I refer to this phenomenon as “I appreciate X more than I like them”, and I use the descriptor most often with musicians. It refers to anyone who perhaps I should like, who has actually made significant contributions to music, or their genre, or whatever - but for whatever reason, I can’t fuckin’ stand them.
My list is a mile long. Here’s a small sampling.
Miles Davis
The Grateful Dead
Phish (or hell, almost any jam band)
Rush
King Crimson
Joan Baez
Steely Dan
There are so many, many more. I’m a hater, I admit it.
I really hate Weezer, but once a friend of mine said, “I like the concept of a song about destroying a sweater, and that’s as far as it goes.” I can dig that.
Slightly off-topic but you might want to take a look at R.L. Burnside. I got his album Wish I Was in Heaven Sittin’ Down as a gift about ten years ago and found myself playing it over and over again. The only blues music I never got tired of. Great stuff. There are currently several songs from that album on Youtube. You might want to check them out.
I respect him. I understand, in principle, what he was trying to do. I’m in awe of his intellect.
But actually reading his stuff is just way too much work for me. I’m no dumbass and I have far above average abilities with understanding the English language and comprehending literature, but trying to wade through Joyce is a goddamn Herculean effort which I do not find enjoyable. I can get most of it it if I try hard enough, but I don’t enjoy it. Joyce is the only writer who makes me feel like a drooling moron.
So true. I was really missing him a lot after he quit NBC and was wishing he came back soon with his own new show. Then he comes back and I never watch it.
Maybe the filler stuff annoys me too much to wait around for the inspired bits.
And Kurt Vonnegut, who tops my list of “creative types who were very lucky to be born when they were, cause they would not have made it in any other era.”
I am a big aficionado of Korean movies. Plus, I like filmmakers that challenge me; show me something other then the tired old clichés. So you would think I would be a huge fan of Ki-duk Kim, who is a highly regarded filmmaker.
Can’t stand most of his movies. The only one I actually liked was Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring; and **3-Iron **was okay. The rest, awful. In fact, **Bad Guy **may be the most unpleasant movie experience of my life.
After a fair amount of head-scratching the only name I can comfortably add to what I consider a decent list so far is Woody Allen, as a filmmaker. His early stand-up comedy was okay, but the way he and his audience started taking him seriously as a modern philosopher and spokesperson for a generation just left me wondering what I was missing. I can accept that a lot of people think he’s terrific. I just don’t.
J. R. R. Tolkien. I’m a huge D&D geek and a fan of fantasy novels, so I should love the Hobbit et al, right? Nope. Tolkien’s is way too verbose for my tastes. I got maybe fourteen pages into the Hobbit before giving up.
This is my ‘this thread could have been made for me’ moment. I agree with many of the choices already offered.
Hendrix: guitar god, genius, pioneer, innovator, peerless energy, shattered our understanding of what the electric guitar could do… yada yada. Do I actually want to listen to him? Mm, not so much. ‘Live in Winterland’ is good in parts, and I can enjoy the high flying on ‘Nine to the Universe’, but by and large I’m okay listening to something else.
Tolkien: admire the achievement, don’t actually want to read through it all.
Dylan: I understand how he important he was and is, and I recognise the brilliance of the writing… just can’t stand actually listening to him. Not for 10 seconds. I have this lazy preference for singers who can, um… sing.
And so on. I think this thread is actually kind of therapeutic. It gives you a nice ‘Oh, so it’s not just me…’ feeling.
Modern Art: I’m the last person who’d spout that “my kid could do that” crap. Pollock, Rothko: love them. Could look for miles into their paintings. The late Cy Twombly though, I just can’t pick anything up there.
Have you read “Dubliners” or " A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man"? They have almost none of the stuff that make “Ulysses” or “Finnegans Wake” such hard work, and are very good books.
Except for the “I can’t fuckin’ stand them” part (since I like a few of his songs) that almost exactly describes my feelings about Prince. I like and respect the fact that he’s a prodigiously-talented musician who, for the last 30 years, has been doing what he wants artistically and has still managed to be commercially successful during most of that time without feeling the need to water things down for mass consumption or cave in to the record industry. And yet, when it comes down to it, I’m personally indifferent about most of his stuff.
Here’s a small sampling.