It's like I feared.. :-( this is something I've been against all my life, but maybe just have to comply in some respects.

If I just think of the listener, yeah, I can see the 2nd one is easier to swallow. But, I feel like I'm selling myself playing like that, in 'machine' style. There's no challenge to it, just play it to the beat and that's it, easy and harmless. But the first one, it can take a dozen takes before I'm absolutely happy with the result, much more of a challenge. But it's dawning on me slowly that people usually want accurate execution and playing on very exact timing.

The difference to me is akin to that of between, say Santana whose neat style I usually dislike, and, Hendrix playing 'Star Spangled...' which is how I'd like to hear every solo played. I also much more appreciate, say, Sex Pistol's rhythm guitar work than a Rush song or any prog rock pretty much, or most any guitar hero music, which I find boring because it's so accurate and predictable. You listen to it once and you know the song, there's nothing out of whack to keep you interested, besides maybe a nice sound or something.

I think it's the same on rhythm guitar. Usually when I play my track it's like some people are wow that was spot on, let's move onto the next song, but I'm like NOOO it was way too neat, and then I replay it a few times more till I get it suitably skewed to my liking, not exactly on time but pushing a little maybe, chord changes having a bit roughness and noise to them or a brief extra open string there etc...one of my tricks is to vary downstrokes and upstrokes, you can get a really crazy sounding chord by suddenly playing it a little ahead of beat and with a slower upstroke so it ends just after the beat...anyway, then I'm happy. (No wonder I most like to listen to Angus and Neil Young, and both preferably live too :-) but, often I end up battling the other guys which take is better, the neat one or the more quirky one.

So...I fear there's no escaping I think that most people want it as neat as it can be. Just look at top-40 charts...all music is performed by computers or at least with machine-like accuracy and autotuned and time-corrected to perfection. That's what people want...:-(