Alice Bag

LOS ANGELES, CA — Punk rock emerged in the late 70’s and made no apologies for the hell it raised. It welcomed the misfits, the outcasts, the huddled masses of black sheep — the misguided few who refused to fit the mold and weren’t ashamed of being different. It was an uproar of fearless troublemakers who wanted nothing more than the right to express themselves freely. Punk rock caused a ruckus, a public disturbance, and turned the music industry as the world knew it on its head.

On the front lines of the early LA punk scene, The Bags were led by co-founder and vocalist Alice Bag. She made a scene by wearing grocery bags and aprons on stage. Alice also had the audacity to be both bisexual and Chicana, inadvertently beginning a wave of activism that has grown exponentially over the past four decades.

If you ever get to meet Alice Bag in person, you’ll quickly realize two things about her: she’s as electric as her blue hair and at 60 can light up a room like a strobe. She’s a force of nature wrapped in leopard print and leather with the kind of energy you can feel the second she’s in your presence.

The realization that she could make a living doing what she loved came at a young age. “I was in elementary school. I had a teacher who invited me to participate in a recording. There were these filmmakers on campus, and they were recording educational cartoons. They needed the voices of children to sing certain parts, and the teacher picked me. It was really exciting to be able to go into a professional recording studio and to sing with other kids and then to get a big, fat paycheck at the end of it. I got paid $100. We lived in East LA, and this was the ‘60s. The rent on our house was $60 a month. And I got $100 to sing some tracks for this cartoon. It blew my mind. I just thought, ‘I can do what I love and make a living.’”

Performing, she recalls making very little money. “We needed to get on the stage and would’ve done it whether or not they paid us. That’s how you know if you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing in life. If you would do it anyway, then you’re on the right path,” she attests.

Another indication that you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing: is if forty years later you’re just as much into it as when you started. Bag still rocks the hell out of the stages lucky enough to have her. With massive amounts of energy, she shows no signs of slowing down. “I think my favorite part of performing is connecting with people and feeling like either my performance or my energy or my lyrics connect with the audience.”

She adds “I feel like some artists get off on getting awards or getting huge record sales. For me, the ultimate reward is having somebody come up to me after a show and say ‘I’ve been in your shoes. I felt what you felt on stage’ or ‘when you were singing it touched me.’ All those things are why I do it. That’s why I write music.”

It’s a rarity in the age of studio manufactured performers, but Bag is old school and hands on. She plays the guitar and keyboard. “I feel like instruments, my voice, and my body are tools. My ability to write songs is my main tool, and I use whatever means are at my disposal. My expression comes through my songwriting and the different instruments that I play are really just tools to get that song written.”

Writing music that is truly soul-touching takes a certain level of openness that many struggle to reach and few ever achieve. “I’m not scared of being open. For example, when I was writing my first book, Violence Girl, there were things about my childhood that I hadn’t addressed. In writing the story I realized, ‘Oh, I have to talk about this.’”

She reveals that it was difficult to face things she’d willfully tried to bury in the past, but the thought of sharing with other people or having readers look at my life wasn’t an issue. “I want my family to know me better. I want my husband to know what I went through when I was growing up. I want my kids to see me as a full human being. I think a lot of times when you’re a mom, you feel like you become less than human. You become the nurturer. And it’s important for my children to know I had a life, or I have a life,” she asserts. “I really wanted my kids, especially my daughters, to feel a connection to me as just someone who had been a girl their age, who had been through the same pressures that maybe they’ve gone through, and that I’ve overcome some of those things.”

Because we live in a society that’s built on tearing people down, being open means being vulnerable. “I just recently put out a video on YouTube that’s called “77” and it talks about the gender wage gap. I got tremendous amounts of trolls writing to me, insulting me and saying the gender wage gap is a myth, why was I so ignorant,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘That is kind of how I gauge that I’m doing what I need to do.’ If the people that I disagree with react that violently to me, then I’m doing the right thing. I pissed the right people off, and that’s a good thing. And the people who agree with me are right there feeling like, ‘Yes! There is a gender wage gap. Yes, speak up! Be a feminist. Be strong!’”

I asked Bag about the differences between a man’s and a woman’s experience in the music industry and if it even matters. “I definitely think it matters. I think a woman’s experience in the world is different from the experience of men. So even if you are not consciously trying to address being a woman, even if you think, ‘I’m just doing my thing as a musician, I’m not representing,’ your experience growing up was different. The world sees us differently and treats us differently, so our experiences are going to be different,” she stresses. “It’s up to us to decide we’re going to demand to be treated the way that we see ourselves,” she says. “If you feel like you can’t stand up and do this by yourself, you need allies, then you go and find your allies because we’re out here. I’m happy to stand with somebody else and say, ‘No, you can’t treat a woman this way.’”

A lot has changed in the music industry since Bag made her first appearance at the infamous Masque in September of 1977. “When I started off in punk, it was very much an inclusive situation where women were involved in all sorts of jobs. Everything was wide open to women and it felt like a truly egalitarian time in music. Then a few years later, things became very masculine and very white. People of color and people who were queer felt out of sorts. They didn’t feel like they fit into the punk movement.”

Considering those changes in the music industry, specifically punk, and the obstacles she’s had to overcome, in hindsight would she still choose music? “In many ways, I don’t feel like I really had a choice. I feel like music chose me. Music always had been there for me. It’s like a part of me and at the same time it’s the part of me that’s always a friend. When I feel down, music lifts me. When I feel like I’m angry, music helps me find a way to express it. I feel like music is the side of me that is always going to bolster me. It’s just a healing thing.”

The lessons Bag has learned throughout her life speak to my life as well. “Be bold, and don’t be afraid to fail, because failure is part of the process of success. We all have to try, and trying means that sometimes things are going to work and sometimes they’re not. If you stumble, get up, and keep going.”

— Written by Keldine Hull
— Large format photography by Milana Burdette
— Installation by Farida Amar & Milana Burdette
— First published in [ Issue 3 ]