I'll Take My Bad Taste

"[L]istening to music recorded 20, 30 years ago is not living in the past, is not nostalgia. According to my dictionary, nostalgia is "homesickness... a longing for something far away or long ago or for former happy circumstances." The truth is that the Sixties, not to mention the Fifties, sucked in the first place and you wouldn't like it if you were back there [...] No one in his right mind would want to return to either of those eras, which is why the lie in rosy confections like Grease and Beatlemania is despicable. But preferring Hank Williams or Charlie Parker or the Sun Sessions or the Velvet Underground to Squeeze and Rickie Lee Jones and the Go-Gos and the Psychedelic Furs is not nostalgia, it's good taste. Just like listening to Beck, Bogert & Appice or Clock DVA and the Fall are bad taste. So I'll take my bad taste and you're welcome to yours, and maybe someday something will actually happen again and then we'll both be happy."

– Lester Bangs, "Bad Taste Is Timeless," from Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader