#the title is from an Everclear quote

[bringinbackpod]

Interview with The Get Right Band

We had the pleasure of interviewing The Get Right Band over Zoom video! 

The Get Right Band released their fifth album on May 23, 2020. Itchy Soul explodes with fresh ideas and original production--voices fade into synths, drums distort and echo through space, crunchy guitars twist and bend and rage, the bass is one moment heavy and driving, the next hypnotic and groovy. The Get Right Band filters 60's/70's psychedelia and 90's alternative rock through a modern lens--as if Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Nirvana co-wrote an album produced by Danger Mouse and Dan Auerbach. There’s a new level of maturity and confidence to GRB’s fifth release. This is all-in, maximalist rock n’ roll for grown up people (kids and adults alike) who know the world is falling apart, who know social media is rotting our brains, who know politicians are taking away our rights, and who know that art and beauty and music and love and action are the antidotes. Itchy Soul will make you remember the power of music. 

​​

​​In the first few weeks of its release, Itchy Soul has been featured on WTF with Marc Maron, Live For Live Music, and tastemaker radio stations like KEXP, WTMD, and WNCW. 

​​Eschewing the trappings and limitations of conventional recording approaches, The Get Right Band recorded and mixed the majority of the record outside of a studio. Programs had to be learned, gear bought and borrowed, techniques trial and errored. In giving themselves the time and freedom to experiment, to obsess over sounds, and to record exactly what, when, and how they wanted, they made something singular and compelling.

​​The album features a collaboration with comedian and podcaster Marc Maron on the gritty, existential track “However Broken It Is.” After many hours in the van listening to Maron’s WTF podcast, GRB started collecting particularly poetic quotes and eventually turned them into a co-written song with Maron. 

​​Even the album cover stands out as something unique and creative--it’s augmented reality art! Just download the app Artivive and point your phone at the cover to see the artwork come to life.

​​Compared to their previous work, the new album moves one step closer to pop with catchy hooks and modern production, and one step closer to psychedelia with experimental effects and layers of sound--all the while bringing the very best of their signature high-energy indie rock. The end result is sure to resonate with fans of modern rockers like Arctic Monkeys, Cage The Elephant, and My Morning Jacket. 

​​The lyrics of Itchy Soul take on real world problems, from the very personal--the title track explores themes of self-acceptance, isolation, and agitation--to the very global--”Future Blood” is a climate change call-to-action with driving, distorted guitars. “Fire With Rain” combines danceable grooves with well-crafted poetry about the highs and lows of life as a traveling musician: “here we are hawking magic to the disbelieving masses, with a pink neon sign lit by vaudeville’s ashes--we fight fire with rain.” 

​​The Get Right Band’s origin story goes back to 1998, when singer/songwriter/guitarist Silas Durocher poached bassist/singer Jesse Gentry from another middle school band. A lifelong friendship and musical partnership developed (along with a quirky shared sense of humor and their own made up language), and the two formed The Get Right Band in 2011. With the addition of Jian-Claude Mears, the group gained a jet engine, powerhouse drummer (and a new best friend), and stepped into the great tradition of genre-bending power trios.

​​The Get Right Band has shared the stage with Everclear, UB40, Rusted Root, Dr. Dog, Smash Mouth, Lifehouse, Dawes, Ozomatli, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and Victor Wooten. They have appeared on NPR’s World Cafe, Paste Studios, and Nashville’s Music City Roots television show, and have performed at major festivals and venues including The Fillmore, The Orange Peel, Brooklyn Bowl, Theatre of the Living Arts, The Hamilton, FloydFest, Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion, StrangeCreek, and Riverbend Fest. 

We want to hear from you! Please email Tera@BringinitBackwards.com.

www.BringinitBackwards.com

#podcast #interview #bringinbackpod  #foryou #foryoupage #stayhome #togetherathome #zoom #aspn #americansongwriter #americansongwriterpodcastnetwork

​​

source https://bringin-it-backwards.simplecast.com/episodes/interview-with-the-get-right-band-qHL1mmui

[pre-successful]

rules: answer 30 questions and tag blogs you would like to get to know better.

