Mia Zapata was soaked in sweat, surrounded by congested bodies while preparing to sing “Second Skin”, the final song of the gits inside the Strait Jabberjaw Café. It was a hot summer day on June 27, 1993, and were opening for the pioneer of Riot Grrrl Bratmobile. It was the last time the gits would play in Los Angeles.
“I need a second skin, something to hold me, it seems that I can't get out of this hole, I have returned,” The 27 -year -old croonado In the illustrious rock place.
In a YouTube video of this Final Los Angeles show, Zapata often closes your eyes and vividly emits pain, anger and joy in your music. Zapata's bandmates, bass player Matt Dresdner and guitarist Andy Kessler, said Zapata had a “without bulls – person” that was “100% organic and authentic.” On stage, his performances became a “dance to communicate the feelings he is singing,” Dresdner said.
“I do not think there is any artifice in anything he did, she was just shers Dresdner said to Times.
When the Seattle -based band was in Los Angeles in June 1993, they were offered the opportunity to sign with Atlantic Records, but the git never had the opportunity to fulfill that agreement, Zapata was sexually attacked and killed 10 days later in Seattle.
Unable to continue without his best friend, the gits left him. But more than 30 years after his death, Zapata's art and music continue to leave a brand on the punk rock scene and influence the ancient and new generations of fans.
On Friday, Sub Pop Records is relieving the full album of the band “Frenching the Bully” in all formats and joins with non -profit music organizations The Vera Project and Kexp for a record release party in Seattle on Saturday. The celebration includes a projection of the short film “The Gits – Live AT RKCNDY”, Vinyl signings of the band, and an art exhibition that shows some of Zapata's paintings.
“Everyone joins and help organize this incredible celebration of mine and gits,” Dresdner said. “Our manager, Rachel Flotard, has been coordinating [and] Moving all these mountains for years and is now culminating, and at the top of one of these mountains is Mia Zapata, and it's time. “
The little rat that faced the rat, as they were known before shortening his name to the gits (and originally appointed in tribute to “Flying Circus” of Monty Python), were formed in 1986 by Zapata, Dresdner, Kessler and Drummer Steve Moriarty while students from Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio.
“The interesting thing is that chemistry and power were there immediately, and lasted from then on … we played sporadically during those university days, but that was when we moved to Seattle that I feel that we really became a band ”Kessler said.
Before getting to know each other, Dresdner remembers having seen Zapata on the campus and feeling “inspired and intimidated” by her, but says he had no “guts” to talk to her. Finally, she approached Dresdner about her lack of initiative as a painter and gave her a directive.
“She called me to measure it, and from there she says: 'Tomorrow, you come to the art building with me and you're going to paint,” he challenged me, “he said.
They quickly became friends, and after that incident, Dresdner said that he saw her sing on an open microphone night on the campus and was surprised by what he witnessed.
“I couldn't believe what I was listening, I was so paralyzed by her, her voice and her presence, made me cry,” said the bassist. “She was so resonant and personal, and at that moment she thought: 'God, we had to discover how to start a band'”.
Zapata, a Mexican -American art student from Louisville, Kentucky, was not just a talented singer with a voice similar to great ones such as Bonnie Raitt, Patti Smith and Amy Winehouse. Friends also describe her as an exceptional painter who did creative works in other media, including ceramics and engraving.
Michael Casselli, associate professor of sculpture and installation and creative director of the Herndon gallery in Antioch College, was a friend of Zapata when both were art students and said that Zapata was a passionate painter with a very different style that came to define his work. In 2023, Casselli selected an exhibition in Herndon Gallery entitled “Mia Zapata: A Place Within”, which presented several paintings, impressions and a sculpture of Zapata, which were borrowed from the singer's family.
“It was influenced by abstract expressionism, and was influenced by people at that time they were also painting in the Neoexpressionist movement,” Casselli said. “[Mia’s art had] This type of emotional and emotional approach but not highly realistic, and also a real softness for its touch, so that it could hesitate between slightly different approaches, I could really feel it, in its work. “
Casselli said that one of the most “outstanding” images at exhibition was a painting that Zapata made of the Mexican revolutionaries Emiliano Zapata and his brother Euphemio Zapata.
In “Mia Zapata & The Gits: A Story of Art, Rock and Revolution”, the gits drummer details the moment in which Zapata painted this portrait, briefly enjoying the family tradition claiming that the singer gits was a distant relative of the heroes Mexicans
“I remember that when he painted that painting by Emiliano and I could not even understand what it was, because he had this canvas extended on the floor and was painting a type of style of Jackson Pollock, and told me that he just wanted to look into the eyes of the painting And he tries to discover his story, ”said the drummer.
Moriarty's book, published by Feral House, pays tribute to Zapata focusing on the art and creative genius of the singer, remembering the friendship and musical career of the band to the best of his memory, according to Moriarty. For him, it was important to paint an image of Zapata in a way that had not been done before to claim the narrative about the singer's life.
“Every time I saw something written about the gits, half of the story was about [the murder]And I would never get to who was mine, ”said Moriarty. “I tired of seeing the draft after the draft of things about the band that were more about the murder than the band.”
The book also covers the band's time in Seattle after university, when they began to take their music seriously and play more shows on the west coast.
“It was before the terms like 'grunge' began to be immobilized in Seattle,” Dresdner said. “Over time we realized that our music, the kind of things we were doing, did not easily qualify within the other types of genres that were flourishing here, so I do not think that we will necessarily find a natural home at that time, But I don't think we really affected us because we had our mission quite clear, ”said Dresdner.
Kessler added: “We had a strong identity, a transformative sound but still a strong sense of who we are and what we wanted to do.”
That strong identity is something that they say that reverbera in mine's words and is the best way to know and remember it.
“You can get a lot about who was just listening to the songs, listening to his voice,” Kessler said.
