Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop, from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears

This is truly an amazing book. As a young kid in the 70's, I grew up on AM radio hits: The Osmonds, 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Archies, and so on. What I had no idea was that a majority of those groups were the brainchild of a producer and the recordings were made up of studio musicians. Half the time, no such band ever really existed. This book documents the different groups and songs, the successes and failures, and the product cross-marketing of all those hits that used to come through the radio (or on the 45 single that I'd buy with my allowance money). This is essentially a group of assembled essays and they are very well written. I feel like it's a pop (bubblegum) music history lesson. The interviews with the many people who contributed to the genre are also very informative. I honestly have to pull out this book periodically and read it cover to cover, it's that good.

The naked truth, indeed!Editors Kim Cooper and David Smay have outdone themselves in producing the definitive work on the wildly popular yet strangely esoteric world of bubblegum rock, compiling dozens of essays written by some of the finest scribes of the underground press.Case in point: "Looking for the Beagles" by Steve Mandich, the author of the fantastically comprehensive biography "Evel Incarnate: The Life and Legend of Evel Knievel." Here Mandich sheds a similarly swell light on the all-but forgotten rockin' doggie duo the Beagles, who starred in their own short-lived late-'60s Saturday-morning cartoon series and released one gleeful pop album.Other contributors include the comic world's Peter Bagge ("Hate") with a hilariously enthusiastic overview of his young daughter's contemporary bubblegum CDs, Jake Austen ("Roctober") deconstructs KISS, and, in the interest of fairness, Dennis Eichhorn ("Real Stuff") bursts the bubble with "I Hate Bubblegum!"Buy for its long-lasting flavor.Splat!

Why don't you own this already? Don't you want to know the connections between the Ramones and the Bay City Rollers, or the Beatles and the Backstreet Boys? At times frightening, often hilarious, and always illuminating, this collection of essays is written by people who clearly know music--not just the sub-genre known as Bubblegum Pop--backwards and forwards. This is a smart book, and a must for everyone from music criticism completists to closet Partridge Family fans.

A pleasant surprise. I picked this up even though I thought it would be another disposable hoot at popular culture. It turns out, however, to be a thoughtful and intelligent, only-partly-tongue-in-cheek collection of biographies, essays, and analyses of "bubblegum" music (and related media). Lots of detail, critical discography, and a clear love of the form by its collective authors. Covers everything from 60s kid-pop through 70s/80s bubblegum-punk to 90s teen-pop, everyone from Steve Barri, P. F. Sloan, and Kasenatz-Katz to Lou Perlman, the Bugaloos to Vitamin C. A cover-to-cover read.

If you,like me,are an avid fan of the bubblegum rock bands of the 60s-70s you will love this book!Besides looking at classic bands like the archies,ohio express,1910 fruitgum co,boyce and hart,etc the book covers the people behind the scenes who were,literally,pulling the strings.Very revealing read.Buy this!