Rick Parashar's work on Ten, at least the final mix of it, and starting with Vs, Brendan O'Brien has had his hand in every album ever since (with the exception being Avocado). He didn't produce Binaural, but was brought in to save the day (I guess thats the concensus) after the boys weren't happy with Tchad Blake's work. And now he is back in charge on Backspacer.

Adam Kasper on the other hand, assisted on Vs, assisted on Vitalogy, produced Riot Act and Avocado by himself (and even produced 'Into the Wild).

A couple questions:

1. Looking at the timeline, Adam Kasper was obviously liked by at least Eddie Vedder, probably the whole band. What are your feelings on why the band truly thought they needed to make a switch back to Brendan O'Brien? Record sales? Getting the old magic back?

2. Can you listen to the albums and really detect a distinct difference between the two producers' work?

3. Do you think the band will stay with either of these two guys going forward, and not maybe experiment with someone else, ala Tchad Blake?

At this rate, they'll be "experimenting" with Timbaland by the next album!

I think they're going to stick with BOB if they can. I think a lot of it for them is trust. They trust BOB with their music, almost like he's a bandmate.

was AK involved with backspacer as well? do we know?

Musically speaking i think Brendan is able to bring all the songs together more uniformly and produces what seem like more "balanced" cds.

Brendan clearly can mix a cd much better than Kasper (Riot Act vs. Avocado)

Why Adam Kasper i do not know. I don't like his work with or without pearl jam.

Did AK work with Soundgarden too?

Kasper did a pretty good job on RA.

LIFE WASTED

Yep, and then he sucked on S/T.

he didn't mix it though. but i don't think that has anything to do with why people don't like s/t. people mainly complain about the plain sound, which has little to do with mixing if I'm not mistaken. Wouldn't that be on the engineers, and the producers (the band included)? and maybe whoever masters it?
anyway, from the stuff i've heard by Kasper (only a couple QOTSA songs, his PJ stuff, DotU, ITW, and Riot Act), his ITW and s/t productions seem to be the most clear. Down on the Upside sounds muffled, and Riot Act has a bit of the same thing going on. The QOTSA songs too, it's part of their magic for me. Interesting that his more recent stuff has a clearer quality; I wonder if that's PJ, him, or what.

The feeling I get (and this is based on absolutely nothing but speculation) is that BoB can tell the band what sucks and what doesn't. He's not afraid of the band, so to speak. I got the feeling that Adam Kasper never really put his foot down, and let the band do whatever they want. Didn't provide much direction at all. Kind of like he was a big fan of the band, and got to record one of their albums. "Sure, whatever you wanna do, Eddie!"

I think BoB provides that direction, and can help steer the band bc he's done so much with them since the near-beginning. He won't let the band run over him. There's a mutual respect.

It's kind of like going over to someone else's grandparent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Sure, it tastes good, but it's not the same as your own grandma' cooking.

Riot Act has great production and You are free (Cat Power album) as well. I hate Avocado but it feels impossible to blame bad songs on Kasper. RA on the other hand has some really dense soundscapes like Can't Keep, All or None, Help Help etc.

Agree with this 1000%.

so its just BO'B on backspacer.... that we know of.

He's the head, but Kasper was an engineer on allthe records BOB produced as well. So who knows...

this is just me thinking outloud here, but what if the band liked a lot of what came out of RA, tried to reproduce it with PJ and came up short, and both parties (the band and AK) really wanted Brendan back in the fold to re-orient them all. and any future albums could be some combo of these two guys (BO'B & AK) producing/mixing/engineering.

maybe?

i dont think they tried to recature RA with ST. They are NOTHING alike, you can't even hear the failed attempt.

Really? Didn't Nick DiDia engineer a few, at least No Code?

recapture is strong, i was thinking reproduce the sentiment of the album... there seems to be a "theme" to riot act, imo... and like you said, PJ doesn't even come close to RA, so obviously they didn't have anything figured out. from all the interviews it sounds like BO'B has left everybody feeling really energized by the experience, which is fun.