tagged by @societyneedstocrumble

1. nicknames: I don’t really have one. Recently I’ve started introducing myself as Liz instead of Elizabeth, just because Elizabeth feels too formal, but most people in my life still use the long version just because I’ve been going by that for most of my life. 2. gender: female 3. star sign: Pisces 4. height: about 5′ 6″, but like....juuuuust under that mark. 5. time: 3:18 PM 6. birthday: March 10 7. favorite bands: The National, Portugal. The Man, State Radio, Dispatch, the Airborne Toxic Event, Of Monsters And Men, Counting Crows, Everclear, Fall Out Boy, Silversun Pickups, the Mountain Goats, Modest Mouse, Florence + The Machine, Blue October, Death Cab For Cutie, the Decemberists, The Killers. Oh, and a special shout-out to Those Bands I Liked In My Youth And Still Unironically Love Despite Widespread Ridicule: Smash Mouth and Matchbox Twenty. Fight me. 8. favorite solo artists: Fiona Apple, Michael Kiwanuka, Hozier, Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor, AWOLNATION, Cat Stevens, Danny Schmidt, Lorde,Sara Bareilles, Sharon Van Etten, Passenger  9. song stuck in my head: Nothing right now, but I’m sure something will be by the time I’m done with this, so I’ll keep you posted. (UPDATE: My Doorbell by the White Stripes) 10. last movie i watched: Hmm...seems like it’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman. Pretty interesting. 11. last show i watched: The Good Place (EVERYONE PLEASE WATCH. IT’LL MAKE MY SPAM LESS ANNOYING TO YOU, MAYBE.) 12. when did i create my blog: Hell if I know. I guess I could check, but...years ago, let’s go with that. 13. what do i post: Lately just a bunch of TGP spam, but more generally The OA, HTGAWM, Mindhunter, and whatever else I’m watching at the moment. 14. last thing i googled: the White Stripes lyrics that were stuck in my head, because I didn’t actually know the song title. 15. do i have any other blogs: My main shitpost/personal blog is @a-logical-phallus. I also have an old RP blog and some other theme blogs I never use anymore :/ 16. do i get asks: Occasionally. I have a bad habit of not answering ones that will take even a modicum of work, though; sorry about that! 17. why i chose my url: I just recently changed it to this one, and it’s a TGP quote from my boy Jason Mendoza: “I wasn’t a failed DJ; I was pre-successful!” 18. following: 318 19. followers: 512 21. average hours of sleep: Usually 7-8 hours a night, but more if I’m feeling shitty and can’t stand consciousness :D 22. lucky number: 3. Sometimes 11, too. 23. instruments: I used to play clarinet in high school, though I was no good. I also played guitar for awhile, and would sort of like to get back into that, but I don’t have one here.  24. what am i wearing: PJ pants, an old T-shirt, and a ratty college sweatshirt. Plus fuzzy socks with large holes.  26. dream job:  Author and/or forensic psych researcher. Ooh, and/or TV writer.  27. dream trip: I’ve wanted to go to Australia for quite awhile now. Also maybe like the Netherlands? And South America, generally. Ooh, and Spain! idk. I’ve barely traveled, and I’d like to. 28. favorite food: Probably popcorn, tbh. Also pizza, pumpkin pie, chocolate chip cookies, and Russian piroshki.  29. nationality: American.  30. favorite song right now: Ahhh don’t make me pick oneeee. I have been listening to “Various Storms And Saints” by Florence + The Machine quite a bit lately, though. Also “Arsonist’s Lullaby” by Hozier.

Aaand I tag:

my OA folks: @the-invisible-self, @theoanetflix, @paladin-cleric-mage

my HTGAWM folks: @bex-thinks, @just-a-crazy-lass (plus Giulia if you’re still around??? I forgot your blog name??? oop)

and all my new followers/mutals bc I don’t know y’all at all but I wanna.

(also nobody feel obligated to do this obv.)

[thecalminside]

What does your username mean?

I can’t talk about the calm inside without talking about a song titled: the twistinside by the band Everclear. Art is one of my favorite song writers and that song is a masterpiece, it summarizes how a good portion of my life was: a twistinside. A frustration so deep it consumed me and a sadness that was buried so deep, I didn’t realize it was there. And a detachment feeling or depersonalization presence that kicked my ass everyday. There –simply put– was just this twistinside.

