Are there creatives that most of us will never hear of? Should we check out our local music scene? Is how we lived more important than how we died? Do we need to remember who the person was and their art more than what they endured? In the case of Mia Zapata of the Gits, the answer is yes.
Seattle 1992
In 1992 I was working as an interim youth leader at a church. The church sent me to Seattle to go to a youth leaders convention. 3 days. All expenses paid. Christian culture had sapped my resolve and my passion for life and equality. I did not expect to have the real me awakened briefly in a club. It served as a lifeline, a seed in the garden.
The convention was horrible. It was like an incel convention and everyone was wearing chucks. I did not like any of the other youth pastors and I did not think most of them were safe to be around teenage girls. After the first night I needed to just get the hell out of there.
With the hotel doorman’s advice I was able to navigate the public transportation to find where the music scene was. I poked my head in club after club and all I heard was grunge. While I have a respect for what grunge did in the music world and what it means and meant, it was not my scene at the time.
I hit a bar, lit a cigarette, and found myself in a random conversation with two women who were my age.
One of them asked me what I was doing in Seattle.
“Looking for good music. I’m in the wrong city.” One of them laughed. She asked me what I was into. It has been awhile since I thought about good music. All I knew was an entire day of Christian Praise Music and local grunge had me longing for something that punched and was real. The indoctrination into my church subculture temporarily removed good music from my life. I named off the Ramones, Joy Division, Blondie, Joan Jett, X Ray Spex and a few others.
The girl who was talking to me looked at her girlfriend and said, “Gits!” Her friend nodded. She asked me if I was doing anything tomorrow night. I told her I had a girlfriend. She bumped the woman next to her and said she did too. The next night two lesbians would pick me up from the hotel. I hopped into the back of a beaten Ford minivan that smelled of skunk weed and discover The Gits.
DIY Temples
There is a term used when describing iconic women in punk and post punk. DIY Ethos. When you use that term you get to sound like you are in the know and those who don’t know are posers. But when we talk about seeing The Gits and Mia Zapata live in Seattle, we need to unpack it a little. At the core of DIY is that anyone can make music or publish a Zine if they want to, most of the time the producer and consumer of music can be the same person. But it is more than that, rough sounding music with heart, and a clothing aesthetic. It is about space and community.
Drummer and a figure in Punx of Color, Gayla Escoda Brooks, said something profound once. “The way I kind of think about it is — going to a show at a venue versus a D.I.Y space — it’s similar to the difference of going out with your friends to a restaurant versus inviting your friends over for dinner.”
DIY punk ethos, especially with women in punk, has a space for people who feel marginalized. In this DIY space you can collaborate, self-organize and be passionate about whatever you were passionate about. I love buskers, indie musicians, and content creators doing their own thing. But in the DIY space there is a sense of belonging that is hard to explain, but you feel it.
I do now know if I was in an early Seattle version of CBGB’s or just a dive music club, but I do know I felt something I had not felt in a long time. And unlike the church convention, I was in a sacred space and I was about to see the night’s priestess take to the stage.
Gits on Stage and Mia Zapata Wreck Me
The Gits hit the stage hard and mercilessly. It was the best punk set I had ever been to in my life.
A melodic guitar solo started and as it faded the drummer played in jazz stylings. Then came the bass guitarist joining the drummer into a jazz riff that led to the band playing refined pure punk like I had never heard before. This small framed woman went to the front of the stage and grabbed the mic. A powerful voice hit the speakers and her presence was larger than life, yet real. The song was called Absinthe and the lyrics of the first verse sucked me in.
“There are these people that use you for
Their own need for deception
By the size of their lies and
The size of the stories that they’re telling
They’ve proved themselves to be
Very small…..minded”
The awareness of my religious programming melted away with this truth and for a few moments I was home again. I was me and not the creation.
Later in the show I swear that she made eye contact as she sang this part of second skin.
“Though, no one ever said it’d be easy, still one left to deny – the choice that comes between your willingness to survive. Though you know what you stand up against, a world set to deceive, you need a special strength. Yeah, I’ve got that second skin. “
Her charisma shined on stage and her voice was blues and R&B, but it was also punk. If Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Janis Joplin’s spirits could embody the essence of one vocalist, it was Mia Zapata. How someone could be melodic and in your face hard core punk at the same time in the same song was wonderous.
Meeting Mia
Just like I cannot tell you where I saw them play, I have no idea who my lesbian hosts were, but after the set the girls introduced me to her. The interaction was less than a minute. She was a few years older than me, but we were basically the same age. In person, she was just herself.
Since I thought they were some local band I was more confidant than I would have been if I knew they had just come off a successful indie international tour and had major labels sniffing for a contract. I think my lesbian couple guides may have been more important than I realized. They knew everyone and had access. I felt the swagger of the me I liked. I was feeling the old me that had been buried under religion. With confidence I told her that the show was amazing and she was amazing. Then I said, “Thank you.”
