Artist Biography
by Mark Deming
While
the Gits
were a band who made a strong impression with their music during their
all too brief run, it was how the group suddenly ended that would come
to dominate their story. Playing a unique and passionate fusion of
first-era punk, hard rock, and streetwise blues,
the Gits
had a sound that set them apart from their peers in Seattle in the late
'80s and early '90s, when the city was hip deep in the grunge
explosion. The Gits also had a fearless and charismatic frontwoman in
lead singer
Mia Zapata, but just as the group seemed poised to move up to the next level of popular acceptance, the potential of both
the Gits and
Zapata were snuffed out when she was raped and murdered in the summer of 1993.
The Gits were formed in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1986, when
Zapata, guitarist
Joe Spleen (aka Andy Kessler), bassist
Matt Dresdner, and drummer
Steve Moriarty
were all students at Antioch College. The band was initially known as
"The Snivelling Little Rat Faced Gits," taken from a line from a Monty
Python sketch, but before long, convenience won out and they shortened
the name. In 1988,
the Gits recorded a set of demos with the help of
Ben London of
Alcohol Funnycar; they would eventually see official release under the title
Kings & Queens. In 1989,
the Gits
pulled up stakes and made their way to Seattle, Washington, where they
squatted in an abandoned house where they lived and rehearsed. While
the Gits'
music was significantly different from that which defined the Pacific
Northwest rock scene of the day, their forceful performances and
Zapata's
gifts as a vocalist and communicator won them a following among punk
rockers, political activists, and renegade artists as well as discerning
rock fans. In 1990,
the Gits
released their debut single, "Precious Blood" b/w "Seaweed" and "Kings
& Queens," and after a pair of 45s in 1991, the band began work on
their debut album,
Frenching the Bully, which was released by C/Z Records in 1992.
Frenching the Bully
received enthusiastic reviews and the band toured extensively in the
U.S. and Europe, booking their own shows without the help of a manager
and performing overseas without official visas, relying on the help of
independent musicians and squatters to make their way. The Gits' power
as a live act, coupled with
Frenching the Bully's success on college and independent radio, made them one of Seattle's most talked-about bands at a time when the success of
Nirvana,
Pearl Jam, and
Soundgarden
brought a remarkable amount of media attention to the city's music
community. The Gits began work on their second album while their profile
was on the rise and major labels were courting the group. The album was
nearly complete when on July 7, 1993,
Zapata
was walking home from a night out with friends when she was raped and
murdered; the singer was dead at the age of 27.
Zapata's
murder initially polarized the Seattle music community, largely because
police detectives initially focused on her friends and peers, believing
she must have been killed by someone she knew. However,
Zapata's
surviving bandmates rallied, hiring a private detective to investigate
the case, and the city's rock musicians showed solidarity with a series
of benefit shows and albums that raised both money and awareness about
the
Zapata case, as well as inspiring new dialogue about issues of violence against women.
Joan Jett, a fan of
the Gits, played a handful of shows with
Spleen,
Dresdner, and
Moriarty, and they would release an album titled
Evil Stig -- "Gits Live" backwards. The band
7 Year Bitch paid homage to
Zapata with their 1994 album
Viva Zapata!, which included a song about her murder, "M.I.A." And several of
Zapata's
friends gathered to form Home Alive, a non-profit group offering
self-defense instruction and support systems for women.
In 1994, the surviving members of
the Gits completed the album they were working on in the summer of 1993, which was released by C/Z as
Enter: The Conquering Chicken. The Gits would later release two albums of rare and unreleased material from their archives, and
Spleen,
Dresdner, and
Moriarty would join forces for a new band,
the Dancing French Liberals of '48.
And in 2003, Seattle police initiated a "cold case" examination of the
case that led to processing DNA evidence gathered at the time of the
crime. A search for matching DNA led to Florida, where Jesus Mezquia had
been arrested for burglary; research revealed that Mezquia was living
in Seattle in July 1993, and in 2004, he was found guilty of
Zapata's murder and sentenced to 36 years behind bars. In 2005,
Zapata's
life and the long search for justice became the subject of a
documentary film by director Kerri O'Kane, simply titled The Gits.
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