Through those feelings, through that twistinside, I was led to doctor after doctor and finally landed me in the office of a therapist that was very calming and understating. He taught me relaxation techniques and I naturally started to just breathe and meditate with that breath, then this feeling, this warm, still, calm feeling started to appear in my chest, right where my ribs meet. That feeling led me to write, or writing came from that feeling. I chose the name the calm inside to honor the twistinside that led me to eventually find it. This blog is that feeling, the quotes I post bring it out of me and the writing I do comes from that space: thecalminside. This blog is, at its best, a transmission of that feeling through what I write, the pictures and the quotes. At least that is my hope. My hope is that it all reaches you guys and helps move things and lighten things. And as always: I hope this helps.

✌🏼~greg

PS

The lyrics, if anyone is interested, to the song the twistinside are:

We have been sleeping with the lights onJust about every nightBecause we are afraid of what the dark might bringI know, I know it’s just a childish fearThat grows and grows wild in the middle of me

I’m gonna get a new tattooBlack and stretching around my armLike a life that is visible and realI know, I know it’s stupid and immatureI just want to give shape to the faceThat twists inside both you and me

Breathing fire, doesn’t look good on a resumeNeither does anything else we doWe got to get ready for the real worldYeah yeah we got to grow up

You know I like to die for awhileEveryday in the afternoonI like to let the arms of a barWrap around me tightI’m just going to sprawl in the front boothBig drink above my headCross eyed and smiling as I watch the worldGo twisting by

I don’t want to die with youOr live in the same dark roomI don’t want to see your bloodshot eyes no more, no moreI just want to take this girl, all curls and big brown eyesMan I can’t take the pain of wanting her, needing her

I know the secret of your soulAnd I just don’t want to know Yeah, man we got to grow up

[prince-darkleboop]

Muse Post

>”Hey I know you want to finish Absinthe and Adjuration, but in one of the next alcohol writing projects, Florian must learn ballet and ice skating. What? It’s extreme, up their ally. Toootaly not because you binge watched Yuri!!! on Ice and feel the need to fill an anime void” >What kind of video game character is Polaris? Come on he’s a main character, you can’t just say “barman”. Come on, it’d be fun to make quirky one liners for movement, attacks, injured, death and all that fun stuff. I mean, you’re already thinking about it, learning Jhin’s lines for Momo con and all. (I actually half answered this. I will post when I have quote lines.) >What would be the titles of the other alcohols? Yeah you got Whiskey and Wonderland as well as Everclear and Everlasting, but man, you’ve GOT to write stuff for Fae and Vampires. (Rum and Ruin is a working title for the Fae. Vodka and Vestigial is a working title for the vampires) >Also remember the criticism your friend gave you? Rewrite Absinthe and Adjuration. From. Scratch. It’s awful. (Okay so that was always on the agenda, because I knew it needed other kinds of polishing, but I can’t fix what isn’t finished. That and it’s not that it’s awful, it’s that problems I have been working on, while showing up infrequently, are still present) >You know how that same friend suggested that with each new alcohol work you should have another character be the perspective? How would that look...? (Ha. Ha. Ha. Not happening, because it’s impractical) >also you were sure Absinthe and Adjuration would be a 30 page work. We will take mercy and delete a scene to make it a 25 page work (now this I am 100% okay with)

[wendyimmiller]

The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest

June 26, 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

Well, as your letter writing skills are obviously taking second place to your Facebook overshares, I thought I would pick up the baton (as most women must do in this life), and nudge you with its slightly nubby end.

The bananas are beginning to cook.

I enjoyed your latest Rant about things in the gardening world that you love and loathe, but erased my pithy comment about 600 characters in, feeling it was better to start a new, more focused, discussion on the things that also make me crazy as a gardener and garden writer in a new(ish) digital age.

As almost all of them involve a laptop which is not particularly photogenic, I’ll entertain you with pictures of the garden right now instead.

Bird-sown Petasites hybridus (with violet leaf for scale).

There are many things to love about the digital age of course – my word processor for one, my digital SLR for another.  Hell, my iPhone camera at this point. But I know, in a little tiny corner of my mind which I often close for comment, that each is working with the passage of time to make me lazier and less clever.  Depth of field nuance? Grammatical flourish? Tricky spellings which tax the brain? All casualties to algorithms and sweet sweet convenience if I allow it.  And I so often do.

And these are skills we should be loathe to lose. A writer friend wrote the following on syntax, which I have pinned up in my office on a 3×5 card to remind me of the fun of it all – the reason if you will to turn off Microsoft Editor, and Yoast, and the specter of your fourth grade teacher insisting that you will be pitched into the fires of hell if you start a sentence with a conjunction:

It’s no sin to tax the grammar. If you’ve the skill, then you canna.

