Overview

Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapesdistills thirty delirious, jam-packed yearsof some of the best music writing ever tocome out of the Twin Cities. As a writer andmusician, the ever-curious Jim Walsh haslived a life immersed in music, and it all makesits way into his columns and feature articles,interviews and reviews-including personalessays on life, love, music, family, death, andyes, the manic-depressive highs and lows thatcome with being an obsessive music loverand listener.From Minneapolis's own Prince to such farflungacts as David Bowie, the Waterboys,Lucinda Williams, Parliament-Funkadelic, L7,the Rolling Stones, the Ramones, U2, HankWilliams, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley, andNirvana, Walsh's work treats us to a chorusof the voices and sounds that have made themusic scene over the past three decades.Whether he's dishing dirt with Yoko Ono ordigging the Replacements' roots, giving anold rocker a spin or offering a mic to the latestupstart, Jim Walsh reminds us that in the landof ten thousand lakes there are a thousanddances, and the music never dies.

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9781517901813

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Reviews

Jim Walsh has been the introspective and thoughtful voice of a generation that reenergized Minnesota music and gave it to the world. This is a book about a man in love with music. Chris Osgood of The Suicide Commandos Most mere mortals would have burned out after so many years and so many decibels and late nights, but Jim Walsh is the battery rabbit of the local music scene. For him it really is all about the passion: his contagious joy, awe, and fierce fidelity to the communal spirit are there in everything he writes, and his voice is unmistakable. Brad Zellar, author of Suburban World: The Norling Photos, Conductors of the Moving World, and House of Coates Jim Walsh's Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes is as much a chronicle of the past few decades of the Minneapolis scene as it is a pitch-perfect memoir of what it means to live for music. A crucial read for anyone who has spent their days and nights tangled in the tether of a song. Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

Jim Walsh has been the introspective and thoughtful voice of a generation that reenergized Minnesota music and gave it to the world. This is a book about a man in love with music. Chris Osgood of The Suicide Commandos

Jim Walsh has been the introspective and thoughtful voice of a generation that reenergized Minnesota music and gave it to the world. This is a book about a man in love with music. -Chris Osgood of The Suicide Commandos Most mere mortals would have burned out after so many years and so many decibels and late nights, but Jim Walsh is the battery rabbit of the local music scene. For him it really is all about the passion: his contagious joy, awe, and fierce fidelity to the communal spirit are there in everything he writes, and his voice is unmistakable. -Brad Zellar, author of Suburban World: The Norling Photos, Conductors of the Moving World, and House of Coates Jim Walsh's Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes is as much a chronicle of the past few decades of the Minneapolis scene as it is a pitch-perfect memoir of what it means to live for music. A crucial read for anyone who has spent their days and nights tangled in the tether of a song. -Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic Jim Walsh's Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes is like a cicada come trilling out of the fertile past. Each chapter is a love song of old for the here and now, a desperate season in need of music elixir. -Nicole Helget, author of Summer of Ordinary Ways, The Turtle Catcher, and Stillwater Walsh's writing is musical, rhythmic and tuned, with a throughline of humanity. -MinnPost.com Jim Walsh is a true believer: For him, rock 'n' roll is more than music or culture and becomes religion. Published in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, the Minnesota writer-musician is a good and heartfelt essayist and memoirist. -Shepherd Express Whether he's discussing Prince, Springsteen or the Uptown Bar, Walsh is a man and a fan in touch with his feelings about songs, his own life and the communal spirit that music builds. -Star Tribune There are a lot of rock critics who focus on the negative, or shrug off the humanity of music fandom in favor of cold logic and bloodless analysis. Walsh is not that kind of writer or critic: even when he struggles with what's going on around him, even when life is unbearably shitty, his writing is usually positive and filled with hope. -PopMatters.com Organized thematically, it demonstrates Walsh's knack for using music as a springboard for writing about people's lives and the communities they inhabit. Walsh's intimate, nuanced prose makes you feel as if you've known him, and the people he writes about, for years. -Minnesota History

Author Information

Jim Walsh is a Minneapolis-based writer, journalist, columnist, and songwriter and the author of The Replacements: All Over But The Shouting: An Oral History and, with Dennis Pernu, The Replacements: Waxed Up Hair and Painted Shoes: The Photographic History. The former music editor at City Pages and pop music columnist at the St.Paul Pioneer Press and current staff columnist at the Southwest Journal and a regular contributor to Minnpost.com and others, Walsh has published in Rolling Stone, SPIN, the Village Voice, the L.A. Weekly, the Star Tribune, Melody Maker, Billboard, the Utne Reader, and has been a recipient of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. He is the former leader of bands REMs, Laughing Stock, and The Mad Ripple, and the ringleader behind the 10-year-old singer/songwriter showcase The Mad Ripple Hootenanny.

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