Albums you do not get...a plea for help and understanding

I sometimes grab a CD by some well known and much blessed artist to evaluate what the fuss is all about.

Two recent disappointments - Sinatra. Mariah Carey.

edit - I suspect that Shatner isn't supposed to be taken seriously. 

I like jazz, but I can do without Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman. I bought a couple of Albums by Radiohead and I just don't get there music. Sometimes it almost sounds like I'm playing at the wrong speed. 

Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music was a disappointment to say the least. I had just discovered Rock n Roll Animal and MMM was my second album. Should have bought Transformer instead. 

To me the Grateful Dead was a live band.  Bluegrass on drugs, literally and figuratively.  Their studio stuff did lack energy, though the album Reckoning is great.  But that is live in the studio even.  Joni Mitchell is where I go off the rails, though I can wrap my head around her lyrical prowess.  My folks never had music playing in the house and we had only classical, country and what is now considered classic rock on the radio where I grew up. None of which was interesting at the time.  A friend had cable and I got hooked on the very beginnings of MTV.  Sad but true.  And DEVO is one of the most anti-establishment bands of all time, more punk than most punk but without the angry facade.  Satire at its finest. Except for "whip it"- who knows what that was.  

Totally agree on 

...sorry.  Totally agree on how we chase the sound of our formative years.