[arewhyehen]

This is more of an elbows-on-bar-top conversation that I'd love to have with Rob, prompted by some recent M@W conversation on the album ranking thread. It's probably not suitable for a documentary, but I'll indulge myself here anyway because this is something that I'd love to talk to him about.

Rob, during your SiriusXM interview around the release time of MMP you talked about past producers. You said that Don Smith was the only producer to ever get two good albums out of you, something that Steve Berlin and Bob Rock couldn't do. You said each of these two producers was only able to pull one good album out of the band. When it comes to Steve Berlin, we can presume that the "good" album was Phantom Power and that you personally are dissatisfied with M@W. My questions:

1. When it comes to M@W, how much of the responsibility (blame?) for the end result lies with the producer and how much lies with the band?
2. How do you form an opinion on what constitutes a "good" vs "bad" album? Is it how the studio album sounds? Is it the quality of Gord's lyrics or the quality of musicianship on the album? Is it how the songs translate live and how they are received by your fans? How much does the commercial success of the album play a role in this?
3. The band didn't strongly support the album with videos (only one, MM@W) and radio singles (only two, MM@W and Lake Fever). Does this reflect the band knowing early on that the album was a bit of misstep? When did you form your negative opinion of the album and has it changed over time? Did you know as soon as it was "in the can" that this wasn't going to measure up to your previous work with Steve Berlin?
4. Other band members have mentioned that there were upwards of 30 songs recorded during this time. Was the band able to achieve consensus on the 14 that went on the album? As you think back to some of the other songs that were left off, do you think the album could have been improved by a change in track listing? Given the opportunity to go back yourself and re-select an album of 14 from that pile of 30 for a M@W Redux, how many do you think you would swap out, if any?
5. Being the in house art director for the Hip, how do you feel the album cover holds up? Were any other ideas considered for the cover and upon reflection, would you change anything?

It might be impossible to ask a somewhat negative string of questions like this without getting Rob's fist in my face, but I would love the answers nonetheless. In some ways the M@W time period, despite spawning one of my least favourite Hip albums, is one of the most interesting to me (e.g. declining commerical success, Gord striking out solo for CMG- any band member worried about this?, etc.). To me it would be just as interesting to ask the band about the highs as it would be to talk about the (perceived) lows.

Haha, yeah. Rob is doing a big favour to me by doing this so I will probably try and stay away from too much negative stuff. I do want to get some new information out of him and make it worth while and interesting, but don't want to get punched hahaa