The Scots would point out, quite rightfully, that the last word negates the gist of the thing, but I like to feel it is penned in the style of Ogden Nash.  Perhaps you might prefer CAKE’s more modern approach with the lyrics of John McCrea in Stabbing Shadows:

Adjectives on a typewriter, he moves his words like a prizefighter. The frenzied pace of the mind inside the cell.

That last line’s gotta resonate with the man who just penned 722 words (I counted) on high octane gasoline.

So if we allow these things to ‘help us,’ will they eventually hurt us instead? Which brings me to the issue of the modern ropes, however silken, that tie us in knots and limit the creative [horticultural] mind. I wonder if you’ll agree.

Echinacea ‘Tres Amigos’ with belamcanda fans – now Iris domestica.

Autocorrect

Do you know how long it takes to thumb-type Aechmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands? Do you know how much I’m forced to drink when I then read ‘Arch fascists’ on a text I’ve just sent to a botanist friend who is probably wondering how much news I’ve been taking in lately – and from which websites?

Wait a minute, of course you do, you’ve got at least a decade on me. At least I can see my screen at this point.

All said, it does tend to limit the amount of times one wants to thumb-type Achmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands. Easier to type ‘urn plant’ and pray there’s only one.

Well, not an achmea, but an ananas. Pineapples in Virginia. So. Much. Fun.

Google dictation

Which, like its evil brother, Autocorrect, does not understand botanical nomenclature and turns a simple task into ten wasted minutes of your life you will never get back. Here’s a great example from today: Tripsicum dactyloides to the folks at Apple is “trips to come back to the ladies.”

And, if I type it in, and forget to hit that top left “Yes, that’s damn well what I typed” word suggestion, I get something equally incomprehensible courtesy of Autocorrect. Unless of course, I’ve typed it before. Or not. Depends. Meanwhile, the tripsicum has spread four inches.

I imagine Dr. Fauci and his lot are struggling with the same issues: “No! I said remdesivir – the polymerase inhibitor, you idiot machine, not ‘REM death severe.’  Holy hell – like the President needs to think sleep will kill people at this point.  Somebody get me a new phone.”

Writing for SEO

I do believe I dislike this most of all. Not simply because of the articles that have been butchered by editors with their hungry marketing eyes fixated (quite understandably) on key words and their synonyms awkwardly repeated 16 times in 900 words. Nor because of one-sentence paragraphs that can no longer hold their heads up proudly and call themselves paragraphs. But because of the nuance that is lost when all this happens – particularly when it comes to clever, teasing titles.

Would you rather read “The Necessity of Underwear” to gently introduce you to the painful subject of staking, or scroll through yet another “The One Crazy Trick Great Gardens Have in Common – Sure to Shock You!”

Mixed shrubs made ever so much better by a touch of Cosmopolitan. (Miscanthus sinensis)

Had this SEO nonsense been the norm eighty years ago, it would have completely obliterated most great garden literature, including the scratchings of His Royal Highness, Monty Don. Loathe as I am to mention great British garden writers in light of your sensitivity on the subject, I feel an example is necessary.

One of Christopher Lloyd’s Country Life articles “Shun the Invisible Worm” (found in In My Garden) is a piece about succession bloom in late summer borders; and somewhere, deep in the meat of it, he comes to the threat of introducing the phlox eelworm into one’s garden.  Then, just as quickly, back to love of plants, and of hybrid rhododendrons. The worm was just a blip; but in finding it and moving through the article, the reader-gardener is transported deep within Lloyd’s kingdom.

I simply wouldn’t have fallen in love with that garden (or that wit) without that journey.  One feels the garden. One begins to know the garden.  His articles are a mix of straight-to-point and linger-a-little.  Both are necessary.

The great American garden writer Henry Mitchell wrote similarly, as did many others in the days before newspapers threw out their garden columnists onto hard pavement — forcing them to sell their souls in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces.

New 2020 title for Lloyd’s piece: The Terrifying Pest That Will Destroy Your Garden!

Notes from 2020 editor: Remove rhodos and summer border options.  Not relevant. Need some keyphrase headers.  Can you make the worm more terrifying?

