GREAT MUSIC - SO POORLY RECORDED...

U2 Joshua tree is a great album but very poorly recorded and compressed like crazzy.

This isn’t the only one just the most egregious example. The Stones of course are crap. Duh. But anyone hearing Joshua Tree anything less than dynamic, deep, layered, and with massive inner detail is either playing a crap pressing, a crap CD (but I repeat myself), a crap system or has crap ears. My copy is demo material. Don’t be so fast to blame the recording. Figure it out.

“Born to Run” at the top in terms of gap between greatness of music and anemic sound.

Right. Bruce is the King of Great Music, Crap Recording.

I make exception for The Ghost of Tom Joad.

Layla (Derek and the Dominoes)
Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones)

A CD by Uriah Heep 'Sweet Freedom' (Essential ESMCD 338) sounds nasty - excessive sibilance and cpmpression make it unlistenable.

I meant "compression"

My personal disappointment is people.
I look and see the responses to the question of "What are your personal disappointments?" to the question of " GREAT MUSIC - SO POORLY RECORDED..."
The OP makes no mention as to what the material source is that is being lamented due to limited hertz or some such. Vinyl, tape, CD, digital, analog, among the most popular sources.
At the time, when most of the music was and is recorded, it was done by people in front of the microphone as well as behind it,their best effort.
Where I am going with this, is, it is what it is. We need to live with what is available and how it is presented. The OP moved some speakers around and didn't like the result.
Every song ever sung has its merits. Or it wouldn't be here to grouse about. 20hz to 20khz is a baseline, where music is the variance.