Mia Zapata was drenched in sweat, surrounded by congested our bodies as she geared as much as sing “Second Skin,” the ultimate track of The Gits’ set contained in the cramped Jabberjaw Café. It was a sizzling summer time day on June 27, 1993, and so they had been opening for riot grrrl pioneer Bratmobile. It was the final time The Gits would ever play in Los Angeles.
“I need a second skin, something to hold me up, can’t seem to get out of this hole I’ve dug myself right back in,” the 27-year-old soulfully crooned on the illustrious rock venue.
In a YouTube video of this remaining L.A. present, Zapata usually closes her eyes and vividly emotes the ache, anger and pleasure in her music. Zapata’s bandmates, bassist Matt Dresdner and guitarist Andy Kessler, mentioned Zapata had a “no bulls— persona” that was “100% organic and authentic.” On stage, her performances grew to become a “dance of communicating the feelings that she’s singing about,” Dresdner mentioned.
“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,” Dresdner advised The Occasions .
When the Seattle-based band was in L.A. in June 1993, they had been provided the chance to signal with Atlantic Information, however The Gits by no means acquired the possibility to meet that deal — Zapata was sexually assaulted and murdered 10 days later in Seattle.
Unable to proceed with out their greatest buddy, The Gits known as it quits. However greater than 30 years after her loss of life, Zapata’s artwork and music continues to make a mark on the punk rock scene and affect each outdated and new generations of followers.
On Friday, Sub Pop Information is rereleasing the band’s full-length album “Frenching the Bully” on all codecs and teaming up with nonprofit music organizations The Vera Undertaking and KEXP for a record-release occasion in Seattle on Saturday. The celebration features a screening of the brief movie “The Gits – Live at RKCNDY,” vinyl signings by the band, and an artwork exhibit showcasing a few of Zapata’s work.
“They’re all coming together and helping put on this amazing celebration of Mia and The Gits,” Dresdner mentioned. “Our manager, Rachel Flotard, has been coordinating [and] moving all of these mountains for years and it’s culminating now, and on top of one of these mountains is Mia Zapata, and it’s about time.”
The Sniveling Little Rat Confronted Gits, as they had been identified earlier than shortening their identify to The Gits (and initially named in tribute to Monty Python’s “Flying Circus”), had been shaped in 1986 by Zapata, Dresdner, Kessler and drummer Steve Moriarty whereas college students at Antioch Faculty in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
“The thing that’s interesting is that the chemistry and power of it was there right away, and it did last from then until the end … we played together sporadically during those college days, but it was when we moved to Seattle that I feel like we really became a band,” Kessler mentioned.
Earlier than they met, Dresdner remembers seeing Zapata on campus and feeling “inspired and intimidated” by her however says he didn’t have “the guts” to speak to her. Finally, she approached Dresdner about his lack of initiative as a painter and gave him a directive.
“She called me out for half-assing it, and from there she’s like, ‘Tomorrow, you’re coming down to the art building with me and you’re gonna paint,’ she challenged me,” he mentioned.
They shortly grew to become buddies, and after that incident, Dresdner mentioned he noticed her sing at an open mic evening on campus and was shocked by what he witnessed.
“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,” the bassist mentioned. “She was so resonant and personal, and at that point I was like, ‘God, we got to figure out how to start a band.’”
Zapata, a Mexican American artwork pupil initially from Louisville, Ky., wasn’t only a gifted singer with a voice akin to greats like Bonnie Raitt, Patti Smith and Amy Winehouse. Buddies additionally describe her as being an distinctive painter who made inventive works in different mediums together with ceramics and printmaking.
Michael Casselli, affiliate professor of sculpture and set up and artistic director of the Herndon Gallery at Antioch Faculty, was buddies with Zapata after they had been each artwork college students and mentioned Zapata was a passionate painter with a really distinct type that got here to outline her work. In 2023, Casselli curated an exhibition at Herndon Gallery titled “Mia Zapata: A Place Within,” which featured numerous work, prints and a sculpture by Zapata, which had been on mortgage from the singer’s household.
“She was influenced by abstract expressionism, and she was influenced by the people at the time who were also painting in the neo-expressionist movement,” Casselli mentioned. “[Mia’s art had] this kind of emotive and emotional but not highly realistic approach, and also a real softness to her touch too, so she could vacillate between slightly different approaches, you could really sense her, in her work.”
Casselli mentioned that one of the crucial “outstanding” visuals on show was a portray Zapata did of Mexican revolutionaries Emiliano Zapata and his brother Eufemio Zapata.
In “Mia Zapata & The Gits: A Story of Art, Rock, and Revolution,” the Gits drummer particulars the second when Zapata painted this portrait, briefly indulging in household lore alleging the Gits singer was a distant relative of the Mexican heroes.
“I remember when she painted that painting of Emiliano and I couldn’t even really make out what it was, because she had this canvas sprawled on the floor and was painting kind of Jackson Pollock style, and she told me that she just wanted to look into the eyes of the painting and try to figure out her history,” the drummer mentioned.
Moriarty’s ebook, which was revealed by Feral Home, pays homage to Zapata by specializing in the artistry and artistic genius of the singer, recalling the band’s friendship and music profession to the perfect of his reminiscence, based on Moriarty. For him, it was vital to color an image of Zapata in a approach that hadn’t been finished earlier than to reclaim the narrative concerning the singer’s life.
“Every time I saw anything written about The Gits, half the story was about [the murder], and it would never get to who Mia was,” Moriarty mentioned. “I got really tired of seeing draft after draft of things about the band that were more about murder than they were the band.”
The ebook additionally extensively covers the band’s time in Seattle after faculty, after they began taking their music significantly and enjoying extra reveals on the west coast.
“It was before terms like ‘grunge’ started being pinned onto Seattle,” Dresdner mentioned. “Over time we realized that our music, the kind of stuff we were doing, wasn’t easily categorized within the other sort of genres that were burgeoning here, so I don’t think that we necessarily found a natural home at the time, but I don’t think it really affected us because we were pretty clear on our mission,” Dresdner mentioned.
Kessler added: “We had a strong identity, a transforming sound but still a strong sense of who we are and what we wanted to do.”
That robust identification is one thing they are saying reverberates in Mia’s phrases and is one of the best ways to get to know her and keep in mind her.
“You can get a lot about who she was just from listening to the songs, listen to her voice,” Kessler mentioned.
