You got it. Axiom is one of his labels.

But wouldn't that be cool? I would love to appreciate a producer's prowess so much that I would actually seek out their work to discover new music, trusting them to have made something I'd like (of course with no garuntee of that, just as with a recording artist). Now I'm getting really interested. I'm gonna go look up who produced Workingman's Dead and 40 oz to Freedom.

EDIT: Bummer. The Workingman's Dead producer only did more garcia stuff as far as i can tell, and 40 oz was self produced by sublime.

Musicians and songwriters matter to me too much; I will happily listen to an album of good songs with horrible production values. I don't know if I would ever checkout a band or project based on the producer, if that producer was not already known to me from his or her time as a musician.

I can't even forsee a time when that would be desirable, although I have to admit, with Terry Date launching careers of many a wannabe, I often thought that eventually albums would be crediting the producer first and group of musicians involved on page 2 or 3 of the liner notes.

Given much of the popular music that's come out since, I think that's still a possibility

Most of the producers I follow are musicians as well. I like them for their particular style and the fact that most of them are hands on. In the sense that if you hire them as producer they are going to shape the sound of the musical landscape noticeably. Or, they just have a habit of getting together great groups of people and consistently put out great material, like Laswell and Eno.