Bad Gardening Advice

Book excerpt: What do reviews of the Winnipeg music scene have in common with crappy advice on growing a garden? The worm. This book’s worm is Steve Schmolaris, a man of discerning taste with over forty-five years of servitude and dedication to Winnipeg music under his belt, who has devoted his life to extolling its virtues, who delicately unfolds each song—to eat, to hold, to plant like seeds—to reflect their singular beauty and uniqueness back to them. Here, you will find a compendium of Winnipeg’s proud, fourth-best local music review site of the same name, written in the same acerbic, confrontational voice readers will be used to. Taking up an eclectic range of artists and genres, Bad Gardening Advice’s reviews take many forms, from mock interviews to recipes to love letters, peppered by Schmolaris’s musings on death, lost love, and the musicians’ sex appeal. This original and inventive collection will make a great addition to the bookshelves of anyone close to the Winnipeg music scene—especially those in it. In Bad Gardening Advice, some of the artists reviewed are professionals. Some of them are amateurs. Most of them are weirdos. But if you know how to look, all of them are doing something interesting. All of them have something worth making music about. Welcome to the Bad Garden!