Notes from Lloyd: [annoyed muttering]

Primo Black Pearl heuchera (a long-lived stunner!) with Sun Power hosta.

Those frowny faces say impertinent things like “Keyphrase has been found less than four times.”  “42% of your sentences contain more than 20 words.” “82% of your readers have started scanning their Instagram feed.”

I wonder if those who don’t blog or write content for websites (all fifteen of them) understand how much has been lost in a one-inch-deep marketplace.  20 words folks.  That’s what Yoast and Google think of our ability to read at this point.

For the benefit of future employers/editors reading this letter, I feel compelled to add that I am fully versed in SEO and will absolutely sell my soul in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces. The pavement is so very hard. Scott, I’m sure you’ll join me in my abject groveling.

Writers gotta hustle in a COVID world.

Exclamation points

Or rather, the new need for us to use exclamation points in texts, emails, or prose — or risk pissing someone off with our disembodied, obviously snotty, tone!

You probably wouldn’t understand because you’re so “good-natured” and “sometimes humorous,” but some of us don’t have to work that hard to make others believe we’re using a snotty tone, so we’re forced to use more exclamation points!

To friends! To colleagues! To people we’ve never met before! I die a little bit each time I do it! To those who flatly refuse – I deeply respect your stance! But maybe you’re grumpy!  I can’t tell! And see paragraph above!

I always think I love the red ones the best, then I see the pure lavender ones.

Can we all just agree to stop using them?!? Can we all just agree that an slightly uplifted tone is implied in all correspondence, no matter how short?!? Please!

Insane misinformation, perfectly SEO’d

Insane. And because I have no idea if it is libelous to quote these people, I won’t.   Instead I’ll make up something that I may, or may not have recently read, by someone who may, or may not have 45 thousand followers, of whom 44 thousand may, or may not, be Russian bots.

“Plant green healthy taro! The healthy leaves are awesome in the garden!  And good for you!  You can eat the green healthy leaves in tons of ways!  People say the leaves are medicinal – I’m sure they totally are! They just LOOK healthy! And green! Why not try it? Plant medicine is good medicine right? Right!”

Not for salad fixins’

There’s those exclamation points again.

Yeah buddy. You’re right.  Taro leaves do happen to be edible.  Boiled. Boiled hard. Just don’t make one of those “tons of ways” chomping on the raw leaves with a steaming cup of ashwagandha before you start your sun salutations, or your throat will swell shut.  And then you’ll need something other than plant medicine to realign your chakras.

While I give everyone and anyone a free pass to make mistakes in life and in print as we all do, I cannot get over some of the utter horseshit I see out there.  I suppose I should be thankful that it’s mostly Russian bots scanning it.

What was my SEO header keyphrase again?

Speaking of plant medicine, it appears to be time to close up this fabulously clever word processor with all of its little demons and frowny faces, and mix myself a G&T – though I know we disagree on the sticky issue of what to pair with one’s tonic. Your penchant for Vodka is unsettling, but I will assume a Vodka tonic pairs well with a Vodka jello square after a long day keeping the elephants off the phlox. Personally I don’t see why you don’t use Everclear and save a bit of cash.

Can we at least agree on Pimms? Don’t tell me your mixer is soda water.

Yours in the sublime brilliance of tonic at least,

Marianne

P.S. Just rebuilt the carburetor on my edger with the help of a friend. I too loathe this gasoline dance we do, but at Stihl’s exorbitant European-esque fuel prices, I’ll continue to use my additives.

P.P.S. The irony of having to mess with the SEO of this letter to achieve Green-Face Nirvana has sent me to my second G&T.

  The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on June 27, 2020.

The post The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest appeared first on GardenRant.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2020/06/the-seo-garden-a-letter-to-the-midwest.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[turfandlawncare]

The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest

June 26, 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

Well, as your letter writing skills are obviously taking second place to your Facebook overshares, I thought I would pick up the baton (as most women must do in this life), and nudge you with its slightly nubby end.

The bananas are beginning to cook.

I enjoyed your latest Rant about things in the gardening world that you love and loathe, but erased my pithy comment about 600 characters in, feeling it was better to start a new, more focused, discussion on the things that also make me crazy as a gardener and garden writer in a new(ish) digital age.

As almost all of them involve a laptop which is not particularly photogenic, I’ll entertain you with pictures of the garden right now instead.

