THE GITS

My name is Steve... and I am a Sniveling Little Rat Faced Git. I played drums in THE GITS among other bands for a long ass time. Not all the bands were that great but THE GITS were. We formed THE GITS in 1986. I was not the first drummer. Bob Lee of L.A. bands: ClawHammer, Mike Watt and Lazy Cowgirls. In '86 I was better than he was, I hung out a lot with Matt, Mia and Andy so I got his job. We originally called the band The Sniveling Little Rat Faced Gits, stolen from a Monty Python episode, this was the only name which could describe our dorkiness and general lack of social grace. We shortened it to THE GITS to fit on our demo tape, which eventually became the Kings and Queens CD. We wrote songs and played shows. Mia and Andy wrote most of the songs but I was always there to help with rhythms and arrangements. Mia and I could sync up effortlessly and that became true of all of us as a group. Oh a BIO. I get it... let me see...we started in Yellow Springs Ohio. There we played shows and recorded the aforementioned demo. In the summer of '89 we moved to Seattle for no particularly good reason. A whole group of our friends moved as well and we rented the Rathouse. It was where we lived, rehearsed and communed with other gits and misfits. We played live as much as we could and hatched many a scheme for touring. No one stepped up to to finance or publicize our projects or tours so we played the clubs up and down the West Coast of the U.S. relentlessly. During that time we played the scene with small up-and-coming bands like: Nirvana, Beck, Sublime, No Doubt and Green Day. THE GITS were never as financially successful as any of those bands. The most we ever made at a gig was $500. All the money we made went into maintenance and gas for our 1976 GMC van. It ran on (very green) leaded gasoline. We lived out of that van on tour. We just wanted to play and tour. We were purists and we loved what we were doing. In 1991 we booked a tour of punk squats and community centers across Western Europe and Scandinavia. We loved playing in Europe and the people we played for loved us too. Energized by the tour, we came back to the states and played with a mission and rage like no other band out there. ANd there were a lot of bands in Seattle at the time. We recorded our first album, "Frenching the Bully", which ended with the song that seemed to have something special. That song was Second Skin. It was our fan's version of a hit. Not in the top 40 sense, but in the realm of human connection and universality. I have been told more than once that "Second Skin" saved some one's life. "Frenching the Bully" was very well received in the press and got widely reviewed around the world. The album got unprecedented reviews for such a relatively unknown small band. Even the snobby English press like N.M.E. and Melody Maker gave it great write-ups. So we continued to play live as much as possible, and went into the studio to record a second album. We had finished most of the music tracks and decided to do a tour before putting on the finishing touches. On that tour we played flawlessly. Intent on showing the L.A. record executives (a.k.a. Hollywood Pinocchios) that if they wanted anything to do with us, they had to catch up. In other words, we weren't playing their games, and we would continue to tour and put out records independently. But after a pair of well attended shows in L.A. the record companies did take notice of our band. An A&R dude at Atlantic Records drew up a contract to offer to us. We never got the offer because on July 7, 1993 our friend and singer Mia was brutally raped and murdered by a stranger on the street in Seattle. There's a lot more to this story and much of it can be decifered in our music after Mia died...