Synopses & Reviews
Named One of the Best Books of 2011 by NPR Spin - USA Today CNBC - Pitchfork - The Onion - The Atlantic - The Huffington Post VEVO - The Boston Globe - The San Francisco Chronicle
For fans of VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave
Remember the first time you saw Michael Jackson dance with zombies in "Thriller"? Diamond Dave karate kick with Van Halen in "Jump"? Tawny Kitaen turning cartwheels on a Jaguar to Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again"? The Beastie Boys spray beer in "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)"? Axl Rose step off the bus in "Welcome to the Jungle"?
Remember When All You Wanted Was Your MTV?
It was a pretty radical idea-a channel for teenagers, showing nothing but music videos. It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.
I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business.
Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.
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"Highly entertaining" -Rolling Stone
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"It reminded me of those long days watching MTV, back when it still played videos...riveting." -New York Times
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"Hilarious, with behind-the-scenes dirt on hundreds of videos. I guarantee you'll have a tough time putting it down." -USA Today
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"Riveting reading, and a book we expect to see on the best-seller lists." -Very Short List
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"The sheer entertainment value within these pages is priceless." -Publishers Weekly
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“Splendid. I Want My MTV is compulsively entertaining, hugely edifying, and occasionally profound.” -TIME
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"A smart, decadently entertaining oral history." -Playboy
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"Just as MTV hypnotized viewers, so the jump-cut structure of I WANT MY MTV swiftly compels." -Businessweek
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"Rollicking. The golden age of MTV was just as wild and debauched as you would hope." -New York Post
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"A rip-roaring, hilarious tribute to the cable channel that changed pop culture. A wonderfully entertaining and enlightening history, a magnificently enjoyable read." -The National
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"Riotous and irreverent. Crack it open to almost any page and you're guaranteed a giggle. Every gaffe, scandal, and sexual innuendo comes in for hilarious scrutiny." -New York Daily News
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"Insiders are already buzzing about the book, which does for music television what Fredric Dannen's Hit Men did for indie promotion." -HITS
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"A smart oral history." -Billboard
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"A wild trip down memory lane, this cool history makes us '80s and '90s kids totally nostalgic." -NYLON
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"Hugely readable and insanely fun." -Pitchfork
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"It makes you laugh, it makes you cry. I couldn't put it down. This is the best book I've read on how the music business really works." -Bob Lefsetz, The Lefsetz Letter
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"An obscenely entertaining (and entertainingly obscene) account of MTV's early days." -Dave Holmes
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"The entire Grantland staff is obsessed with the book" -Grantland
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"The writers certainly did their homework, chronicling the wild and crazy ride of the network in the words of its own eclectic cast of characters...there is plenty to sink your teeth into with this book." -Hollywood Reporter
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"It's part voyeurism, part nostalgia, part social commentary - the perfect pulp non-fiction read for the cooling months ahead." -Modern Tonic
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"I WANT MY MTV chronicles MTV as I, and many others, would like to remember it: a lot of fun when it first came on the scene and a joy to watch every day" -TG Daily
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"MTV changed America and this book will change how you think about MTV. It's a fascinating look deep inside how MTV became what it was from the mouths of those who made it. Everyone who loved or hated MTV will love this story filled with fights, drugs, sex and music." -Toure, author of Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?
