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List Price: $19.95 | | Publisher: Feral House
Salesrank: 790752
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| Our Price: $11.54 |
| Used Price: $8.97 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
From the Archies to Britney Spears, bubblegum music has excited every generation of music lovers. Featuring interviews with many of the genre’s major creators, this ambitious anthology dismantles the worst myths about how bubblegum is produced and identifies the gum tendencies of artists as various as the Sex Pistols, Abba, the Monkees, and the Ramones. The book reveals the light and dark sides of the music, telling bitter tales of litigious backstabbing, pistol-wielding producers, and the perversities behind the jingles.
Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop, from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears Reviews:
great reading for anyone interested in pop music 
2009-07-04 - This book has a fresh quirky writing style that is intoxicating. In each chapter we are brought into the recording and sometimes television studios
to learn the subversive craft of selling culture to the youth. Fascinating
and insightful.rock history
I love this book!!!
2009-05-15 - 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.
Bubblegum 
2008-11-10 - I haven't read it...it's a gift. A sadly overlooked area of music. At a time in ones life when everything is fresh and new,Bubblegum music is forever fondly,if jadedly, remembered.
Letter to the Editors 
2005-07-14 - The following is a copy of a letter I wrote to the editors of "Music Is the Naked Truth" - it says all I can say about the book:
I'd been looking forward to reading your book
"Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth" for several years
and finally got hold of copy and read it last month.
I felt like I needed to contact (you) the editors,
if only to express my major disappointment.
Your book is advertised as a dark history of bubblegum music
and I was looking forward to some sort of logical outline and
readable history of bubblegum (a type of music I don't know much about)
However, immediately upon reading the introduction and first few
tentative essays, I could see it was going to be rough going.
While planning the book, I'm sure you all thought it would be cute for
your contributors to use as many kooky and coy references
to gum, candy, sugar, sweets, etc as possible.
While delving into your book, initially the candy
references were annoying...then they became plain
excruciating... and then painful. The painful candy references
on almost every page made reading the book an almost impossible chore.
But I'd paid good money for it, so I struggled through all the "gooey,
chewy, yummy" references
Another glaring annoyance in "Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth"
is the fact that there are NO color photographs inside...and what photos you
do place in the book are all 2 X 2 inches and in gray-ish black and white
Oh, wait...I forgot...there IS a large forlorn photo of a Monkees lunch box...
...but why are all the other photos the size of large Puerto Rican postage stamps?
A book about bubblegum music without color photos is
beyond ridiculous. Something along the lines of a thick,
colorful, well-written glossy would have been preferable
and you may have sold a few more books.
I'm sure by now your book as become the "textbook"
on bubblegum music...however, it's clearly not.
And I'm sorry I paid money for it...and I would
feel guilty loaning it to friends or even donating
it to my local library.
Thanks for reading and better luck next time
Give me more, more, more of that bubblegum music
2003-11-09 - This is a collection of essays about (yes) bubblegum music. Most of them are very interesting. If you like to interested in the lighter side of rock and roll, this book should interest you.
