Quality of recording vs Musical tastes

I don't know if this falls into the same category, but a long time ago I bought Steve Winwood's "Arc of a Diver" LP. Loved the music, but I also found the production to be remarkably good. I bought his previous releases and made sure to pick up a copy of the new records he released. Same thing happened to me with Dire Straits and Blue Rodeo, bought 'em all. I figure even if the songs aren't ideal, the production quality will make the listening session pleasant.

I'm totally into the remaster side of things,I've ended up with multiple versions of certain artists releases because of it.
I think that is a seperate point from Sean's original post though.
I also think regarding remasters it's nearly always stuff we've been familar with for a long time.
I hope my original post didn't infer that the quality of production wasn't important to me, it is and was even before I got into hi-fi on a serious level,even a basic system will reveal differences on production/sound quality.
However it isn't how I approach finding new music.........

I'd like to plead guilty, too. I listen to a lot more classical (Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Rossini, etc.) because of the beauty of the recordings. I also listen to more jazz, but prefer pre-60's recordings. I too have Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue and Companion (XRCD). I like about half of her stuff. More so her own originals, than her covers of other music. Jennifer Warnes, The Hunter and Famous Blue Raincoat. Jennifer's voice does a wonderful job of complimenting the lyrics of Leonard Cohen. David Byrne (formerly Talking Heads) produces very well recorded music. So does Joe Jackson. His latest recording of Heaven and Hell combines, classical, jazz, opera, and rock. As strange as that sounds, he makes it work and the soundstaging is awesome. Other good recordings are from the groups Pink Martini, and Barefoot. Barefoot is out-of-print, but if you see one of their two cd's in a used record shop, get it. It's world beat at it's best.

I am guilty of both things as well, and better off for it. Some of the ones I got on a whim/review/recommendation and ended up loving, for both musical values and recording quality:

Jennifer Warnes, Famous blue raincoat, the hunter, the well
Patricia Barber: Everything she's done. (Saw her live too.. very cool!)
The Chieftans: most of their stuff, esp. the most recent album.
Lorenna McKennitt - Irish(?) female singer, sort of like Enya.
Susan McKeowen (sp?) - Similiar to McKennitt - Irish singer, great voice, very moving traditional and new songs.
David Byrne - Look into the Eyeball - excellent album! Highly recommended, best of his solo work IMHO.
Betty Johnson - I did a web site for her, and ended up loving her music as well. (www.betty-johnson.com). Swing/Jazz stuff mostly.

Also got into some of the older classics too, like Ella, Miles, Frank Sinatra and even Elvis(!)... Elivs is Back is a good album with a stunning rendition of Peggy Lee's 'Fever'.

Remasters: have had some good luck with these, I admit I am a sucker for them too, esp. if I already have the original version. the Dire Straits ones are good, though their original versions are very good too. Also have been buying stuff on SACD that I have on CD already, like Santana's Abraxas (another great album I got on a recommendation from a friend).

Let's keep this going....it's more refreshing than talking about gear incessantly...

-Ed

Most of Miles Davis stuff from his "second great quintet" are great improvements on the remasters. ESP, Miles Smiles, Miles in the Sky are all great improvements from the orginial CD releases. I have also had good luck with some of the older blue stuff that has been remastered, mostly from the Chess label.