how do you define bad musical taste?

Perhaps the more interesting question is what this was like 15 years ago, when you had to spend a lot of time and money amassing a collection of cd's before you could profess things.

I listened to what was then called "classic rock" of the 1960s and 1970s until I was about 16, when as an explicit act of identity formation I decided to programatically make my music taste "more cool" -- this involved buying two R.E.M. cassettes (Document and Murmur) and playing them every night until they were my favorite records. From there, the Cure, Jesus and Mary Chain, Julian Cope, etc. but didn't really go full-on "indie" (or "alternative" as it was then called) until first year of college (1989) when my roommates gave me cassettes of Doolittle and London 0, Hull 4 for my birthday.

It was definitely different pre-internet; I guess you could have subscribed to music magazines, but barring that, for a kid in the suburbs you heard about bands from your friends or on alternative radio (I don't think I knew there was such a thing as college radio then) and it was a bit random what you heard and what you didn't hear. I bought my first Julian Cope record because I read a good review of it in the Washington Post.

Oh yeah, and as a representative of the past, let me just say that the Alanis Morrissette record was certainly branded as indie when it came out and tons of huge Mountain Goats fans really liked it, and still do, me included.

And that Hall and Oates was indeed a pretty straight-ahead, not-cool thing to like when I was a kid. A lot like Huey Lewis. But does a readoption of Huey Lewis by contemporary tastemakers seem out of the question to you? Not to me.

You're right that it was hard to find. I think I was the first kid at school to get anywhere beyond chart music, and that needed a total leap into the dark - the Chart Show's Indie Chart with its lovely psychedelic carousel was about the only gateway I can remember. The first few NMEs I got were like discovering the Americas - Indie No.1s! Stiff Records! The Greatest Drummers Of All Time! - there was so much undreamt-of stuff to care about that I managed to miss Nirvana breaking about six months later because I was poking about in Sarah Records or some other blind alley instead.

For all that I criticise the greyness of indie as an aesthetic, I guess it really did feel like a world of discovery at the time. It was really weird to get to university three or four years later and find that, the odd metalhead or goth apart, people there had never even attempted a similar journey and were mostly content with stuff like Mike & The Mechanics.

first thing that came to mind when I saw the thread title was, "someone who doesn't like black sabbath."

I'd say if you enjoy the musical stylings of Nickleback then you are beyond hope.

I don't think it's so much the things you like but why you like them and how you express this liking
e.g.
National Review's Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs

though certain acts lend themselves to and encourage being appreciated in an ugly way (ha! nickleback!)

do you people pay attention??