I wrote this as a response to a comment by PP. It got long and I became interested to see if it provoked any response. So I put it in a blog to get more exposure.

I don't understand anger over music. I used to go to NYC once a month. My girlfriend had a flute lesson, after we'd go to a museum. Later we'd go to a music event, usually an avant-garde jazz bar with a live band. Some times I enjoyed it, some times not. I didn't get pissed if I didn't get into it. When I can't get into a musical performance I conclude I don't know enough to grasp it or it's not very good. I keep listening and studying to see if I can understand it better. 

The Dylan episode had nothing to do with music. The people simply wanted to hear a live performance of songs they knew and liked or at least if new songs,  songs that were almost exactly the same as the songs they knew. It's a problem musicians have when they want to grow and people with small musical minds won't let them. Ricky Nelson wrote a song about it. If you gotta play at garden parties I wish you a lot of luck but If memories was all I sang I'd rather drive a truck.

There is implicit and explicit ways of knowing. On a basic level it doesn't take long for most people to hear the difference between an oboe, trumpet, guitar, violin all playing the same note. Implicit knowledge, they just hear it. I could tell you why it sounds different. Explicitly with graphs and wave forms and the overtone series. People implicitly understand music. They implicitly understand everything that The Itsy Bitsy Spider has to offer musically and lyrically. It bores them. Most people stop growing soon after that. To grow musically on has to educate one's ear implicitly by a lot of listening. The radio plays almost the same song, songs at the same level. So after growing beyond  The Itsy Bitsy Spider they stop with basic rock and roll. Those who are interested and by luck get exposed to something more seek it out. But most people limit their exposure. If it doesn't sound like what they're used to listening to they change the station. They don't know explicitly why. They can't say there's a chord I haven't heard before or a tempo that's different or a melody along a scale that's not major or minor. They just hear it's different and turn it off. The pop radio stations know this and help by rarely playing anything different or unusual or even a little bit more complex.

Even those who advance beyond the basic can get stuck. That's what happened with Rite of Spring. It was a song beyond the implicit understanding of the listeners. Their ears weren't educated enough to hear it. I could explain explicitly why it was good. I could explain what Stravinski was doing, why it was hard to understand. I could say listen to it a few times and your ear will be educated and you'll begin to hear it. I could explicitly explain how it fits within the evolution of classical music in terms of the harmonic structure. How Gregorian Chants fully explored the harmony of octaves and fifths until it got boring and led to the choral music of Bach. How each advance included the next harmonic in ever increasing complex harmonies. But it's enough if you just listen, your ear will learn to hear it implicitly.

Some times I play a radio in the background tuned to the local rock station. Not often because most rock bores me. Almost every song sounds the same. Almost always the same harmony, same tempo, same instruments, simply melodies. They might as well be playing The Itsy Bitsy Spider over and over again. The music goes in one ear and out the other. Occasionally I'll hear something different, that will pull me away from what I'm doing. In my mind I'll say something is happening there. I'll stop and listen and try to figure out what it is that's happening.

I bought her DVD because of this song. Not because of What If God Was One of Us, the hit from the album. I liked the song and I bought the album because if someone can write and perform this song I wanted to hear what else she could do. I don't know people here. How far you've grown musically. Can you hear that something very different is happening here? Do you like it? Is it hard to listen to and get into? Does it affect you emotionally? Could you dance to it? Do you know why it's different than every other rock song out today?

Anyone, or at least the vast majority, can learn to hear higher quality music. If they just listen eventually they'll be drawn to it. Just as we all learned to hear music that is better than The Itsy Bitsy Spider. And eventually became bored by it. When I get a new album that I like I often don't want to listen to anything else. I'll play it over and over and over again until I've heard everything it has to offer. Every bass line, every cymbal crash. I'll play it until I know it. I got this Joan Osborne CD when I was traveling from California to Florida. I picked up a hitch hiker, a good old boy who probably never listened to anything but country music his whole life. I played this CD constantly, just this CD and I could tell he didn't like it, but my car my music. After a dozen or so times My Right Hand Man was the song he was "seat dancing" to. He was really getting into this song out of all the songs on the album. He was really digging it. Swaying, or jerking since it's hard rock, beating his hands to the music. Anyway there's my little anecdote that says to me you can learn to hear more and better and if you do you'll be drawn to higher quality stuff.