Get Help

I'm so excited about this feature finally running, because it reminds me of the old days at Splendid, when I ran features and could write about anything I wanted to. I didn't realize how lucky this made me, to be able to interview bands that no one else cared about (at the time, some of them became pretty big later, some didn't)...but the years since Splendid folded have been a long slog through the realities of music industry marketing and relevance and trendiness...Anyway, here's one more feature of a band that may never hit it big, but which is, nonetheless, very much worth noticing.

Labor of Love: Interview with Tony Skalicky and Mike Ingenthron of Get Help
By Jennifer Kelly 15 August 2011

Sometimes a band is a band from the beginning. Sometimes it starts as the tiniest spark of an idea, a good feeling, or even the warmth and understanding between two old friends.

Get Help is more the latter kind of band, a joint project between Tony Skalicky, who is better known for his work with the Beatings, and Mike Ingenthron, who has done time in Strikes Again. Now, with their second album The Good Green Earth out, the two have an actual band – drummer Gene D’Avolio and bassist John Vann Atta. Still, when they began a few years ago, they mostly just had each other, some shared ideas about R.E.M. and Guided by Voices, and an extended, musical email conversation.

More

"It's Only In Your Head"

Wow…Get Help

This doesn’t happen nearly often enough, this thing where you put a new record that you know nothing about on the player and it just…knocks your head off. But it does happen sometimes and it’s happened just recently with Get Help, a Boston band led by Tony Skalicky of the Beatings (a band I seem to remember hearing good things about, but never really followed up on). Anyway, there’s a new record called The Good Green Earth coming in May on Midriff Records, and it’s fantastic hard-edged power pop with some sort of a mid-1980s college radio vibe showing through (I close my eyes and think, sorta REM, sorta Feelies, sorta Jason Falkner but not really any of them). Here’s a track from their blog which didn’t quite make the record. It’s called “Lives We Lead.”


Now I’m going to see if I can get someone to let me write about this.