“Girls Are Waiting To Meet You” and they’re for real!

This past Sunday was “La fete de la musique” (world music day) hosted by the French Cultural Center in Beijing. I stopped by early on to catch a glimpse of “Mademoiselle” playing and stuck around for the other bands which included Rwanito, the incredible JSB and GAWTMY who are just something different!
Now, the band has been around for a few years but I have never heard of them until last week! And now, everywhere I turn, I see these cats mentioned…

GAWTMY or Girls Are Waiting To Meet You

Rocking the French Cultural Center in Beijing

They came on stage and started rocking.. that is if you can rock with 2 violins, a ukulele, flute on top of the usual guitar/bass/drum combo. And by golly if anybody says “a band using a violin, much less two, can’t rock” then I invite you to go check them cats out.
They brought an incredible amount of energy to the stage and had the place jumping up and down with melodies and uptempo songs. I was reading some of their reviews online which referred to them as “soothing”… I can roll with that but I’d liken them much more to a glass of Bailey’s on ice.. it’s soft, velvety and can still rock your socks off.

And that name… that band name just made me laugh out loud so I tracked down their lead singer, Natan, and asked him a few questions:

• How the hell do you pronounce “GAWTMY” ?
  gawt like ‘ought’ my like ‘me’

• How did the name of the band come about? it’s one of the most pun prone names I’ve seen in a while
  the name of the band… we were talking about spam e mails as a name for a band and the two we came up with were ‘enlarge your p*nis’ and ‘girls are waiting to meet you’. the second one stuck and we then shortened it to gawtmy for e mails and websites. but the full title is the official one we announce ourselves with at shows.

• Is there such a thing as a GAWTMY curse? (referring to the number of “accidents” to band members)

  yes… and it is dangerous. we are still working out exactly how it hits but we’ve had:

  – a guitarist in hospital, puking blood with a stomach virus (he left the band)
  – a cellist in hospital with a heart murmur (she left the band)
  – a pianist in hospital with a broken leg (he has left the band but will rejoin for the album launch)
  – a drummer in hospital after falling down stairs and breaking her ankle (she’s still in the band!)
  – the sax player had his identity called into question when his passport was damaged. he has to prove to the British intelligence officers who he was! (he’s also still here)

  also, two pets of band members have died in bizarre circumstances, one got slammed in a door.

  it’s weird stuff…

gotta love the matching outfits... these cats got style

Thanks to Natan (he’s the one in the red shirt) for being a good sport and taking the time to answer those questions… I hope that the curse gets lifted and especially hope it doesn’t affect people asking about it…

Catch GAWTMY at Yugong Yishan on July 16th, 2009 for the release party of their long awaited record. Tickets are 30RMB and get you a copy of the CD… very much worthwhile if you ask me!

Rumor has it that the band will also hold a free all day “gig-a-thon” on june 27th in which fans are invited to follow them throughout Beijing as they play all around the city! details on all the social networking sites!

Keep track of the band on:
facebook | myspace | gawtmy.com