It is rare these days in the music industry that a person is able to enjoy a career that spans many decades without having to sell one’s soul to make a mortgage payment. For those who do sell themselves, usually a casino reunion show is in their near future, but rarely do they get to maintain the street cred they once easily commanded with the flick of their (usually hand-rolled) cigarette.
This is not the path for Alice Bag, founding member of the group The Bags and an integral piece of the Los Angeles punk rock movement. After all these years since punk's 1970s birth, she is still proving she has that punk spirit, even if she has crossed a major age milestone.
What makes Bag stand out in the male-dominated punk world is not just that she is a female, but also a Chicana feminist with an unapologetic desire to upend the status quo with her rebellious style. She has even written a book, Violence Girl, documenting her years in the punk scene of L.A. that brought her in contact with the many acts who also performed at well-established venues like The Masque and Whisky-a-Go-Go.
In addition to rubbing elbows with many cross-over punks like Henry Rollins and The Go-Gos during their formative years, The Bags were featured in Penelope Spheeris' documentary The Decline of Western Civilization.
"Violence Girl is not some sentimental look back at how great it all was,” said Henry Rollins in the LA Weekly. “Alice [Bag], without exaggeration, allows the reader to understand how exciting and in-the-moment things could be -- but also how quickly and easily things can go bad and come to an end. With The Bags in the middle of it, it was a time of incredible innovation, explosive creativity and recordings that stand the test of time.”
Bag spends her time married with children but also maintaining a blog, "Diary of a Bad Housewife," which seeks to chronicle the punk scene of Southern California. She will be in town to read from her new photograph-rich memoir, Violence Girl and will perform a few songs at this intimate Avenue for the Arts artists space.
In addition, Bag's work has been awarded probably one of the highest forms of cultural cred that can be bestowed as it has been selected to be included in a traveling Smithsonian exhibition, "American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music.”
Admission: Free
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