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. A cross-section of his work is collected in Bar Yarns and Manic Depressive Mix Tapes, and despite the title, not every essay is a concert review or band profile. Walsh loves musicians who invest their projects with a larger sense of meaning—the Bruce Springsteens, Bob Dylans and Bonos. And he has a true believer’s fervor when it comes to protecting the tenets of his faith from wannabes. He writes: “I believe everyone should stop saying ‘That rocks’ about things that absolutely do not rock.” 

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