Get Set Go

Music:

Member Since: 1/1/2005
Band Website: getsetgomusic.com
Band Members: Mike TV,
guitar, vocals

Eric Summer,
viola, vocals

Dave Palamaro,
drums

Colin Schlitt,
bass, vocals

Jim Daley,
guitar, vocals

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Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. (“Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot)

Hell is other people (No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre)

A Review of Get Set Go’s Sunshine, Joy and Happiness

Get Set Go’s latest release, Sunshine, Joy and Happiness is for people for whom these things remain elusive. Think of this CD as an existentialist manifesto for people who chose to be losers in a world that continues to bewilder them.

I have been told that I am a “Lyric Whore,” and I suspect that Mike TV, lead singer and lyricist for the band, is as well. Get Set Go continues with this CD to combine “pop” sound (albeit with the unusual and haunting addition of a cello) with lyrics that usually remain just at the edge of a suicide note.

Sunshine, Joy and Happiness articulates the confusion and despair of people who love and think intensely, but who always remain observers – both tangled up in love, desire, fear and hate – whilst simultaneously, acutely aware that they play “a part in murdering the couple that we used to be” (Crazy Over You). If this band has a problem, it is the inescapable problem of the intellectual, of “someone whose mind watches itself” (Camus). One feels, but one cannot stop thinking. The person is always aware of himself/herself as a player on the world’s stage – and feels compelled to sing about it.

No song articulates this dilemma better than Hell On Earth which opens with the sounds of a busy schoolyard – something that will send the true Get Set Go fan into a tizzy of nostalgic despair (as Faulkner says, “the past ....is not even the past”). Clearly echoing Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side, Hell On Earth celebrates more ordinary outcasts like “Suzy [who] thought she was ugly/And Harold [who] knew that he smelled strange.” Here, the band reminds us that all there is, is here, and here:

You will be made to suffer
And that they will treat you rougher
And you will learn
That you were made to burn
And you like it rougher
Because it makes you tougher.

Any listener who grew up intelligent and alone will recognize him/herself in this song. But lest we feel too proud of our outcast status, the band reminds us in another song reminiscent of schoolyard nursery rhymes, that “Everyone’s a liar” (You’ll Look Beautiful As You Burn). To tell one’s story, according to Get Set Go, is to lie. Few people want to understand this.

I tend to listen to Get Set Go while drinking alone in my kitchen, and I know the band would understand perfectly. After all,

I would like a drink
To keep me from thinking
Of all the things that I once had
But oh its that drink
I think that is what made
All of these things turn from good to bad.
(The Trouble With Being Poor)

Addiction, failure, deranged love affairs, suicide – this is Get Set Go’s milieu. To understand them, one must understand what it is to love those whom one should not love, to desire what one knows one should not desire, to long for all that one despises, to try to escape what one cannot forget.

Or, in other words, one must possess the kind of intelligence that F. Scott Fitzgerald defined as “the ability to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function” (The Crack-Up). Today’s world does not encourage this kind of intelligence; I am not sure that any society ever has. And this is why, perhaps, that Get Set Go remains on the margins of success. It is a mark of their genius, and of their pilgrim souls, that they continue to remain there.

Blythe Tellefsen
Influences: Arlo, New Maximum Donkey, Yes Dear, Guided By Voices, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Belle and Sebastian, Weezer, Archers of Loaf, The Mr. T Experience, The Ramones, and ...crap! There's too many to list. I've been writing music for a long time, and I sorta stopped aping bands years ago. I sorta am influenced by myself, nowadays. But you'll find hints of all the above bands in music that I've written in the past, and even some in the music I'm writing today. Oh yeah, and all the bands in the Launchpad and Kiss or Kill scenes, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Karp, um...crap, way too many. I mean, how many people influence the way you live your life? It's pretty much the same thing with me and music.

Also, here's some art beautifully hand-crafted by a friend and fan, Melissa Baley! Thank you so much, Melissa!

If you guys have any other Get Set Go related art, images, designs, banners, or what have you, always feel free to send them our way and we'll figure out someway to use them. Thank you all!

CONTRIBUTE. IF YOU DARE.
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Get Set Go is a very poor band. But we do love to tour. And try to get out as often as we can. A long time ago, a fan proposed that we include a donation button on our MySpace age, to allow for donations to our tour fund. If you're interested in helping us out, and have a credit card, or a bank account, or a PayPal account, please click the button below. If not, no worries. We'll try to get out your way, by hook or by crook. To those of you who do donate, thank you so much. I can't even begin to convey how much this means to us. You're the reason we make records instead of playing these songs in the safety and comfort of our own bedrooms.

