Introduction - what's it all about?

Okay folks, have you been typing in Gents for years to things like Google and eBay, in the hope of coming up with the Gents of Doncaster and actually coming up with millions of things like Gents outfitters and even other completely unrelated bands who also managed somehow to appropriate the name the Gents at some point or another?  Well...guess what, now your time has come, and you finally found the only proper website (it's new of course!) dedicated to the finest band South Yorkshire ever produced this side of the Arctic Monkeys (well okay, there's Little Man Tate from Sheff, and they're pretty darn good), but having done over 800 gigs myself with the Gents from 1983 to 1989, including a lot of humping (bass bins that is, more's the pity) in and out of gigs, I have always thought of myself as the ultimate Gents fan and as such I have wanted to put together a site on the band for ages.  I have always also thought it to be a criminal shame that none of the Gents' material has ever made it to the CD format (but we'll come to that particular issue elsewhere on the site), apart from the one single appearance of the Faker on the CD'd reissue of the Countdown Compilation.  This band was just so good, with 9 singles, 2 LPs and they even reached number 95 in the national chart without any hint of major backup, only missing out on being spun on Radio One's Round Table because of an "important" budget announcement!

     I suppose one question that you might be asking about all this is whether or not this website is actually relevant, seventeen years after a band who never really made it that big split up anyway?  Well my answer to that is that to me the Gents were special, I guess that all over the world there are bands with similar histories, who probably deserved to do better than they did and then finally gave up, but to me, the Gents were six and a half years of my life, it's what I did and for me they were without doubt the best band that never made it.  My second answer is that if you're on the case with eBay and the Gents, you will probably already know that Gents vinyl comes up on the auction site all the time...ALL the time, so it seems that there is maybe a residual interest in the band, even after all these years.

     I have to tell you that I just have this nagging feeling that something, somewhere along the line is telling me that the Gents might just be in some small way an unfinished story and that there maybe, might be some small business left to run.  Maybe this website is a small step in that direction.  We'll see...hope springs eternal.

     At this point I should really mention Steve Emmerson from Barnsley, who I've never met but who has had the only other web-based presence I've seen for the band, and which I guess probably inspired me in the first place to aspire to do something of my own.  I have the greatest of respect for that site, because it's a great effort but, and I hope you won't take the wrong way Steve, but I just thought I could do better.  Let me know if you think I'm wrong.  And I'd love to hear from you Steve too.  You were also the guy who plea for members of the band to get in touch with Dizzy at Detour Records I saw, and upon which I acted and got a dialogue going about releasing CDs of Gents music, a dialogue which has now broken down, but hopefully not forever...

     So, CDs - you never know, reunions - possibly and/or probably not, but there's no harm in trying and so ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to...