*Song Description By Noles*
When keyboardist Jen Doyon joined the Plaid On Flannel band on February 22, 2015, we finally became a 4-piece group. The first song she auditioned with was "Potential" from the Fairbairn Meadows album. I was immediately intrigued with what her keyboard brought to the table. I noticed her organ sounded rather playful and exuberant. She was clearly influenced by Ray Manzarek of The Doors. And it was refreshing to finally have a band member that could sing harmony backup vocals. After she joined the band, I came up with the term "Carnival Rock". The keyboard sound made it feel like carnival or circus music. Which has a joyful feeling to it. To go along with guitar riffs and solos on blues-based songs, I wanted to write music that could sound like it's from a carnival. All the while tailoring to Jen's sound as a keyboardist.
After a few gigs with the new version of the Plaid On Flannel band, I wrote the music for "Get On!" on April 28, 2015. When coming up with the guitar riff, I was imagining a ferris wheel moving around in circles at a carnival. A guitar riff that goes up and down and side to side. The carnival concept became the subject of the album artwork for the Get On! EP in 2017. And the Primitive Normative album artwork foreshadows that with a carnival tent in the background of the monkey image. I knew "Get On!" would fully explore the carnival rock concept as soon as I came up with the opening guitar riff. That riff is followed by another one that has more power as it goes intro the 1st verse of the song.
By the summer of 2015, I was writing and recording the final songs for the Primitive Normative album. With 4 songs left, I started recording the Primitive Normative version of "Get On!" on August 1, 2015 before I even had lyrics for the song. Sometimes I'll arrange and record the music for a song before I write the words for it. The lyrics for "Get On!" were written on August 18, 2015. While zoning in on the carnival concept, "Get On!" has lyrics that talk about carnivals being a metaphor for life itself. Which was inspired by the song "Life Is A Carnival" by The Band. Life can feel like a roller coaster at times. Having ups and downs to go with the ebbs and flows. Some carnival rides can make you throw up. But the ones you enjoy make up for the bad ones. Much like life itself.
I finished recording the Primitive Normative version of "Get On!" on September 19, 2015. Not long after I uploaded "Get On!" online, Plaid On Flannel drummer Minas Hatzigiannatzoglou suggested that we play the song. When we started rehearsing "Get On!" as a band, we knew it would be a concert staple going forward. The Primitive Normative album was released on December 31, 2015, and we played "Get On!" at almost every show after that. While it was too late to record it on our Rising Above EP that came out in 2016, we saved it as our title track for the Get On! EP. We started recording that record on February 4, 2017, and that's when we shot the music video for "Get On!" in the studio. You can watch that video here...
youtu.be/M8FkzhvaHQ4 I like both versions of "Get On!", and it's a song that I know will remain as a go-to tune for POF live shows in the future.