Bird-sown Petasites hybridus (with violet leaf for scale).

There are many things to love about the digital age of course – my word processor for one, my digital SLR for another.  Hell, my iPhone camera at this point. But I know, in a little tiny corner of my mind which I often close for comment, that each is working with the passage of time to make me lazier and less clever.  Depth of field nuance? Grammatical flourish? Tricky spellings which tax the brain? All casualties to algorithms and sweet sweet convenience if I allow it.  And I so often do.

And these are skills we should be loathe to lose. A writer friend wrote the following on syntax, which I have pinned up in my office on a 3×5 card to remind me of the fun of it all – the reason if you will to turn off Microsoft Editor, and Yoast, and the specter of your fourth grade teacher insisting that you will be pitched into the fires of hell if you start a sentence with a conjunction:

It’s no sin to tax the grammar. If you’ve the skill, then you canna.

The Scots would point out, quite rightfully, that the last word negates the gist of the thing, but I like to feel it is penned in the style of Ogden Nash.  Perhaps you might prefer CAKE’s more modern approach with the lyrics of John McCrea in Stabbing Shadows:

Adjectives on a typewriter, he moves his words like a prizefighter. The frenzied pace of the mind inside the cell.

That last line’s gotta resonate with the man who just penned 722 words (I counted) on high octane gasoline.

So if we allow these things to ‘help us,’ will they eventually hurt us instead? Which brings me to the issue of the modern ropes, however silken, that tie us in knots and limit the creative [horticultural] mind. I wonder if you’ll agree.

Echinacea ‘Tres Amigos’ with belamcanda fans – now Iris domestica.

Autocorrect

Do you know how long it takes to thumb-type Aechmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands? Do you know how much I’m forced to drink when I then read ‘Arch fascists’ on a text I’ve just sent to a botanist friend who is probably wondering how much news I’ve been taking in lately – and from which websites?

Wait a minute, of course you do, you’ve got at least a decade on me. At least I can see my screen at this point.

All said, it does tend to limit the amount of times one wants to thumb-type Achmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands. Easier to type ‘urn plant’ and pray there’s only one.

Well, not an achmea, but an ananas. Pineapples in Virginia. So. Much. Fun.

Google dictation

Which, like its evil brother, Autocorrect, does not understand botanical nomenclature and turns a simple task into ten wasted minutes of your life you will never get back. Here’s a great example from today: Tripsicum dactyloides to the folks at Apple is “trips to come back to the ladies.”

And, if I type it in, and forget to hit that top left “Yes, that’s damn well what I typed” word suggestion, I get something equally incomprehensible courtesy of Autocorrect. Unless of course, I’ve typed it before. Or not. Depends. Meanwhile, the tripsicum has spread four inches.

I imagine Dr. Fauci and his lot are struggling with the same issues: “No! I said remdesivir – the polymerase inhibitor, you idiot machine, not ‘REM death severe.’  Holy hell – like the President needs to think sleep will kill people at this point.  Somebody get me a new phone.”

Writing for SEO

I do believe I dislike this most of all. Not simply because of the articles that have been butchered by editors with their hungry marketing eyes fixated (quite understandably) on key words and their synonyms awkwardly repeated 16 times in 900 words. Nor because of one-sentence paragraphs that can no longer hold their heads up proudly and call themselves paragraphs. But because of the nuance that is lost when all this happens – particularly when it comes to clever, teasing titles.

Would you rather read “The Necessity of Underwear” to gently introduce you to the painful subject of staking, or scroll through yet another “The One Crazy Trick Great Gardens Have in Common – Sure to Shock You!”

Mixed shrubs made ever so much better by a touch of Cosmopolitan. (Miscanthus sinensis)

Had this SEO nonsense been the norm eighty years ago, it would have completely obliterated most great garden literature, including the scratchings of His Royal Highness, Monty Don. Loathe as I am to mention great British garden writers in light of your sensitivity on the subject, I feel an example is necessary.

One of Christopher Lloyd’s Country Life articles “Shun the Invisible Worm” (found in In My Garden) is a piece about succession bloom in late summer borders; and somewhere, deep in the meat of it, he comes to the threat of introducing the phlox eelworm into one’s garden.  Then, just as quickly, back to love of plants, and of hybrid rhododendrons. The worm was just a blip; but in finding it and moving through the article, the reader-gardener is transported deep within Lloyd’s kingdom.

