I just can't figure out what it would even mean for a jazz saxophonist to be "good on paper". What does it mean? Did he hit 100 RBIs? A take such as "I don't care for Coltrane's improvisational style" would be beyond debate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltrane_changes He and The Beatles and a lot of other musicians from this era have been subjected to a form of schizophrenic post-hoc pattern matching. In English: someone doodles on the sax or does a tune a little different and suddenly there are 100 papers about the specific and intricate genius of The Rolling Stones making a love song in the Second Person!!! and it’s the same sort of crap in the end, one is doodling on the sax and the other are playing some guitar chords.

These people are also somehow ignorant and independent of Bach, Beethoven, Handel, and of all famous literary authors and poets who have done the same before.

Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t like The Rolling Stones or John Coltrane but they’re just something you like. Thats it.

I see you getting a few downvotes, but for the record I agree completely, to the extent that your complaint is about the members of the cult and not the object of their veneration.

Yeah like I said, if you like him that’s great! If you like The Beatles or The Rolling Stones I will happily listen with you! Because that’s just taste and I think in general most people make pretty good music. It’s all these really weird arguments that have to tell me “no, it’s not doodling on the sax it’s something else!”. When again I feel like you’re extracting patterns to justify the doodling rather than justifying the sound or melody. (Often, people like that don’t care about melody)