“For?”
Memories of the women who touched me before the indoctrination filled my mind. Women who once helped me realize they, and I, were more than the sum of our abused and neglected parts. Cassie, Heather, Jenny, Sarah, Norah, Kim, Karen. The weeds in my garden, the spirits who recalibrated my compass. The ghosts that I once thought haunted me, but would later learn were the true spirit guides.
I did not have words. I shrugged. One of her bandmates came over and said something into her ear. She smiled at the three of us, nodded, and left.
I got a hit of X from one of the lesbians and bought a CD. It was called, ‘Frenching the Bully’. It had many of the songs in the set. I would later find the ones not in the set were amazing too.
The Death and All We Talk About
On July 7, 1993 Mia joined the 27 Club. At the age of 27 she was beaten, raped, and murdered. The murderer would not be arrested, face trial, and be convicted for a decade. This, the gory details of her death, and the how the murderer was found is all that is spoken about. Her bandmates and people who loved her were on documentary after documentary after her death. Their hope was for the killer to be found and to tell her story as best they could.
Unsolved Mysteries and other shows like it had a salacious hook that was good for ratings. When we talk about Mia, we do not talk about the music as much as we do about her murder. But there is something worth discussing. How those who loved her made a difference after she passed. They were able to make this difference because she was loved and adored by many. She was brought in as a Jane Doe and the coroner recognized her because he loved her music. Seattle was a large city, but her presence made it smaller and touched lives.
The Difference of a Loved Life
Mia had friends and a community in the DIY punk world that loved her because of who she was.
According to Completely Kentucky Fandom Mia’s friends created a self-defense group called Home Alive. Home Alive organized benefit concerts and released albums with the participation of many bands, including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Heart, and the Presidents of the United States of America. The Home Alive group’s instructors offered a range of courses, from anger management and use of pepper spray to the martial arts
Joan Jett and Kathleen Hannah co wrote a song called “Go Home” in 1994. Joan Jett jammed with the surviving members of The Gits for a one off album called Evil Stig (“Gits Live” backwards).
When we published “The Doom or Destiny of the Ladies Tea Party” I wrote it knowing I would write about Mia one day. At the center of so much of the Punk Scene it felt like Joan Jett and Debbie Harry were always showing up and supporting other women artists. Kathleen Hanna was one of them.
In this article I also wrote about the death of a woman I dated named Sarah. Like Mia, I did not want to focus on that part, but it was part of the story. What mattered was how important it is to show up for one another and be present. That is what drives the jam in the heart of the DIY ethos.
Joan did not know Mia, but showing up is what her and Debbie do. Knowing in the 90’s Joan collaborated with Kathleen Hanna to write a song and then show up for her friends shows the authenticity of Jett’s ethos that I strive for. Show up. And Joan Jett also opened her checkbook to make sure more girls like Mia could walk safe and get home.
The Force of Mia and Why the Word Just Sucks
Many of our Fem Friday Features are about women who opened doors for others. They blazed trails and changed laws and hearts. I personally despise the word just. No one is just anything. Mia was not just a musician. She was an amazing artist and that is not only enough, it is more and a gift. A good song can change a life, inspire someone, move someone. That matters. Those inspirations save and change lives.
If 5 people take the time to check out the music of Mia Zapata and the Gits and read the book her drummer wrote about her that focuses on the person and the music and not the death, then some concentric circles of change will continue.
Mia Zapata was an amazing artist and The Gits was a great band. Her friends who honored her after tragedy were moved by the person they knew. We need to see people for who they are and what they give us, not what happened to them. Am I the writer or the sympathetic dyslexic with diabetes who was abused as a child? Are you the you that Mister Rogers likes just the way you are or the rape victim or cancer patient?
I know I am going to die. Some days it is a weight on me and other days it motivates me an a sublime way only a few would understand. I do not want to be remembered for a disease or freak accident. I want my words and the way I loved and showed up to be what people remember. And I want that for Mia because it was an amazing show.
Find a tribe and show up for the ones creating. They are changing the world despite all the just reductionist words used against them and are often here for a short time. Just a local artist, just an amateur, just a woman? With a simple action you can make a huge difference as they make a difference. Shares, likes, and showing up makes you a part of that change. And if you are a creative spirit, there is no just. Fuck that just shit and jam. If you know someone putting themselves out there and taking my advice to jam, show up for them, support them, and be there with them now, not after they are gone. Joan Jett has often said that in every town in America is a girl with a guitar and a voice in a band. There are also poets, writers, painters, and other bad asses wrecking hearts and changing minds.
The Gits! Check them out. Would love to hear what you think of their music.
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