The failed return of 80s rock: GIT, with Pablo Guyot and Alfredo Toth, after a heart attack and without Willy Iturri

A handful of gangs set fire Argentine rock from the 80swith such strength that it reached all of Latin America with an unimaginable popularity in pre-globalization and pre-digital platforms times.

Obviously Stereo soda He took the biggest laurels, sometimes eclipsing his colleagues, but time confirmed that they were not the only ones: Miguel Mateos had a huge impact and also Enanitos Verdes.

However, another number one of the moment is usually relegated: IDIOT, which even started first and had its debut album in 1984 and big shows in Chile and Peru. Perhaps the forgetfulness was influenced by the fact that they had less continuity, some separations and possible reunions, but His songs continue to resonate across the continent as a symbol of an era.

For example It’s for love, The street is its place (Ana), You have always been my love, Don’t hurt my heart, Curfew, Idiot birthday, Crazy wind AND Don’t behave badly.

All this time, the guitarist Pablo Guyot and the bassist and singer Alfredo Toth They never stopped working together, both as artistic producers (Los Piojos, Bersuit Vergarabat, Ratones Paranoicos, Intoxicados, Turf, Guasones, Massacre) and as two thirds of GIT.

They will thus return to the stage renamed GYT, this one Saturday 2 March at 8.30pm in La Trastiendawith a review of the most emblematic songs of his career and the desire to continue throughout the year.

The drummer Willy Iturri is no longer there nor are they a trio like in the beginning, but rather a larger formation, like on stage Distortion (1992) of his career. They will be accompanied by Marcelo Mapelman on drums, guitarist Guillermo Cudmani and keyboardist Pablo Echeverry.

A new phase

Sitting in Guille Cudmani’s recording studio, Alfredo says that “La Trastienda is the beginning of a new phase. What we want is to have fun 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 much fun it was to play. Now we continue to produce things but not as intense as the period where we were making four albums a year. We have to find the balance and ride the seasons.”

-How did this show come about?

Pablo:-We actually wanted to continue playing after stopping in 2018. We put the band together with Guille, who already knows how we work. We were trying hard and the pandemic came, so we had to stop. Next we toured Chile.

-Last year they were supposed to have an exhibition at the Usina del Arte and Alfredo had the terrible idea of ​​having a heart attack.

Alfredo: -Yes, it was last year, in August. We had a good accident, but I had surgery and everything went well.

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 very well and is also divine. We’re all having fun together.

There’s actually five of us now, because Pablo Echeverry also joined as keyboard player, and I’ve known him since I recorded with La Zimbawe in the 90s or so. The chemistry that exists between the five of us now works great, as it hasn’t done in a long time.

Alfredo: -Today was the first day after rehearsal that we felt it sounded great. We will do the most famous songs and two that we have never played, Peruvian woman and a new song we recorded here about two years ago, but we’ve never played it live

That fury of the 80s

-Where they hit hardest in Latin America was Chile?

Pablo: -Yes, maybe yes.

Alfredo: -We also went to Mexico and things went well for us, but then we behaved very badly. There she struck It’s for love. It hit so hard that General Motors released a car model they called the Esporamor.

Pablo: -It was ’87, when they made a collection of records entitled Rock in your language. The first was ours, then Miguel Mateos’ boom. Then it was hard for us to go because it was 1988, with the hyperinflation and all those things that happen in this country.

-There are musicians who meet after a long time and think that people have forgotten them. It happened to you?

Alfredo: -During the last tour of 2018, a really crazy thing happened: we were surprised by the fact that actually the people who came to see us belonged to another generation, 16-17 year olds 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 plays. On Spotify we have more than one million monthly listeners. And the first album is already 40 years old!

-Does it bother you that they are sometimes left aside when it comes to the ’80s?

Pablo: -Things that are, how they end up being. Anyone who saw us knew what was happening and won’t forget it. Maybe we are rather internal. We were very interested in music and didn’t handle the press as well as Soda.

-Do you remember anything about that album, recorded in Ibiza?

Pablo: -It happened that Daniel Grinbank made a deal with Mariskal Romero and the studio that had the Judas Priest drummer. Several groups went to record there, such as Los Abuelos de la Nada, Los Twist and us, with Charly producing.

Alfredo: -We record very quickly. I remember singing the whole thing in one day, even though we ended up staying there for a month.

Pablo: -What happened is that when we started recording a generator broke on the island and there was a four day delay, but the engineer we were recording with was supposed to make an album with Paul McCartney or someone like that. And since we didn’t want to change the technician, we waited for him for several weeks with all the 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 the production of Gordo Pierre Bayona, but at the time we were just starting to play with Charly Modern clicks. Charly was very generous as always, he played a joke on us and let us play two songs in the middle of his show.