I suppose excessive rubato by a classical soloists could be considered self indulgent if it imposes TOO MUCH personality on a piece to the detriment of the orginal composition, but that's a subjective judgement on the part of the listener whether it's "too much", isn't it?.
The thing I object to is entire sub genres of rock and pop being dismissed as "all the same" by supposedly serious mature journalists, people who probably haven't given them fair listening, or are pandering to a decades old tribalism that should have died . It was different in 1976 when 18 years old were slagging of the rock establishement in the NME but they WERE 18 year olds!
I was pretty anti prog (to be more accurate indifferent to it) when it was at it most popular and was of the age where I couldn't afford to buy many albums, but I was only really familiar with the stuff at the top of the album charts, though I had vague idea of early Pink Floyd being interesting.
Musicians of every stripe and level of instrumental sophistication have often been far more broad minded than fans and journos.
About The Damned
"They were heavily into Soft Machine as Roger Armstrong recounts. "The conventional punk influences were New York Dolls, Stooges, 60s garage and pop etc, but Capt and various members of the Mopeds were big fans of the early Soft Machine. At one point they used to stalk them from gig to gig !!!." This may explain some of the Captains more esoteric guitar workouts later. The Cap was also a big fan of Syd Barrett and I remember reading of his disgust at "Music For Pleasure" produced by Nick Mason drummer with the Floyd. The Captain wanted twisted raw psychedelia and a Piper At The Gates Of Dawn it wasn't... he got a rock dinosaur for a producer !!!"
nb. I believe the so called "early" Soft Machine referred to here would be early/mid seventies.
Long way from the original topic sorry!!!
