It has been some time since I have reviewed any Winnipeg music. Nearly a month. This was not because of any despondency or disillusionment on my part, but rather for the simple fact that I had been writing a book. Know, then, that I have not been idle.
No, it’s not another collection of Bad Gardening Advice reviews, although that is certainly not out of the cards, for I feel I have more than enough new material with which to fill it. No, it’s a novel. A story of fiction that takes place in a world far far away (and yet is so near to our own). It is also a dangerous novel, one I feel would be rejected by every publisher in Canada. So dangerous is it that even self-publishing services would reject it. So dangerous that even you, Bad Gardener, would curl your nose in distaste. It would cause an eruption of chaos. There would be protests and calls for my head.
Do you believe me? You should.
You would say “Now, Steve, this is going too far. Have you no sense of decency?” You would say “What right have you to write such things?” You would say “I will no longer read Bad Gardening Advice and request that you refrain from not only reviewing my band but from listening to it altogether.”
Do you believe me? You should.
But if I am to receive the musical equivalent of a last meal before my public execution, then I’d ask to be provided the time to listen to an album of my choosing one last time. And why wouldn’t that album be Smoky Tiger’s CatCryingEmoji? Perhaps then the hangpersons would have a change of heart and their predatory rage would quell to that of a kitty’s gentle purr. They would see that in order to feel joy one must also feel sorrow. They would see that in order to be serious one must also laugh their fucking ass off. They would see that the artificial is real. That one’s limitations are infinite. That deities are all-too-human, too. In short, they would run the gamut of the human experience, from its heroic highs to its lowlife lows. Perhaps then their calls to cleave my head from shoulders would hush.
Do you believe me? You should. You’d be impressed by what a good song can do.
😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
