What's wrong with me?

 

Thanks for the detailed response, Paravion. If I gave the impression that I thought it was necessary or better to like music for which a taste needs to be aquired, that was an accident. I certainly don't think we should spend all of our precious listening time spinning discs we don't enjoy, in the hope of getting to like them.  And sometimes, I absolutely agree with you, a piece of music is just not going to appeal to us, and there is no good reason to force the issue. It has been my experience fairly often, though, going right back to my teenage years, that I may dislike an album on first listen and put it away, and then take it out again a few months or even years later, put it on, and find that something in me has changed, and I am now hearing things differently than I'd heard them before. It all depends, I suppose, on our reasons for that initial dislike. Often, I thnk we might dislike an album because it conflicts in some fundamental way with our expectations, either of the album or band specifically or of music more broadly. In this case--and again I need to be clear that I am speaking only from experience and not suggesting how anyone else "should" listen to music--I have often found it the case that my expectations were in some key way narrow, and when they either broadened by themselves as a result of exposure to a range of new experiences, or were broadened deliberately through effort on my part, my appreciation of previously unappreciated music increased, and the fabric of my life was enriched in some small way. I suppose I might wrap up by saying that if I only listened to what I liked on first hearing, I would presently have little or no appreciation for certain whole genres and sub-genres of music, prog and otherwise, that have become so much a part of my life that I cannot imagine what my mind would be without them.