Extreme Late-Sixties Panning

This seems to have really only been a thing for about four or five years, but it suuuuucks. Guitar in the far left speaker, drums in the far right, overdubbed lead guitar flying around the room after the final chorus... Name your least favorite examples.

I'm listening to Jeff Beck's Truth on headphones and I would love this album if it was in mono, but the extremely wide stereo field is just annoying as hell and serves no purpose as far as entertainment value is concerned.

"Beck's Bolero" is in pretty narrow stereo, isn't it (he said, holding his face inches from the computer screen)?

I don't think that this has ever really annoyed me, at worst it's a quaint memento of the era. I really adore it on Forever Changes, Village Green Preservation Society and some of the 1969 mix of Aoxomoxoa.

low - drums and guns is my least favourite modern example of this, especially because the album is otherwise great

Stereo panning helps one appreciate the duality of human nature

binaural or gtfo

flying around the room

Unperson, didn't you say you liked this effect on "Go Ahead John"?

No, that's a different thing. Teo Macero split the drums into two tracks, far left and far right, and edited them so they were actually bouncing left to right on the beat. And everything else (trumpet, sax, bass, guitar) is more or less centered. McLaughlin's solo is moving around in the mix, bouncing left to right just like the drums, but it's also going from very loud to muted, then coming back in. It's disorienting and weird, but it works.

To be fair, Macero was light-years ahead of anybody working in Rock at that time in regards to tape editing, layering sounds etc.

There's some goofy-ass panning stuff going on on some of Flamingo by the Flamin' Groovies.

The stereo version of Pink Floyd's Saucerful of Secrets is an absolute dog's breakfast on a lot of songs, due to excessive panning and bad muting/editing choices, the mono is miles easier to listen to.

it works fine if you are listening on a compact stereo system, but with fully separated speakers or headphones it sounds ridiculous, yes. The original stereo mix of Sgt Pepper is the first example that comes to mind.

the drums and guns mix was the most confusing choice to me, I just hated that when it came out. I got over it eventually, album sounds fine when not listening via headphones.

I was listening to all of Low’s stuff on shuffle and it flows together really well except for the D&G tracks which immediately make me stop and think WTF

I don’t dislike it but it’s kinda baffling

Fridmann has been doing hard-panning stuff since the 90s with Mercury Rev— on Drums And Guns it feels particularly not-artful (on headphones), there’s a void in front of the listener that I don’t enjoy. Nigel Godrich is also a notable hard-pan enthusiast— with his mixes I often feel like there are these appealing voids in the stereo field at 10.5 and 2.5 o’clock, I like it. One of my favourite albums he worked on is (perhaps surprisingly, as I’m not a Macca fan) Chaos and Creation in the Backyard— wonderfully produced and mixed album.

The transformative moment for me came in ca. 2007 when an engineer friend showed me the stems for Gaye/Terrell “Ain’t No Mountain”, which is a spectacular mix and production, all the more when you realize every one of the eight tracks is hard L, hard R, or mono up the middle (slight panning on the lead vocals).

Cream's "I Feel Free" is a particularly egregious example. Rhythm guitar, bass and drums pushed all the way into the right channel, and to add insult to injury, mixed absurdly low. Most of the time, the only part of Baker's kit that is really audible is the hi-hat. Madness.