In the summer of 1979, while disco was dying and new wave and punk were
rising from the underground, two twenty-something guys were thrown
together on a new music monthly ignobly called Sweet Potato. One had a
Canon camera, the other a thirty-six-pound Royal typewriter. Over the
next several years, the two chronicled the Minneapolis scene and the
cultural landscape of the Twin Cities, covering some of the most
influential artists, musicians, writers, comedians, and entertainers of
the past forty years. They profiled legendary musicians from across the
globe and across musical genres--Paul and Linda McCartney, Bob Marley,
U2, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Devo, and more--as well as homegrown
talents ranging from Dylan and Prince to the Replacements and Hüsker Dü.
They covered such disparate writers as William Burroughs and Dr. Seuss,
and young, up-and-coming comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Louie Anderson,
and Lizz Winstead.
In Hijinx and Hearsay, writer Martin Keller and photographer Greg
Helgeson are at it again, offering a delectable, fun, and fresh
perspective through Helgeson's photography (much of it never seen
before) and new stories and insights by Keller that shed fascinating
light on a singular, influential era in popular culture in Minnesota.
