Girl In A Coma - Biography
With a shared youthful exuberance for the music of Morrissey and The Smiths, San Antonio-based Girl in a Coma—named after Moz’s own “Girlfriend in a Coma”—is a three-piece rock set formed initially by Phanie Diaz (drums) and longtime friend, Jenn Alva (bass). Emerging from a crush band paying homage to Morrissey—yet with musical leanings towards Nirvana—they became a full-fledged rock band with the addition of Phanie’s younger sister, Nina Diaz (vocals/guitar). The trio toiled for years as an unsigned act playing regional gigs before a series of events led to signing with Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records label in 2006. Since that time Girl in a Coma has released two full-length albums, have toured with such acts as Frank Black, The Pogues and Xiu Xiu, while winning awards and breaking through on independent rock charts. They even realized a dream when Morrissey asked them to join his tour in 2007 when Kristeen Young was fired.
Alva (and Elvis fan) and Phanie Diaz had been playing together in miscellaneous bands for a couple of years when a then 12-year-old Nina Diaz got the courage to show them a song that she’d wrote. Impressed by her younger sister’s budding ability on guitar and on the vox, Phanie asked the Nina to front their band and Girl in a Coma was born. They wrote material and performed gigs out for the next few years before one of their demo tapes was heard by Morrissey’s music director, Boz Boorer, who brought them to London to record a more proper one called Gira O Morir (2005).
They were soon thereafter chosen to become one of the subjects for a documentary about the struggle of all-female bands called Jammin, and, during a performance one night at the Knitting Factory in New York, Joan Jett caught the tail-end of the show. Liking what she saw from the raw rock band, she signed them to her label. Girl in a Coma was a different kind of act—Nina Diaz was only 17 years old at the time, the other two were openly lesbian, they were Mexican, and they rocked in multiple genres.
After performing at SXSW in Austin in 2007, the band’s debut album was released on Blackheart, Both Before I’m Gone. The 14-track album made a good splash in the indie rock world, rising to #23 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, mixing punk hooks with Nina’s Moz-like vocals (and lyrics), updated-Mexican balladry and traces of ’50s rockabilly. The escalating song “Clumsy Sky” won Best Punk Song by the Independent Music Awards, and the album’s underlying romanticism made Girl in a Coma one of indie rock’s most contrasting acts.
The band would return two years later with Trio B.C. (2009 Blackheart Records), a 13-track album which featured a cameo by the band’s greatest champion, Joan Jett, on “Joannie in the City”—and indeed, the image and the songs in general bore a closer resemblance to Jett’s style. While wholly an American rock/pop-punk album, the references to Latin culture on Trio B.C. are more prominent, as the album takes its name from the Diaz sisters’ grandfather’s band and the closing track, “Ven Cerca” is sung in Spanish. Greg Collins produced the album, with mixing and co-production efforts by Joan Jett.
In 2010, Girl in a Coma put out three 7” vinyl’s/digital recordings that they called the Adventures in Coverland series, which featured cover versions of songs as wide and varied as David Bowie (“As the World Falls Down”), The Beatles (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”) and Joy Division (“Transmission”). In 2011 a new record appeared, titled Exits & All The Rest.
