This story of punk-rock promise and ultimate tragedy, starts oddly enough, in semi-rural Yellow Springs, Ohio (just outside Dayton).
My interest was sparked, having read about the recent celebration held by the wonderful Seattle radio station KEXP, to celebrate the re-mastered re-release of this bands debut on Sub Pop Records, more than thirty years after it first came out. It is a story marred by a huge tragedy though (you will see the section to skip, if you don't want to read about that.)
It is 1986 at the small, liberal arts Antioch College, and four young students get together to form a band. Mia Zapata, from Louisville, Kentucky, was a prodigious painter, sculptor and ceramicist, who seems to have taken Matt Dresdner under her wing.
Then, one night, he caught her singing at an open mic night on campus. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing, I was just so transfixed by her, her voice and her presence, it brought me to tears. She was so resonant and personal, and at that point I was like, 'God we got to figure out how to start a band.'"
And so, Zapata, Dresdner, along with Andy Kessler (a.k.a. Joe Spleen) and Steve Moriarty formed The Snivelling Little Rat Faced Gits, in tribute to a Monty Python sketch, but this was soon shortened to just The Gits.
In 1988, they self-released an album locally called Private Lubs, which would later see a proper release in 1996 as Kings & Queens, on the Broken Rekids label. It sold out it original run of one hundred copies very quickly. Moriarty later said in his book, Mia Zapata & The Gits, that it was recorded in six hours (because of budget constraints), which he liked because that was the way his favourite band, the Minutemen, had recorded their classic Double Nickels On The Dime.
The foursome decided to move to Seattle in 1989, and its burgeoning music scene. They found jobs and took up residence in an abandoned house in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood, known as The Rathouse. They lived and rehearsed there and quickly started to build a following on the local music scene.
Spear & Magic Helmet (Audio only)
There was a succession of singles released on different local labels: Precious Blood came first on Big Flaming Ego Records; then Second Skin on Broken Rekids; and finally, Spear And Magic Helmet, on Empty Records.
Second Skin (Official live video)
Then, in 1992, they were able to put out their first 'proper' LP, Frenching The Bully, on C/Z Records (re-released in 2003 on Broken Rekids). Martin Douglas recently wrote for KEXP, that the album was "in its purest essence, a 33-minute exorcism", with Zapata's lyrics showing her ability as a "great communicator of internal struggles." The band also managed to tour Europe around this time, riding the wave of interest in the wider Seattle scene - which is quite notable as they never managed to do a full tour of the United States.
Wingo Lamo (Official live video)
There was lots of live gigging, and also work had begun on the second album. 1993 should have been a stellar year for the band. Tim Sommer, an A&R man for Atlantic Records was getting ready to sign them up, a mere matter of days before tragedy struck.
The death of Mia Zapata (trigger warning):
Mia Zapata was born in Chicago, but raised in Louisville, in an affluent family. Hers would be a tale of two different lives, between that well heeled upbringing and the choice to follow the life of a poor musician, as her father later noted, "She lived on two different sides of the street—the straight side on one, with parochial schools, an affluent family, and tennis clubs. But when she crossed the street, material things didn't mean anything to her."
It was 7 July 1993, and she had been out at The Comet bar. In the early hours of the morning, she headed home, via a friend's apartment in Capitol Hill, leaving for the final stretch sometime around 2 a.m.
Her body was discovered at around 3:20 that morning, on the corner of 24th Avenue South and South Washington, less than two miles from the bar. She had been raped and strangled - and because she had put up a struggle, she had also been beaten and the injuries from that would likely have killed her, even if she hadn't been strangled.
The incident left the scene numb and in fear, not least because initially many of her friends and acquaintances were under the spotlight of suspicion. The Seattle Times reported that the murder was the moment "the Seattle scene lost its sense of invincibility."
It was soon clear that there were no obvious suspects. Benefit shows were hosted and CD's sold, by artists including Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Presidents of the USA, raising money so that her friends could hire a private investigator, Leigh Hearon, to work with the Seattle Police Department. That lasted for three years, with still no suspect.
The murder featured on a number of TV shows over the years, including Unsolved Mysteries, Cold Case Files and many others. In the end, it was the evolving world of DNA evidence that cornered the killer. A DNA check in 2001 did not generate a positive result, but samples of saliva found on Zapata's breast were kept. Eventually a random sample got a match and Jesus Mezquia was arrested in Florida.
Mezquia was originally from Cuba, but had moved to the US in 1980. He had built up a lengthy criminal record, including aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, robbery and indecent exposure. But it was two cheek swab samples he had to give under terms of probation for a robbery that finally triggered the match, providing a match on the National Data Bank.
