There are people in life who are what I like to call “last-name” people — never addressed by just their first name. Not that their last name is particularly poetic and/or hilarious. (Although hilarious last names are usually used in conversation directly after said person is out of earshot.) Rather, it is like a credential. Like, you're an officer in the “scene.” If music scenes had the equivalent of a “team captain” badge for your jacket, this would be it.

Prior to that is the “of“ stage. So, “your name here” of “where you work, the band you're in, etc.” It's like being Joan of Arc minus the sainthood and hearing voices, and, on the upside, it very rarely involves being burned at the stake. I like to think of it as being the “high school letter” stage. I came on the scene at 17 and very quickly got my badge while working at a place that was cool among other 17-year-olds with very large hair and very pointy shoes. For a brief period after that, I got the rare perk of a nickname “Chris the Guy” — or CTG for short. (Not to be confused with my bestie “Chris the Girl,” or CTG for short. To be fair, it was the ‘80s and we also found Gallagher hilarious – don’t judge.)

Anyhow, Jon Clifford is a last-name person. If you are an active showgoer in the Twin Cities alt-rock world, chances are pretty good you already know who he is. Clifford is an interesting character. He’s a hairdresser by trade, a record store owner by accident of fate, and a superfan and an archivist by nature. A left-of-the-dial, solid-state survivor that not only drank the Kool-Aid, but got all the collectable glassware and kept the boxes mint.

Hairdressing and rock ‘n’ roll might seem an odd cocktail — ‘til you taste it. They are both about style, detail, technique, a heaping helping of illusion, and ever so much swagger. If you look at some of rock's foundations they were all hairdressers: Chuck Berry was one. So were George Clinton and Mahalia Jackson. As was the dude from A Flock of Seagulls. And, yeah, actually that last one does kinda make sense.

I recently arranged to meet up with Clifford — see there’s that last name thing again — at Francis Burger Joint in northeast Minneapolis. It’s a vegetarian burger place, and it’s the kind of place that the Archies would have hung out at in an alternate universe where Archie wore a $200 T-shirt and listened to Fleetwood Mac ironically. My job: to write a portrait of this person. Like all good portraits, it is subjective, capturing a truth, but not necessarily the whole truth. The truth is the sort of thing we don’t ever know. We just make our best guesses at it, like how many marbles are in a jar.

Mr. Clifford was already there, resplendent in a T-shirt that was fashionable, but in an “I don’t give a crap about fashion” way; jeans; and a necklace of noticeable weight featuring a 45 RPM record adapter, a ’90s throwback to a ’60s invention. It may be the only clue in his appearance that placed us in the year 2023, although the whole ”vegetarian burger joint“ might be a bit of a giveaway.

If you took a black-and-white photo of Clifford standing in a cornfield, you might easily think that it was in fact taken in 1965, or ’75, or any of the ensuing years that a Keith Richards “rooster” haircut was a proper choice. It says something amazing and terrible about rock ’n’ roll that the hairstyle is both timeless and dated at any given moment. It’s a ship in a bottle that is always three degrees from capsizing. Jon Clifford stands out of time, like a portrait of Dorian Gray — if he were less foppish and more into vintage Joe Walsh. Or, to borrow a line from squad leader Taylor Swift, Clifford is “the fella over there with the hella good hair.”

With a faith in three chords and a dream worthy of a missionary, Mr. Clifford has made his business a living tribute to Minnesota rock gods, both fallen and still standing. That business, HiFi Hair, is a two-seat hair salon nestled on the dirty boulevard of Hennepin Avenue, with a view of the Basilica of Saint Mary and spitting distance from Loring Park. The address is notable for the countercultures that have graced that street from Nick & Eddie’s, Joe’s Garage, and the one-time sanctuary of Twin Cities art culture, the Loring Bar.

HiFi isn't just a place to get your quiff quaffed, it's also a record shop. It’s the kind of music emporium you’ll find in other places, more akin to a stall in a market. The selection is small but mighty — every title is there on purpose. You could call it curated, but that’s the wrong vibe. It’s discovered, collected like truffles in a forest — which I guess would make Clifford akin to a pig, so let's not follow that metaphor all the way. But it is a hunter’s treasure trove, an ensemble of titles that, as they say in record-collecting circles, is as rare as hen’s teeth.

The shop started as a project of indie rock stalwart John Kass of Prospective Records — another last name guy, it’s getting to be a theme. It has a real focus on the best of the Twin Town’s stage-rockers who bothered to record their loud, vibrant art. You find classics like Hüsker Dü, the Wallets, the Phones, and Run Westy Run next to Eleganza!, Lolo’s Ghost, and your friend’s kid who just made a cassette of his post-screamo trance project. 

Clifford was born in 1965. That fact is interesting, as a pretty solid argument could be made for it being a pivotal year in rock ’n’ roll and a cultural shift. Rock ’n’ roll was entering its second decade, and just like any 10-year-old, it was starting to figure out what it wanted to be, and not just what it was told it was. It gave us the album Rubber Soul, a marked change to the format and one that would start an escalating war of greatness between the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The Rolling Stones sang "Satisfaction,” Dylan went electric, and never really went back. The Byrds made Dylan even more electric and eclectic, and the Rat Pack had finished their suicide spiral and landed with an ugly thud. 

