Recently in an effort to rid myself of some things I will never use again, I took many of my old CDs to our local music store and traded them in. Most of my CDs are from when I was in 8th and 9th grade, when two things were true: 1: CDs were still the primary method for music, and 2: my music taste was terrrrible. Just terrible. Obviously I didn't think so at the time, but consider: the CDs I took to the store included such luminaries as Puddle of Mudd's Come Clean, Velvet Revolver's Libertad and highlighted (or lowlighted) by Buckcherry's 15, which amazingly was my favorite album when I was in 8th grade.
In the interests of reliving the past I listened through 15 on the way to the music store. And dear god is it awful. It's mind-bogglingly bad. The lyrics range from the wonderfully nonsensical ("I guess a music man is no shelter from the rain") to the pointlessly attention-seeking ("you're crazy but I like the way you fuck me" may be the least subtle lyric of all time). The music includes ill-advised stabs at country, generic radio-friendly ballads, and post-punk(not that these guys know what post-punk is; it's mostly just growling and palm-muted guitars), and frontman Josh Todd appears to believe he's Mick Jagger (he's not, if you were holding out hope).
The point of all that is: this was my favorite band at one point. This was an album I considered life-changing! It's intesting to me that something so bad can provide an important foundation. Of course, everyone always considers their music taste good, so I can't really claim that what I like now is any better... but I'm pretty sure it is. But besides thinking it's better, that summer when I bought 15 was the first time I really got into music of my own, and now it's become a very important part of my life. It's just funny that it all started with music that was so terrible.
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