The Gits are one of the reasons this site exists.
I first heard them not long after I got to Seattle. Somebody played me “Second Skin” and Mia’s voice stopped me cold.
I’d heard plenty of punk singers by then.
This wasn’t that.
She could scream, obviously, but there was all this other stuff in her voice — blues, soul, heartbreak, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes she sounded like she was about to tear the room apart and sometimes like she was barely holding the song together.
Then I bought Frenching the Bully.
That was it.
“Another Shot of Whiskey,” “Second Skin,” “Here’s to Your Fuck,” “Spear and Magic Helmet,” “Absynthe.” That record still sounds dangerous to me.
The funny thing is that The Gits weren’t originally from Seattle at all. Mia grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and the band got together at Antioch College in Ohio back in ’86. Mia, Joe Spleen, Matt Dresdner and Steve Moriarty eventually packed everything up and moved out here in ’89.
Seattle adopted them pretty quickly.
By the time I arrived, they were just part of the place.
They were punk, definitely, but calling them a punk band never quite explained Mia. She had too much blues and soul in her voice for that. You could hear somebody like Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday hiding somewhere underneath all that noise, and then Joe would come crashing back in and suddenly you were getting kicked in the teeth again.
I saw them at Satyricon in Portland on February 27, 1993.
I remember Mia more than anything else.
She didn’t perform like somebody trying to look cool. She looked completely involved in whatever was happening inside the song. One minute she’d be bent over the microphone like she was fighting with it, the next she’d look up and grin at somebody in the crowd.
She was funny, too.
That gets lost sometimes when people talk about her now.
Everybody remembers the intensity. They should. But she could make a room laugh.
The band was getting better and better around then. They were working on another record, touring more, and it finally felt like people outside the Northwest were starting to notice what everybody around here already knew.
And then July 7 happened.
I’m not going to write out what happened to Mia here. You can find that somewhere else if you really need to read it.
She was twenty-seven years old.
That’s enough.
What I remember is what happened around Seattle afterward. People were angry. People were scared. People started looking out for each other differently. Friends of Mia helped start Home Alive, and suddenly conversations about getting home safely and protecting each other weren’t abstract anymore.
The Gits were over.
Enter: The Conquering Chicken came out the following year. The others finished what they could from the recordings they’d already made with Mia.
It’s a hell of a record.
“Bob (Cousin O.),” “Seaweed,” “Sign of the Crab,” “Precious Blood.” And their version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” absolutely destroys me.
I don’t play it very often.
When I do, I play the whole thing.
There have been other records since. Kings & Queens collected the early stuff in ’96, and Seafish Louisville came out a couple years ago with live recordings and other material. I’m grateful somebody kept those tapes.
But there isn’t much.
That’s the thing with The Gits. There should have been more.
A lot more.
It’s been almost nine years now and nobody has been arrested for Mia’s murder. I don’t know what else to say about that without getting angry.
I hope someday somebody answers for it.
Until then, I’d rather people remember the records.
Remember the voice.
Remember that she was funny.
Remember that The Gits were a fucking great band.
This site is dedicated to Mia for a reason.