I simply wouldn’t have fallen in love with that garden (or that wit) without that journey.  One feels the garden. One begins to know the garden.  His articles are a mix of straight-to-point and linger-a-little.  Both are necessary.

The great American garden writer Henry Mitchell wrote similarly, as did many others in the days before newspapers threw out their garden columnists onto hard pavement — forcing them to sell their souls in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces.

New 2020 title for Lloyd’s piece: The Terrifying Pest That Will Destroy Your Garden!

Notes from 2020 editor: Remove rhodos and summer border options.  Not relevant. Need some keyphrase headers.  Can you make the worm more terrifying?

Notes from Lloyd: [annoyed muttering]

Primo Black Pearl heuchera (a long-lived stunner!) with Sun Power hosta.

Those frowny faces say impertinent things like “Keyphrase has been found less than four times.”  “42% of your sentences contain more than 20 words.” “82% of your readers have started scanning their Instagram feed.”

I wonder if those who don’t blog or write content for websites (all fifteen of them) understand how much has been lost in a one-inch-deep marketplace.  20 words folks.  That’s what Yoast and Google think of our ability to read at this point.

For the benefit of future employers/editors reading this letter, I feel compelled to add that I am fully versed in SEO and will absolutely sell my soul in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces. The pavement is so very hard. Scott, I’m sure you’ll join me in my abject groveling.

Writers gotta hustle in a COVID world.

Exclamation points

Or rather, the new need for us to use exclamation points in texts, emails, or prose — or risk pissing someone off with our disembodied, obviously snotty, tone!

You probably wouldn’t understand because you’re so “good-natured” and “sometimes humorous,” but some of us don’t have to work that hard to make others believe we’re using a snotty tone, so we’re forced to use more exclamation points!

To friends! To colleagues! To people we’ve never met before! I die a little bit each time I do it! To those who flatly refuse – I deeply respect your stance! But maybe you’re grumpy!  I can’t tell! And see paragraph above!

I always think I love the red ones the best, then I see the pure lavender ones.

Can we all just agree to stop using them?!? Can we all just agree that an slightly uplifted tone is implied in all correspondence, no matter how short?!? Please!

Insane misinformation, perfectly SEO’d

Insane. And because I have no idea if it is libelous to quote these people, I won’t.   Instead I’ll make up something that I may, or may not have recently read, by someone who may, or may not have 45 thousand followers, of whom 44 thousand may, or may not, be Russian bots.

“Plant green healthy taro! The healthy leaves are awesome in the garden!  And good for you!  You can eat the green healthy leaves in tons of ways!  People say the leaves are medicinal – I’m sure they totally are! They just LOOK healthy! And green! Why not try it? Plant medicine is good medicine right? Right!”

Not for salad fixins’

There’s those exclamation points again.

Yeah buddy. You’re right.  Taro leaves do happen to be edible.  Boiled. Boiled hard. Just don’t make one of those “tons of ways” chomping on the raw leaves with a steaming cup of ashwagandha before you start your sun salutations, or your throat will swell shut.  And then you’ll need something other than plant medicine to realign your chakras.

While I give everyone and anyone a free pass to make mistakes in life and in print as we all do, I cannot get over some of the utter horseshit I see out there.  I suppose I should be thankful that it’s mostly Russian bots scanning it.

What was my SEO header keyphrase again?

Speaking of plant medicine, it appears to be time to close up this fabulously clever word processor with all of its little demons and frowny faces, and mix myself a G&T – though I know we disagree on the sticky issue of what to pair with one’s tonic. Your penchant for Vodka is unsettling, but I will assume a Vodka tonic pairs well with a Vodka jello square after a long day keeping the elephants off the phlox. Personally I don’t see why you don’t use Everclear and save a bit of cash.

Can we at least agree on Pimms? Don’t tell me your mixer is soda water.

Yours in the sublime brilliance of tonic at least,

Marianne

P.S. Just rebuilt the carburetor on my edger with the help of a friend. I too loathe this gasoline dance we do, but at Stihl’s exorbitant European-esque fuel prices, I’ll continue to use my additives.

P.P.S. The irony of having to mess with the SEO of this letter to achieve Green-Face Nirvana has sent me to my second G&T.

  The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on June 27, 2020.

The post The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest appeared first on GardenRant.

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