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"Before Google and before Apple, MTV was the one post-60s American enterprise that really transformed the culture. And now we have this definitive, riveting, revealing, amazingly well-reported insiders' account of how an improbable group of visionaries made it up as they went along. You want
I Want My MTV." -Kurt Andersen, author of
Heyday and
Reset, and host of public radio's "Studio 360"
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"I Want My MTV is such a big, wild joyride of book, made to be read with glee and nostalgia and marvel. It's also a thoughtful and astonishingly well-researched historical document, of course, but mostly it's just a total gas. It's all in here, folks! Girls in cages! TV executives on blow! Dudes in eyeliner! Chicks with guitars! Pyrotechnics, consumerism, fame, destruction and shamelessness! Anyone who came of age during the glory days of MTV will be-page by page-steadily transported right back to your boyfriend's parent's wood-paneled den, to savor once more the life-changing lessons of decadence and magic we learned from cable TV." -Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed
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"I Want My MTV is the definitively funny-yet loving-chronicle of music video's golden age: the hopes, the dreams, the drugs, the hair, the legacy of Tawny Kitaen. And for gossip, it's packed tighter than one of Heart's spandex bustiers." -Rob Sheffield, author of the national bestseller Love is a Mix Tape and Talking to Girls About Duran Duran
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andquot;Highly entertainingandquot;
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andquot;The sheer entertainment value within these pages is priceless.andquot;
Review
andquot;I WANT MY MTV is compulsively entertaining, hugely edifying, and occasionally profoundandquot;
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andquot;A smart oral history.andquot; -Billboard
Review
andquot;Hugely readable and insanely fun.andquot;
Review
andquot;The entire Grantland staff is obsessed with the bookandquot; -Grantland
Review
andquot;Hilarious, with behind-the-scenes dirt on hundreds of videos. I guarantee you'll have a tough time putting it down.andquot;
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“Hilarious. One of my favorite books of the year. I guarantee you’ll have a tough time putting it down.” -USA Today
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“This is my kind of book.” -Howard Stern
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“This colorful oral history of MTV’s early years doesn’t pull punches or waste time. A relentlessly entertaining book, an endlessly quotable volume.” -The Onion
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“Wildly entertaining. Music and culture fans of a certain age – you will want this book.” -Washington Post
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“Marks and Tannenbaum make business meetings sound as fascinating as UFC Fighting, with anecdote upon anecdote about models, midgets, and coke-fueled mayhem.” -Spin Magazine
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“This is my kind of book.” -Howard Stern
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andquot;Highly entertainingandquot; -Rolling Stone
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andquot;A smart, decadently entertaining oral history.andquot; -Playboy
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“Reading Slimed is like taking a trip back to summer camp to see your old friends. Mathew Klickstein has captured the outrageous, inventive, and crazy times of early Nickelodeon, and the stories are sweeter than a mug of bug juice. A nation of Nick fans will salute his shorts.”
—Steve Slavkin, creator of Salute Your Shorts
“Somewhere between a tribute, a belated yearbook, and an autopsy, Slimed! attempts to figure out--with the help of nearly 200 performers, writers, producers, and execs who worked at the network between 1985 and 2000--how a fledgling channel with virtually no original programming identified, captured, and entertained the hell out of its preteen demographic…. Slimed! is the best kind of blast from the past: dishy, unwholesome, and thought-provoking enough to make you question your own memories.”
—The Village Voice
Slimed! explores the behind-the-scenes drama of controversial shows like Ren and Stimpy and the family lives of its child stars, but it also reveals the networks unconventional programming and knack for recruiting up-and-coming talent (Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins was on the writing staff for Clarissa Explains It All)—as well as the secret ingredients to the networks famous green slime.
—The Atlantic, Fall Books Preview
“Culture isnt all serious business—sometimes its just good fun.”
—Publishers Weekly, Top 10 Social Sciences pick
Synopsis
Remember When All You Wanted Was Your MTV? The perfect gift for the music fan or child of the eighties in your life.
Named One of the Best Books of 2011 by NPR - Spin - USA Today - CNBC - Pitchfork - The Onion - The Atlantic - The Huffington Post - VEVO - The Boston Globe - The San Francisco Chronicle
Remember the first time you saw Michael Jackson dance with zombies in "Thriller"? Diamond Dave karate kick with Van Halen in "Jump"? Tawny Kitaen turning cartwheels on a Jaguar to Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again"? The Beastie Boys spray beer in "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)"? Axl Rose step off the bus in "Welcome to the Jungle"?
It was a pretty radical idea-a channel for teenagers, showing nothing but music videos. It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.
I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business.
Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.
Synopsis
SLIMED! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age tells the surprisingly complex, wonderfully nostalgic, and impressively compelling story of how Nickelodeon -- the First Kids' Network -- began as a DIY startup in the late 70s, and forged ahead through the early eighties with a tiny band of young artists and filmmakers who would go on to change everything about cable television, television in general, animation, and children's entertainment, proving just what can be done if the indie spirit is kept alive in the corporate world. Get the real back story about all of your favorite Golden Age Nick shows: Everything from such classics as You Can't Do That On Television, Out of Control and Double Dare to early 90s faves like The Adventures of Pete and Pete, the original three Nicktoons, Clarissa Explains It All and more ... All from those who made it happen!
About the Author
Mathew Klickstein is the former editor in chief of Entertainment Today, and has written for numerous online and print magazines. He also worked in Hollywood, where he wrote Sony Pictures Against the Dark for Steven Seagal. He has written four other books to date and currently lives in New York City.