Too often in recitations of punk history (UK, Los Angeles or New York), women who helped shape the culture are given short shrift. LA’s own Alice Bag actually reps two under-recognized creative streams that fed punk – women and Latino culture. Repping bare-knuckled DIY feminism just by being herself, Bag co-founded and was the lead singer of groundbreaking punk band The Bags, formed in LA in the mid-1970s. Her new eponymously titled album (her first solo album) has her tackling issues of immigration, corporations out of control, domestic violence, and the fallout of love affairs, all with characteristically blunt poetry.
The video for the first single, “Weigh About You,” just dropped today. As Bag croons biting words against a doo-wop inflected musical bed (“You’re got a weigh about you / you tend to drag everything down, you coach the rain out of the clouds…/ You turn a silver lining gray, turn sweetness into decay… You’ve got a weigh about you,”) assorted LA landmarks serve as the backdrop as animated rainclouds, stilettoes with a ball & chain attached, and fraying fabric threads drift across the screen. It’s short, bitter, and fantastic.
Photo by Greg Velasquez
Though you can see footage of the Bags in action in Penelope Spheeris’ classic 1981 punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, it’s Bag’s 2011 memoir “Violence Girl: East LA Rage to Hollywood Stage: A Chicana Punk Story” that not only fills in her own story, but illuminates a historical and cultural narrative of the LA Chicana experience that is too little known outside academic circles. She writes with unblinking candor about her immigrant parents, domestic violence, her abortion, and the process by which she transformed from a David Bowie-worshipping fangirl (with Motown in the mix) to one of punk’s leading lights. At the same time, big picture Latino/Chicano life in Los Angeles is sketched in with a nuance and attention to detail that make it an invaluable resource for anybody wanting to get a picture of Los Angeles that goes beyond the familiar and whitewashed.
Bags will be hosting a listening party for the new album at the Echo in Los Angeles on July 2nd. More info here.
