There's one thing that's kind of bothered me about this whole discussion, and it's really just a minor point, but have you guys considered the many people (both at the time of release, and now) who don't really care for albums such as 'Revolver', 'Kind Of Blue', 'Trout Mask Replica', 'The Shape Of Jazz To Come' or whatever, regardless of their timeless or touchstone quality? At the same time, there may be people who flip through their parents' record collections, finds some 70s record which has been deemed as crap by 'anyone who matters' and simply love it. That's really one of the great beauties of music, it can hit different people in such different ways. But screw this musician vs. non-musician thing (I am a musician, in case you're wondering) - a musician certainly may hear things that non-musicians don't, but similarly a non-musician may hear things that a musician doesn't. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm happy to have complex music like Stravinsky as background music, or listen closely to Weezer to analyse their melodic structures and chordal movements... Julian.
Skip nails it with this: ""Contemporanaiety" doesn't enter into the same realm as real live individual expression -- which probably does much to explain why certain people (Raymond Scott, Beefheart, Sun Ra) are perpetually being rediscovered." The notion that new generations ain't gonna get (insert critical touchstone here) is silly, a generational hubris.