Meanwhile, the first teeny boppers were getting married and complaining about the noise of this bastardization of “their” music, a sentiment that gave Billy Joel songwriting fodder for decades to come. It is also the line of demarcation from the age of the baby boomers, to the first lost generation, Generation X, that occasionally subtle line of demarcation from the haves, and the maybe-haves.

All of this is the dirt that birthed Mr. Clifford, who was fertilized by punk and grew in the grunge. It's in that spirit that he has become a catalyst for a community. He runs a series of concerts in the “weather-permitting” months in the alley behind his shop, which might be the second-most-photographed alley in the city. The setting is important. It recalls another past highlight as it was the home of the Loring Bar’s rather dramatic sidewalk cafe. While this may seem like nostalgia, it's more of a celebration of a specific local history, lest a romantic mysticism that so often clouds the past.

Life is a curvy path at best, oh dear and gentle reader. It’s one upon which we figure ourselves out along the way. I think it’s safe to say that we truly get to be pure of intent first when we are very young, and then again when we aren’t. Clifford’s story doesn't diverge too much from that path. He grew up in south Minneapolis, the spiritual birthplace of flannel rock. After high school and a misspent youth hanging out in front of an Uptown McDonald’s trying to be menacing to tourists, he learned his trade at the school that stylist Horst Rechelbacher founded before launching Aveda Institute. Here our hero goes from good boy to bad boy and in-between boy during a time when Minneapolis becomes a sort of hair capital. Cut to 1989 and a journey to western Michigan, where his professional career grows until that curvy path brings him back to Minnesota in the early 2000s and to open HiFi in 2011. It’s not a reinvention of himself, but rather a rediscovery.

Clifford’s got a fascinating life story, but this is about the music. Like I said, we find our pure intentions when we are too young to care, and when we find we have time to think and not let life get in the way.

Being away from Minnesota was maybe a gift. This scene, that grunge-before-grunge sound, wasn't allowed to decay for him the way living in it in the day-to-day can do to things. Instead, it was a pristine memory not viewed through jade-colored glasses of its eventualities. He could remember the glory days and missed the fat, bloated major-label moments altogether. Such a memory preserved in amber could be cracked open and eventually rebloom.

Like a rock ’n’ roll apostle, Clifford has held on to small holy relics of the Minneapolis sound, displaying them in his small leopard-clad church: posters, photos, albums, jukeboxes, a suit worn by Slim Dunlap, the front door to the Loud Fast Rules house, a door that would shortly after open to become Soul Asylum. He has Replacements license plates, and was Paul Westerberg’s avatar here on the earthly plane, driving around in a promotional video for their song “Takin’ a Ride” from the 2021 reissue of Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash.

The clip also features his shop, his loveable dog, Fred, and lust-worthy classic car. He cared about the past while it was still the present, and held that torch while it transformed to its inevitable overrated “who cares” period. It’s a faith he clings to like St Francis of Assisi without the whole animal thing — regardless of the shining light of nostalgia that now keeps us warm and toasty, like a bug zapper on a summer’s eve.

He didn't just collect things but also gathered the right people to work in his shop. He brought in Steve McClellan, veteran of First Avenue, that temple of rock that lives with CBGB’s, the original Fillmore, and the Roundhouse. There was also Terry Katzman, the unassuming sonic architect for Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. He is a name you should think of when you hear the phrase “the Minneapolis sound.” (We have so many sounds, don't we?) Katzman’s was the noisiest and with an edge so sharp you could use it to shave. If we stand on the shoulders of giants, then there is a weight on these guys that would make Atlas shrug.

These may sound like obvious choices, but they weren’t.McClellan was working at a grocery store and Katzman was lost in an office filling out TPS reports. In the 2000s,, it was just a decade or so ago — close enough not to be right now, but not distant enough to be a classic. Plus, rock ’n’ roll doesn't always pay great, and the benefits package is free tickets and a heavy pour at the bar — not always as helpful as one might think. Don't even get me started on the retirement plan.

What stands out with Mr. Clifford is his eye to that community and the effort to build it bigger, and stronger, while not necessarily faster. It's one of the reasons he started his free concert series to give a safe way for people to come together in the Covid era, a shadow that lingers with him as it does us all. 

He tells me about one of the common conversations he has with Gen Z kids in his chair is, “Aren't you ticked? This is all on us. This is all on my generation and the generation before me, and you have to pay for it. You are growing up, you are losing the best part of your lives,” he continues. “All of [the pandemic] what scared me the most is: where is the movement, the kids, the music? It was like they were broken. And now afterward, or whatever it is now, I feel like they are beginning to get their strength back, their voice back, their anger back. The music they are making now is more reflective of that. They are creating their own thing again, which is really good, cause it hasn't happened in a long time.” 

While rooted in the Twin Cities of yesterday, his eye is on its future and the question of what is next. Also, his sincere hope is that the next generations aren’t just a cosplay of eras past. He gets visibility excited while talking about new genres like queercore and Minneapolis bands like SURLY GRRLY. It’s the spirit of punk that gave structure to a misfit lad such as himself being reborn over and over in new variants. The anger truly is an energy. I could say more, but Neil Young said it better ” Hey hey, My My. Rock and roll can never die, there is more to the picture than meets the eye, Hey hey, My My.”