Greg Helgeson and Martin Keller
Greg Helgeson (left) and Martin Keller (right)
If you’re looking for a time capsule of Twin Cities music history, look no further than Hijinx and Hearsay: Scenester Stories from Minnesota's Pop Life. Part photobook, part memoir, the latest from Minnesota Historical Society Press revisits the reporting of writer Martin Keller and photographer Greg Helgeson, capturing the formative years of the Twin Cities arts scene. The duo, otherwise known as the Spud Boyz, started working together for the alt-weekly Sweet Potato, which eventually became City Pages.
“I was the first employee at Sweet Potato, I think Greg was maybe the second staff person,” Keller says, who became the paper's music editor. "We had a lot of adventures together. I've always marveled at the depth of Greg's work, and we've been friends since the late 70s working together."
Hijinx and Hearsay
The title is a reference to Keller's Sweet Potato gossip column "Highlights, Hijinxs and Hearsay: Martian’s Chronicles," which he wrote under the pseudonym Martian Colour.
"Minneapolis has always had a voracious appetite for music," Keller says. "The late 70s was kind of a grim time in popular culture and American culture in general. There was high unemployment. The Cold War was still at a peak. There was a lot of sporadic, interesting bands out there, and things really started to coalesce around 1981, where there seemed to be a lot of activity in a lot of different genres in music. And then the comedy scene started."
Back in the early 80s, the Twin Cities radio market was one of the most conservative in the country. Now with stations like The Current and KFAI, Twin Cities radio has grown considerably progressive.
'"I think a driving element back then was that there was two weekly papers, and between us we did a good job of covering stuff that the daily papers weren't covering, and that the magazines seldom covered," Keller said. "That was a bigger influence than people realize. I think people often take media for granted and don't realize there was no internet."
Flipping through the book, you’ll find insider stories of the subjects behind the news stories, like Bob Marley gazing in awe at the Mississippi River from his hotel room, or early snapshots of U2, Tom Petty, and Devo, with hours-long access to superstars that local media is rarely afforded in the post-internet world.
One anecdote recounts Keller donating plasma in order to see The Rolling Stones at the Met Center, and another recounts how after a press conference, Keller tried to give Paul McCartney a promotional CD of Prince's The Black Album that would later be famously cancelled–a hidden gem that's now considered a collector's item.
1 of 7
Photograph by Greg Helgeson
Prince
2 of 7
Photograph by Greg Helgeson
The Replacements
3 of 7
Photograph by Greg Helgeson
Bob Marley
4 of 7
Photograph by Greg Helgeson
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, 1984
5 of 7
Photograph by Greg Helgeson
Lizz Winstead
6 of 7
Photograph by Greg Helgeson
Louie Anderson and his mom Ora, 1981
7 of 7
Photograph by Greg Helgeson
Prince and Sheila E.
Of course, intimate photos of Bob Dylan and Prince appear in the book, but Hijinx and Hearsay delves further into the local scene by excavating stories of the West Bank folk music explosion, and delving into the rise of the 80's punk scene with bands like Husker Du and The Replacements. Beyond musicians, the book also describes encounters with the comedians Louie Anderson, Joel Hodgson, and Jerry Seinfeld, and outsized personalities like William Burroughs, Dr. Seuss, Gary Busey, and Garrison Keillor. The book also pays tribute to numerous female comedians that jumpstarted the local comedy scene, including Lizz Winstead, Susan Vass, and Phyllis Wright.
Keller knew instantly that Prince would become famous, right out of the gate. "The fact that he produced his first record, played most of the instruments on it, and once he got on beyond the Capri Theater debut, his live performances were thrilling." Keller said. "He had a persona. Even though he was famously shy, there was something about him."
Now in PR, Keller represents local performers like singer-songwriter Jeff Arundel, Prince's New Power Generation or Steven Greenberg, the writer of Funkytown with Lipps Inc., although he continues to write when he can. In 1997, the owner of City Pages at the time bought the Twin Cities Reader and shut it down in the same week, without warning staff. The countless photographs and negatives Helgeson had taken over the years were thrown away–no courtesy call given to claim them from the files. Hijinx and Hearsay preserves Twin Cities history while revealing the backstory of how the arts scene became what it is today.
"As Doug Sahm says in the book, it's one of America's last unspoiled cities, although I think if rents can creep any higher it will become very spoiled very soon," Keller says.