He was arrested on 10 January 2003, and on 25 March 2004, he was convicted of murder by jury and sentenced to thirty six years. Despite this briefly being overturned because of dispute about the sentence length, it was eventually re-confirmed. Mezquia died in hospital (cause not revealed) in January 2021.
Zapata was laid to rest back in Louisville, at the Cave Hill Cemetery. She was 27 years old.
Enter: The Conquering Chicken:
And so the rest of the band were left to pick up the pieces of their unfinished second album, Enter: The Conquering Chicken. It had been partially completed in 1993, prior to Zapata's death, and it was released posthumously in 1994. There were more blues influences in there, such as on their cover of Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come, and more early hardcore in songs like Sign Of The Crab (which being about a serial killer, almost foreshadows her own death).
A Change Is Gonna Come (Audio with fan video)
But finishing the album off was not an entirely satisfying process, Andy Kessler and Matt Dresdner explained in a recent excellent interview with KEXP (click here to listen). Kessler recalled, "Enter: The Conquering Chicken was a bit of a patchwork, which is a shame because I thought it had some of our strongest songs, but I don't think they were recorded properly. It was going to be so much better than it was." Dresdner adds, "we made do with what we had but it doesn't approach what it could have been."
Bob (Cousin O.) - (Live at the Jabberjaw, L.A. - June 1993 - their last show)
After that, there were several post-Gits acts. The remaining Gits, with Julian Gibson, formed the Dancing French Liberals of 48. Then, the song Go Home written by Joan Jett and Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill) came out, including a message by Jett at the end of the video asking for people to step forward with information on Zapata's murder. This led to Jett, a fan of the band, to join up with Kessler, Dresdner and Moriarty, to tour as Evil Stig (Gits Live spelled backwards), playing a mix of songs by The Gits and Jett.
Sign Of The Crab (Video)
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts: Go Home (Official music video)
Home Alone - Zapata's legacy:
In the aftermath of Zapata's murder, a number of friends established Home Alone, a not for profit organisation dedicated to empowering women with self-defence technique, how to use pepper spray and basic martial arts. It would run until 2010, when complications of running it as a non-profit lead it to switch to being a more organic, informal volunteer led organisation.
Ann Powers, in Village Voice, talked of the legacy that Zapata left through Home Alone. "I'm heartened to see how Home Alone helped in that regard, to educate women and probably saved a lot of lives."She adds a personal note on Zapata, "I really believe [Mia] was a true bohemian, a true independent soul, and would have remained on that path."
Jett remembered her time working with The Gits / Evil Stig. "I was having fun, but I was also well aware of the heaviness of what we were doing and the message that we were trying to get out, which was, 'Yeah have fun, but be aware.' We were directing it towards women, but it's really towards anyone."
She also gave personal reflection on Zapata: "Her legacy should be beautiful, strong punk-rock music, coming from a woman's perspective, because that is who she was."
When it was announced that Mezquia had died, her bandmates released a statement on Zapata, reported in Rolling Stone: "Mia Zapata was an extraordinary human being. She was a beloved friend, a gifted songwriter, musician, visual artist and performer. Rather than focus on her death, we prefer to remember her friendship, talent, humor, and the incredible art and music she left to the world."
Kessler said more on her when interviewed by Emily Fox for KEXP ahead of the Frenching re-release, at the end of 2024. "She was the person, when I was having a hard time, she was the first person I would go to, to speak to.... She has an image of being a wild woman in some ways, but she was a very deep person.... I don't think it's recognised what a unique and powerful writer she was."
Dresdner told the L.A. Times, "I don't think there was any artifice in any of what she did, she was just herself. Her lyrics are personal and visceral, and I feel like that is the window into who she was, better than anything I could say about her."
Martin Douglas, in his KEXP article, explains what made The Gits so good. Steve Moriarty had been trained in jazz drumming since the age of ten, and he "developed a style that applied jazz principles to rock music. The tightness of punk rock was augmented by the loose swing in Moriarty's capable hands.... But no surprise, the clarion vocals of Zapata were ultimately the biggest part of the Git's singularity." Douglas opines, that in 2025, when anyone with decent PR can be hailed as poet, that while she was oft hailed for her passionate blues-tinged singing, "perhaps Zapata was such a strong singer because she felt what she was singing so deeply."
Over three decades on from tragedy, their music still has a visceral impact, and it can only make you wonder what would have happened next for The Gits had Mia Zapata not taken that fatal walk home on that July night.
Opmerkingen