What's really strange is that I'd never really heard of anyone NOT liking Tom Waits until I started listening, and now I appear to be in the minority for liking him.
He's the kinda guy I like but I can see why others wouldn't like him, although Tom's argument that his voice is fake seems kinda weird and immaterial. I thought changing your appearance in order to make yourself more entertaining/compelling/whatever was the point of art or entertainment. For Tom to complain about a musician changing his appearance from "real life" in light of the recent Bowie obsession seems REALLY strange and ironic to me, but whatever. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, I just like arguing about stuff like this because I'm a nerd.
I really like the way you've explained this & I think I see this in myself more with movies - like, if I bitch about movie A, saying it's not enough of this and too much of that, I'll think about movie B, which has a lot of the same things in it but I love it. I think it's like umami a little bit, and maybe what I was trying to reach for when I said "you're way on board" with something!
Oddly enough this came up recently when I saw Tom at the record fair. Since his Bowie fixation has kicked into overdrive, I brought up Velvet Goldmine and did he like that movie. He said something to the effect that yeah, it's been a while, I don't remember if I really loved it. I was describing things about it, and Tom goes, "I thought you liked it." I realized I was saying critical things. I do like it, but it's so over the top ridiculous I shouldn't. I mean, the movie posits that Oscar Wilde came from another planet and somewhere along the way he drops a weird green space brooch in some dank London alley that the (not) Bowie character picks up 75 years later or something. It is just crazy. However, I cannot stand Moulin Rouge. I can't make it past the first line of the first song. Know what I mean?