In return for your donation we've decided to offer some gifts, by way of thanks.

For a $10.00 donation we will provide you with a hand-drawn, signed poster by one of the band-members. Probably me, Mike TV. It'll be on a white sheet of 11x17 paper and will probably be embarrassingly horrible. But it will be personally hand drawn. The picture will probably be something ridiculous, horribly composed, and most certainly offensive, and will guarantee to piss off your parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, bosses, co-workers, priests, rabbis, or gurus.

For a $30.00 donation we will provide the aforementioned hand-drawn poster and a burned cd of acoustic demos spanning the entire history of Get Set Go. There will be 5 different versions of this cd, with some similar and some different songs on each cd. I'm just gonna put together 5 different playlists on my ITunes and burn them that way. So, you guys can coordinate with each other and swap tunes all you want. I suggest using Limewire or Kazaa or some other illegal file-sharing software. I can't keep up with all the new hip apps out there. I'm practically a dinosaur by Internet standards.

For a $75.00 donation we will provide the aforementioned hand-drawn poster and two burned cds of acoustic demos, and a private online concert with me and my guitar and perhaps one or two of the other bandmates huddled around the very same little microphone I record all my acoustic demos with. I'll hold these concerts once a month. But if we get a whole bunch of people making these sorts of donations, which is unlikely, then I'll always be willing to do more concerts. You'll be able to make requests during these concerts. It's gonna be super-low-tech, but we've already tried it out and it works.

Also, if 20 people from any city make donations of 5 dollars or more, then we'll include that city on our tour-route. It may take a while for us to figure out the route but we'll certainly get out your way.

And now....drum roll please...

The not very ostentatious, downright homely Get Set Go tour donation button...

The track listings for the acoustic demo cds are as follows:

Mistakes, Missteps, and Other Fuck-Ups, disc 1
1. Bad Day (I'm Having A)
2. Bad Woman
3. Dirty Blue Eyes
4. A Little More (acoustic demo)
5. I Want To Be Your Dog (Elise Gunderson)
6. Into You
7. MCA
8. Day By Day
9. Our Blossom Has Not Withered
10. Medication
11. Click on Me
12. I Will Conquer The Earth
13. I Want You (acoustic demo)
14. Break Your Heart (acoustic demo)
15. Twenty-one (acoustic demo)
16. The Rat Race
17. The Law of Diminishing Returns (acoustic demo)
18. Mavonne

Mistakes, Missteps, and Other Fuck-Ups, Disc 2
1. Over And Gone
2. Racecar
3. Bad Woman
4. Wine
5. Sick of Everything
6. Confessions of a Stroked-Out Wastoid
7. Medication
8. Click On Me
9. Sorry For Wasting Your Time
10. I'm So Fucking Happy
11. I Get It Up When I Go Down
12. Love that Never Was
13. Brush Your Teeth
14. We Go Together
15. My Wasted Life (acoustic demo)
16. Sleep (acoustic demo)
17. Stay Away (acoustic demo)
18. Please Don't Let Me Die

Mistakes, Missteps, and Other Fuck-Ups, disc 3
1. Wasting My Time
2. I Get It Up When I Go Down
3. Bad Woman
4. Brush Your Teeth
5. We Go Together
6. I'll Be Your Heroin (acoustic demo)
7. Medication
8. Click On Me
9. Please Don't Let Me Die
10. What I Will Do
11. Pugilism In The Face o Love
12. I Need To Eat
13. I Killed My Baby
14. Nothing Turns Me On (acoustic demo)
15. How It Goes
16. Wait (acoustic demo)
17. War (acoustic demo)
18. Twenty-One (acoustic demo)
19. I'm So Sorry (acoustic demo)

Sounds Like: Buy your Get Set Go records directly from our record label here....

Selling Out & Going Home

For orders shipped in the United States, it's 13 dollars, shipping included. Click here...

International Shipping (16 bucks)

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Ordinary World

United States ($13.00, shipping included)

International ($16.00, shipping included)

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So You've Ruined Your Life

United States ($13.00, shipping included)

International ($16.00, shipping included)

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BUY ALL THREE RECORDS!
UNITED STATES ($30.00, SHIPPING INCLUDED)

INTERNATIONAL ($39.00, SHIPPING INCLUDED)

Record Label: TSR Records
Type of Label: Indie