Git

In which we support very nearly a quorum of Hollands, Christopher & Richard, at Champagnes nightclub in Horsham on 9th August.

The Squeeze sound crept into some of their songs but there was very little overlap with big brother’s music. It took a few songs to gain the approval of the Champagnes crowd who were reluctant to boogie at first.

And us,

Looking good on stage these days seems to mean outrageous clothes, hardly any clothes or sexually derived dancing, but The Gits took their inspiration from the classic black and white romance movies of the Forties when smoking was fashionable.

The following is a live recording of The Greatest Gift and Naff Song with Jason and Matt from that period, possibly even this gig. There is a certain amount of deviation from the author’s preferred text and I appear to have cut my solo out of the second number so I assume it was awful. It would have been captured on Chris’ Sony Professional Walkman portable cassette recorder.

I couldn’t find any of Twinset’s tunes but here’s most of the line up in a previous incarnation performing as B Sharp on early 80s kids TV. (With the all time great Whites Lemonade advert at 4.02).

Or at least until the video went missing off YouTube.

First Day Of The Tour

Back to The Richmond in Brighton in June of 1989.

These indie stalwarts from Bristol who transitioned to a dancier sound as the 80s drew to a close are well documented on their own website* and wikipedia. [* Or rather were as it seems to have gone].

There is a review of them at the Richmond on their site which may have been this gig but it’s written in the classic style of music journalism where the author is more concerned with a predetermined point they want to make than the events of the evening.. The County Times reviewer on the other hand had to get a lift home a couple of songs into the set so aren’t a lot of help either.

From a Gits perspective I remember that Matt had spent some time on a joke with the punch line ‘takes brilliant corners!’ but Jim gave it a miss and this was the first gig we played Mother Knows How of which we had high hopes but was met with resounding indifference. On the other hand Happily Mad which was horribly out of tune in places went down quite well. Nought as queer as folk.

Back to the County Times,

It seemed apparent by half way through that the band realised the audience were mostly extras from Dawn of the Dead and had decided they would just play for themselves

Which is wrong as although we may have generally been a shambles we always put in the effort to play for everyone, whether they wanted it or not. We did probably do too many new songs.

I would suggest looking at the video evidence but Chris who recorded it forgot to charge his batteries so was stuck at the side of the stage and didn’t think to pan round at any point to prove there was anyone else in the venue. There seems to be a certain amount of noise between songs though.

Also due to play that night were Basingstoke’s The Rain, later Clark Springs, but a car crash put paid to that.

According to Wikipedia The Melody Maker described their debut album of that year, The Citadal, as ‘glorious, honed to cut-glass perfection’ and comparisons were made to the Byrds and REM, but as for their live abilities I shall forever remain in the dark.

In Richmond News…

Forthcoming Events include:
20th June – McCarthy & Bobby Scarlet
25th June – Mega City 4 & Senseless Things

Over the course of preparing for the release of the Retrospeculative I was reminded of a number of events I’d completely forgotten, particularly gigs, which suggests there may well be other performances missing from the the Annals.

This is a list of them: