MTV’s original VJs, including Nina Blackwood and Martha Quinn, are dishing on the channel’s ’80s heyday in an upcoming tell-all. “VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave” includes behind-the-scenes tales of cocaine, Michael Jackson and an unknown named Madonna. “I wasn’t busy, so I got the nod,” recalls Alan Hunter of an assignment to interview the Material Girl backstage at the Limelight. “[She] wasn’t huge at the time — I felt like I was more of a celebrity than she was. This was before Madonna was groomed for stardom. She was fleshy, and her baubles looked like something she might have bought at a trinket store downtown, herself.” Hunter also recalls the network’s hard-partying New Year’s Eve broadcasts, “an exercise in staying straight for four hours while everybody else was going to the bathroom and doing massive amounts of cocaine.” The story also includes anecdotes by Mark Goodman, and is out through Atria Books in May. Quinn says her starting salary was $26,000, and, “I didn’t have an agent; my dad was my lawyer.”