A handful of bands marked
the Argentine rock of the '80s
with such force that they reached all of Latin America with an unimaginable popularity in pre-globalization and pre-digital platforms times.
Of course,
Soda Stereo
took the biggest laurels, at times eclipsing their colleagues, but time confirmed that they were not the only ones:
Miguel Mateos
achieved an enormous impact and so did
Enanitos Verdes
.
However, another number one of the time is usually relegated:
GIT
, which even started first and had its debut album in 1984 and great shows in Chile and Peru.
Perhaps it was influenced by the oblivion that they had less continuity, some separations and eventual reunions, but
their songs continue to sound throughout the continent as a symbol of an era
.
For example
It's for love, The street is its place (Ana), You were always my love, Don't hurt my heart, Curfew, Birthday moron, Crazy wind
and
Don't behave badly
.
In all this time, guitarist
Pablo Guyot
and bassist and singer
Alfredo Toth
never stopped working together, both as artistic producers (Los Piojos, Bersuit Vergarabat, Ratones Paranoicos, Intoxicados, Turf, Guasones, Massacre) and as two thirds of GIT .
Pablo Guyot and Alfredo Toth.
Photo Juano Tesone
This is how they will get back on stage, renamed GYT, this
Saturday, March 2 at 8:30 p.m. in La Trastienda
, with a review of the most emblematic songs of their career and the desire to continue throughout the year.
The drummer Willy Iturri is no longer there nor are they a trio like in their beginnings, but rather a larger formation, like in the
Distorción
stage (1992) of their career.
They will be accompanied by Marcelo Mapelman on drums, guitarist Guillermo Cudmani and keyboardist Pablo Echeverry.
A new stage
Sitting in Guille Cudmani's recording studio, Alfredo says that, "La Trastienda is the start of a new stage. What we want is to have a good time and do what we like, period. Why? Because we deserve it! "
Pablo nods and adds: "We are enjoying this moment of playing again. The truth is that at one point we were producing a lot, and when we played a little we said how fun it is to play. Now we continue producing things but not as intense as the time when We made four albums a year. We have to find balance and surf the seasons."
The art of GYT is in this new stage of Pablo Guyot and Alfredo Toth.
-How did this show happen?
Pablo
: -Actually we wanted to continue playing after we stopped playing in 2018. We put together the band with Guille, who already knows how we work.
We were rehearsing a lot and the pandemic appeared, so we had to stop.
After that we toured Chile.
-Last year they were going to do a show at Usina del Arte and Alfredo had the bad idea of suffering a heart attack.
Alfredo:
-Yes, it was last year, in August.
We had quite an accident, but I had surgery and everything was fine.
Pablo: -On
the other hand, one day we told Álvaro Villagra that we were missing a drummer and he told us about Marcelo, who is a guy who plays super well and is also divine.
We are all having a great time together.
There are actually five of us now, because Pablo Echeverry also joined as keyboardist, and I've known him since I recorded with La Zimbawe in the '90s or so.
The chemistry we have now between the five of us works great, like it hasn't happened in a long time.
Alfredo:
-Today was the first day where after rehearsal we felt that it sounded great.
We are going to do the well-known songs and two that we have never played,
Peruvian Woman
and a new song that we recorded here about two years ago, but we never played it live
That fury of the '80s
A no minor detail in the formation of GIT was the important place that the three occupied in the history of Argentine rock.
Alfredo Toth, for example, was a member of the founding group
Los Gatos
in the late '60s.
He then joined Nito Mestre and Los Desconocidos de Siempre, until joining Guyot in Raúl Porchetto's band and Charly García's support group.
Pablo also joined Zas with Miguel Mateos during the
Huevos
era .
Already as leaders of a project, they reached the boom of popularity with GIT.
-Where they hit hardest in Latin America was in Chile?
Pablo:
-Yes, possibly yes.
Alfredo:
-We also went to Mexico and things went well for us, but then we handled ourselves very poorly.
There he hit
It's for love
.
He hit so much that General Motors released a car model they called Esporamor.
Pablo:
-It was in '87, when they made a record collection called
Rock in your language
.
The first was ours, and then the boom of Miguel Mateos.
Then it was difficult for us to go because it was 1988, with hyperinflation and all those things that happen in this country.
Pablo Guyot and Alfredo Toth became a successful duo of artistic producers, but they want to play live again.
Photo: Juano Tesone
-There are musicians who meet after a long time and think that people forgot about them. Did that happen to you?
Alfredo:
-On the last tour of 2018 a very crazy thing happened: we were surprised that in reality the people who came to see us were from another generation, 16-17 year old kids who knew all the lyrics.
Pablo:
-When all the platforms started and everyone had access to our albums, we saw that there were songs with millions of listens.
At Spotify we have more than a million monthly listeners.
And the first album is already 40 years old!
-Does it bother you that they are sometimes left aside when talking about the '80s?
Pablo:
-The things that are like, how they end up being.
Anyone who saw us knew what was happening and will not forget.
Maybe we are quite inward.
We were very into music and we didn't handle the press as well as Soda.
The cover of GIT's first album, released in 1984.
-Do you remember anything from that album, recorded in Ibiza?
Pablo:
-It happened that Daniel Grinbank made an arrangement with Mariskal Romero and the studio that the Judas Priest drummer had.
Several groups went to record there, like Los Abuelos de la Nada, Los Twist and us, with production by Charly.
Alfredo:
-We recorded very quickly.
I remember I sang everything in one day, although in the end we were there for a month.
Pablo:
-What happened was that when we started recording a generator broke on the island and there were four days of delay, but the technician with whom we were recording had to make an album with Paul McCartney or someone like that.
And since we did not want to change the technician, we waited for him for several weeks with all payment.
Then Charly stayed all night mixing and finished everything.
-Actually you had already recorded a demo more than a year before, but you were busy.
Pablo:
-Yes, with production by Gordo Pierre Bayona, but we were just starting to play with Charly at the time of
Clics modernos
.
Charly was very generous as always, he played the trick on us and let us play two songs in the middle of his show.