Looking Back Really Isn’t Something I Ought To Do

I never fully realised the effect The Gits had until meeting someone who worked with Skint Records a couple years ago. As a teenager he had followed the band back in the day and it was with some disappointment and anger that he told me ‘We really thought you were going to do something. What happened?’

The only answer I had was we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. I didn’t mean from a song writing point of view, that was very clear and all credit goes to Rob who musically wrote nearly every song. But in terms of actually translating our status as the Third Best Band In Sussex 1989 to a wider audience, we were quite simply crap.

From releasing a single that couldn’t be listened to due to an error in the final mastering by an engineer at Abbey Road Studios, printing band T-shirts that read The GTIS! onstage to not working the connections we had with other successful bands to gain support slots, we carried on playing maybe thinking that the songs were enough to get us noticed.

This alas, was not enough but I want to take this opportunity to say the songs were bloody great. In an age when many bands around us were finding the dance element to their music The Gits remained true to the motto ‘Pure pop for pop people’ and in so doing pre-empted messers Albarn, Anderson et al by a good few years.

So there you have it.

The Gits (UK). Ahead of their time, out of time and as ”The bastard son of Morrisey” once sang – ‘Its just a matter of time’.

Jim Calderwood a.k.a. Jammie Git 2009

On reflection we were probably a bit better than I thought at the time.

Rob 2014

Saga

Must finish this one year.

A more sensible history can be found by perusing the Annals or in brief interview form at Cloudberry Cake Proselytism V.3 nee V.2

We are deeply indebted to pre-eminent Gitsologist Simon Smith DrPhil AHa.Db (Hons) for help in compiling this exhaustive chronicle.

Worm Upon A Happenstance…

Hopeless optimists from Horsham in the (not very) United Kingdom who set out to achieve little and were wholly successful. The existence of the ill fated American band of the same name was unbeknownst to them until some years after they broke up.

A Diet Of Worms

In which old alliances are renewed

Formed by ex-members of Nigel The Impaler, Christine, Stair Party, Voice Of The Rain and The Jackalsons in 1988 the fluid line-up contained the core four of Dave Evans (guitar & tapes), Ben E. Git (bass) and Jammie Git (vocals). They were augmented by Matt ‘Guitar’ Git (unknown), Chris T. (guitar), Jason ‘Little’ Git the token short person (vocals) and anchored by Glen Sisela II, as their drum machine was known (though its real name was Kevin Michaels).

Big Fat Wormy String

In which Petunia receives an unwelcome visitor

Some Worms Have All The Luck

In which our heroes fail to endanger their amateur status

Gone Are The Days Worm I Was Happy And Gay

In which a chance meeting has calamitous consequences

Worm Are They Now?

Jammie Git – Tragically moved to Brighton

Ben E Git – Pseudonymous author of best selling romantic fiction

Matt ‘Guitar’ Git – Visiting Professor of Comparative Linguistics UCSB

Jason Little Git – Sorcerers Apprentice

Chris T – Teaches Chemical Engineering through the medium of mime

Dave Evans – Having a fa fa fine, fine fine time

(Some of these are true)

Nice Randy Newman Reference

Lyrics

In which Gits lyricist James Calderwood sheds light on some of the band’s lyrics whilst attempting to avoid repetition, hesitation or deviation.

Complete lyrics can be found here and tab here.

Spend & Learn

As the jet roared down the valley
Bombing Reds camouflaged as sheep,
The pilot saw angels up in the clouds
“I think I’ll join them”, he said out loud,
Waving goodbye from his ejector seat.

Inspired by a news story that a US fighter pilot stationed in the UK was believed to have flown a training mission while on acid, never to be seen again.

Touch Down

My brother, he was so right
Personality is the key

Touchdown was an entire rip off/homage to Death of a Salesman. Ironically I would spend the next 20 years in the living death that is retail sales.

Tidal Wave

You will be on the screen tonight,
Reasoning without force
And calming the storms.

Getting political now. Tidal Wave was written during the era of Gorbachev and Perestroika. Growing up during the Cold War there was a real sense with him and his reforms that maybe we wont blow each other to atoms. And of course now in 2014 we all feel so much safer………

JK Rant

The words that I speak aren’t quite what I feel.
Even my mouth can’t get that contorted,
May the truth be distorted.

I am the walking definition of the Yiddish term ‘Kvetch’, 1/10th of outward emotion is battling with the 9/10ths of inner turmoil, except in my case the ratio was more 1/100 to 99/100

Mother Knows How

Now Jill has plan for revenge
To finally get even with Jack.
So she invited him up for a picnic
And then laced the well with arsenic
And told him to drink deep.

All nursery rhymes are based on Gothic horror. Fact.

A Note On Kana & Kanji Usage

You may have noticed that we three Gits of Britannia are using a rough translation of our name into Japanese to refer to ourselves these days. This is an attempt to distinguish our popular beat combo from the American band of the same name and era who became better known after we packed it in .

Other benefits of adopting the writing system of the world’s leading purveyors of contemporary indie-pop music is avoiding having to put UK after every instance of our appellation and a bonus ready-made logo and graphics style. The latter extending into other elements of this website and the CD release.

The idea was inspired by the use of non-native alphabets by möscow çlub of Japan. By inspired I do of course mean nicked.

A decent detailed explanation of written Japanese can be found on Wikipedia but briefly it can be broken down into the following.

The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of three scripts:

• Kanji, adopted Chinese characters
• Kana, a pair of syllabaries, consisting of:
• Hiragana, used, along with kanji, for native or naturalised Japanese words, and for grammatical elements
• Katakana, used for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes to replace kanji or hiragana for emphasis.

So for us foreigners Katakana is the way to go.

Gits can be translated for our purposes by ギ = gi and ツ = tsu, the u of the latter being largely silent. More correct would be ギッツ which emphasises the ‘t’ but I’m allowing a little artistic licence as it’s a name and logo rather than a description. In that form it has the happy coincidence of resembling a guitar headstock followed by a smile (see infotational image).

That the smile looks a little on the sly side is perhaps apt.

Lastly, how to write it.

From Wikibooks under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Licences by D.328 & M4RC0 respectively.