Episode 1902 of the No Agenda Show, titled "The MTV Chronicles," published September 10, 2026 and hosted by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak, delivers a special best-of compilation drawn from Curry's years as one of MTV's most recognizable VJs. With Curry traveling back from Rotterdam to Austin and on to the Texas Hill Country, the episode stitches together first-person accounts from the late 1980s and early 1990s music industry, offering listeners a candid, unvarnished look at the era's biggest stars, its backroom deals, and the geopolitical undercurrents shaping pop culture.
The compilation ranges widely across Curry's career and Dvorak's tech-industry recollections. Highlights include:
- A midnight car ride to Prince's Paisley Park in Minneapolis during a 1991 Sam Goody Musicland commercial shoot.
- The 1989 Moscow Music Peace Festival, billed as anti-drug and anti-alcohol, which Curry frames as a CIA operation tied to manager Doc McGee's Learjet drug bust.
- Encounters with Tina Turner, Quincy Jones, Raquel Welch, Jamie Lee Curtis, Fleetwood Mac, Steve Stevens, Joe Satriani and Shaquille O'Neal.
- The MTV.com Gopher-server dispute with the University of Minnesota, settled with a t-shirt.
Curry's tone is conversational and often self-deprecating, and the stories land because they arrive unfiltered. Recalling the Prince party warning that he was "too tall and too white" to approach the host, Curry pushed through anyway: "I go over and I say, hey, hey, I'm Adam. Thanks for inviting me. It's very cool. He says, hey, yeah, good you came." On the Moscow flight, he describes Ozzy Osbourne, stranded outside an occupied lavatory with Sharon at his side, wetting himself in the aisle, calling it "probably the saddest thing I've ever seen in rock and roll ever."
The episode also traces the machinery behind the music. Curry explains how MTV agreed to always follow "Michael Jackson" with "the King of Pop," forcing a full weekend of segments to be re-taped when the mandate was missed. He recounts Gene Simmons of KISS bursting into a music meeting with kneepads on, and details how Spring Break was invented in 1990 as a vehicle to lure Budweiser advertising to the network. He credits Axl Rose and executive Doug Herzog with ending his Headbangers Ball run, and describes suing MTV Networks over the MTV.com domain, a case that shaped his skeptical view of corporate storytelling. Dvorak adds color from a late-1980s Moscow visit, describing painted-over listening mics at the Mir Hotel and Reagan's post-visit shift on the "evil empire."
About No Agenda Show
No Agenda is a long-running, listener-supported podcast hosted by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak that takes a skeptical, independent look at mainstream media, politics, culture, and the forces shaping the daily news cycle. Known for sharp commentary, humor, and "media deconstruction," the show offers an irreverent alternative to conventional news analysis. Episode 1902, "The MTV Chronicles," is available now wherever podcasts are heard, with a special guest co-host segment featuring producer Dana Brunetti scheduled for the following Sunday.
