London Calling Paddy, but Trout Mask is nonsense of the highest order

what would he have made of Babyshambles though?

and talk about love. Not just talk about it - but you know - feel it? Like within.

And then talk about how crap Queen are

James, I don't care for it much myself, but it lives on hugely among many, particularly the Scallydelic community on Merseyside.
In fact, I made the mistake of asking John Power of the La's and Cast about it in an interview once and I think I still have the ensuing 20 minute lecture as an MP3 somewhere.
We might not like it, but lots of truly cherish it.

- and the fun - all about our different opinions, and the passion we display in expressing them? If we subscribed to your eminently reasonable and palpably true thesis, we would surely lose much of the wit and energy which makes the debating on here so special.

come on you lot, this is the 3rd time this week that this album has been described as "nonsense".

Wrongety wrong, I'm afraid - it IS a classic.

If you don't like it don't listen to it, but to some of us it was a milestone in our lives.

Next thing you'll be saying Richard Thompson, the Stones, Little Feat, Neil Young (& many others)are all talentless wasters.

I'm not at all against debate - it's just the 'that's appalling rubbish' 'it's pish', 'why is this cack still considered a classic?' verdicts are just tiresome.
It doesn't make something bad because you don't like it. I don't care for lots of great pop or classical or musical theatre music, but I still can see why they are considered great and why people like them.
I haven't entered the Mumford & Sons/ Midlake/ Decemberists threads because, while I don't listen to them myself, I don't think they are rubbish.
Sure have a debate, but don't lambast stuff simply because you don't like it.
It seems quixotic to have a dig at Beefheart or The Clash, there are many more, much more befitting targets.

It doesn't make something bad because you don't like it

So what does make something bad?

For what it's worth I liked a lot of the Virgin-era Beefheart and the Blue Collar soundtrack. Forty years on, and the band's efforts aside, Trout Mask Replica still sounds like little more than a man enjoying the sound of his own voice.

Iconoclasm is useful, it stirs debate.

I don't think anyone's daft enough to assume that when someone says "London Calling" is shit, they're actually saying "it IS shit, objectively, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool". They're saying "I've never seen the appeal, and it sounds like shit to my ears", and I think most people understand that. When we say that something's rubbish, or wonderful, we're expressing ourselves subjectively, and the phrase "in my opinion" is implicit.

One of the most important things about having opinions is knowing what you hate, as much as what you love. I really like reading a cracking old jeremiad as much as a hyperkinetic, wide-eyed, enthusiastic recommendation. (Well, if I'm honest, I'll generally take the jeremiad over the recommendation, just because it's likely to be more entertaining.) Opinion is a good thing, and opposing opinions are an especially good thing. If you're likely to be offended by someone thinking that what you love is shit, then, well - I don't know how you get through the day. I don't mean that dismissively: I mean that every day I'm surrounded by the public validation of much that I think is worthless, and the marginalisation or rubbishing of much that I value highly. If I let that get me down, I'd be a wreck.

Also, like pencilsqueezer and others have said: the only useful place for a sacred cow is on a conveyor belt, heading towards the rotating knives. Nobody is served by over-reverence, except the revered. It does everyone good to see their idols torn down now and again.

on the Word blog would you get a thread not about what is or isn't good or bad, but about the nature of being good or bad...I *love* it (er, that means it good, right?)

There are artists whose work was considered great in its time but doesn't age well. Examples for me would be Prefab Sprout and Deacon Blue. It appears to be still cool to like the Sprouts but not the Deacons. Why is that? Neither of their albums have aged at all well.
Spandau Ballet? Loved them at time, absolutely detest them now. Then you get the opposite - during my late teens and early twenties it wasn't cool to like Presley in the circles I moved in. Now I don't give a fuck about cool and recognise him for what he was - a talented singer and an icon.
I don't like Trout Mask but love Beefheart and if we revised our stated view I am pretty sure Safe as Milk would be considered his classic. Unfortunately as with Astral Weeks and Exile on Main street there is an element of 'this is the artists best work' which for whatever reason we allow to go unchallenged. Strange.

The Beatles.
If someone does not like The Beatles then they are trolling.
It's not possible is it?

JQW posted on the truisms thread and made the excellent point that if you listen to Eric Dolphy's "Out To Lunch", "Trout Mask Replica" will then make sense. That is spot-on. However, because it is a difficult listen at first, that reputation has spread across all his albums.

I appreciate it rather than listen to it a lot : my two most-listened are "Safe As Milk" and "Clear Spot", both of which are pretty "accessible". On a different thread here, Retro Man tried out "Safe As Milk" and was pleasantly surprised by it.

Dismissing music out of hand doesn't help, but discussing it and putting it in some context will.

...it is what appeals to a person on a visceral level. There is no right and wrong, and any argument that says otherwise is pure snobbery.

It is why anybody can pick up a guitar and record a song and put it out there for someone to listen to, and it doesn't matter what anybody says - if someone likes it, they like it, and who cares if anyone says anything otherwise.

Let's take Vivian Girls, for example. I've plugged them before, put up several videos. It could no doubt be argued that Cassie Ramone can't sing for peanuts, and her guitar playing is, at best, Grade 1 atrocious. But, quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. It reaches in and grabs me at a gut level - and, that's all that matters.

I suppose, in reflection, what I was trying to complain about was the bi-polarism of some criticism of old albums - that something is either wonderful or complete toss. I suppose the OP was a clarion call for more widespread use of 'Meh'.
I tend to think that generally we are above that here.
I may live to regret these sentiments when I am lambasting some poor cratur during the Glastonbury virtual get together - only three months now.