With our 10th round pick, #200 overall, AliceLoveGarden is proud to select in the category of female vocalist, from The Gits, the late Mia Zapata.
Mia Katherine Zapata (
August 25,
1965 –
July 7,
1993) was the lead singer for the
Seattle punk band
The Gits. Highly influential in the
Seattle, Washington music scene, she was considered a dynamic live performer and a uniquely gifted lyricist and painter. Zapata is cited as a major influence by fellow Seattle punk band
7 Year Bitch, singers
Cinder Block of
hardcore punk bands
Tilt and Retching Red, Andrea Zollo of
indie rock band
Pretty Girls Make Graves and
Brody Dalle of the punk band
The Distillers.
In the fall of 1986, she helped co-found The Gits while attending
Antioch College, a
liberal arts college located in
Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1989, Zapata, along with the rest of The Gits, relocated to Seattle. The band released a series of well-received singles on local
indie labels from 1990 to 1991. In 1992, the band released its debut album
Frenching the Bully, and received good reviews. Their reputation progressively increased before the band entered the studio in 1993 to begin work on their second album
Enter: The Conquering Chicken.
[edit] Death
On the morning of
July 7,
1993, Zapata decided to walk home following a night of drinking at
Capitol Hill watering hole the Comet Tavern. On the way home, she was brutally
raped and
murdered in the
Central District. It is believed she encountered her murderer shortly after 2:15 am. According to
Unsolved Mysteries, a couple watching a late show from about two blocks from where she was found heard what sounded like screams around 3 am. A woman found her body around 3:30 am in the street around the intersection of 24th and Yesler in Seattle's Central District neighborhood. According to the
medical examiner, if she had not been strangled she would have died from the internal injuries suffered during the beating.
Addendum: Zapata's killer was recently convicted of her murder largely based on DNA recovered from bite wounds. A movie about the band was produced in 2005...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463028/ and they were featured largely in the documentary Hype!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116589/ which is a fascinating look at the Seattle scene of the time and how some of the best bands in Seattle at the time never made it, through no fault of their own. Excellent documentary.
Second Skin...AWESOME! Ignore the annoying graphics, I chose this video because it is the cleanest audio of this song.
Here's to Your F@&# from Hype! A little conversation about the Gits and Mia from the band 7 Year Bitch leads up to it.
Absynthe
And finally, Another Shot of Whiskey