Xicana Women Claim Their Rightful Place In Punk
By Nidia Melissa Bautista
The building guitar riff thunders into the listless crowd of mostly white dudes dressed in patched-up leather jackets. Urged by the onlookers’ growing anxiety to channel angst into dancing, the band picks up speed as lead singer Alice Bag enters into a high-pitch scream that hurls the anxious punks into a complete frenzy. Convulsing on stage and teetering in stilettos, Bag knocks down kids who’ve jumped up to dance next to her, holding her own in front of the packed club. For two furious minutes, the agitated crowd in Los Angeles’s The Fleetwood club pummels in chaos along to the screeching vocals of a Xicana frontwoman in a pink dress.
Such was The Bags’ performance in Penelope Spheeris’s punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, filmed in 1980. Emerging in Los Angeles in 1977, The Bags was comprised of Pat Morrison on bass (who left the band prior to the recording of Decline), Craig Lee and Rob Ritter on guitar, Terry Graham on drums, and Alicia Armendariz, also known as Alice Bag, as the frontwoman. Although the documentary wasn’t released until 1981, by which time the band had disbanded and some members had gone to play in bands like The Gun Club and The Damned, Alice Bag’s fiery performance and screeching vocals solidified her place in L.A.’s early punk scene. This self-assured, fierce style…
