MN Reads: Hijinx and Hearsay – Scenster Stories from Minnesota’s Pop Life

On MN Reads, KUMD's Chris Harwood talks with writer Martin Keller and photographer Greg Helgeson about Hijinx and Hearsay: Scenester Stories from Minnesota's Pop Life, published in 2019 by Minnesota Historical Society Press. In the summer of 1979, while disco was dying and new wave and punk were rising from the underground, Keller and Helgeson, two twenty-something guys were thrown together on a new music monthly ignobly called Sweet Potato (later to become City Pages). 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. In Hijinx and Hearsay, Keller and Helgeson are at it again, offering a 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.

Greg Helgeson / Minnesota Historical Society Press