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Bags | |
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| Also known as | Alice Bag Band |
| Origin | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| Genres | Punk rock |
| Years active | 1977–1981 |
| Labels | Dangerhouse |
| Past members | Alice Armandariz Patricia Morrison Craig Lee Rob Ritter Terry Graham Geza X Joe Nanini |
Bags (also known as the Bags or Alice Bag Band) were an American punk rock band formed in 1977, one of the first generation of punk rock bands to emerge from Los Angeles, California.
The Bags were formed by Alicia Armendariz and Patricia Morrison, who had met while waiting in line to see Elton John guest on Cher . [1] The two became fast friends and eventually decided to form a band called Femme Fatale. [2]
Kim Fowley heard about their band and asked the members to audition for Venus and the Razorblades, Fowley's next attempt at creating a band after the Runaways had left him. [3]
Femme Fatale eventually morphed into a new band, which became Bags. They took the band's name and their stage names "Alice Bag" and "Pat Bag" from a gimmick that the band used during early performances where they performed with grocery bags over their heads (the practice did not last, in part due to an incident where Darby Crash of the Germs got on stage and ripped the bag off Alice's head). Alice Bag was the vocalist and Pat Bag played bass, and the rest of the band comprised guitar players Craig Lee and Rob Ritter, and Terry Graham on drums.
The Bags played their first concert at The Masque on September 10, 1977. [4] Their concerts were often accompanied by disorderly scenes, including altercations with celebrities, such as one between singer Tom Waits and drummer Nicky Beat at The Troubadour. [5]
In 1978, they released their only record, a single called "Survive", backed with "Babylonian Gorgon", released by independent record label Dangerhouse Records. "We Don't Need The English" was included on the Yes L.A. punk compilation album released by the same label.
After this, Pat Bag left the band and Ritter switched to bass. In 1980 the group, was filmed by Penelope Spheeris for the documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization , which also featured the Germs, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, X and other Los Angeles punk bands. At the release of the film in 1981 the producers billed the group as "Alice Bag Band" to avoid any conflict with Morrison, but the band had already broken up by then.
Craig Lee also played with Catholic Discipline, and he and co-member Phranc performed together occasionally when she embarked on her subsequent solo career. However, Lee is best known as a writer and critic for publications such as Flipside fanzine, among others, and as co-author of the book Hardcore California: A History Of Punk and New Wave. He died as a result of AIDS in 1991. [6]
Terry Graham went on to play drums for The Gun Club. Pat, now known as Patricia Morrison, also joined The Gun Club soon after. Once she left The Gun Club she joined The Sisters of Mercy and then The Damned, as bassist. She married Dave Vanian, the Damned's lead singer.
Rob Ritter also joined The Gun Club, and appeared on their first LP Fire Of Love, but then left, changing his name to Rob Graves and forming the death rock band 45 Grave, [7] with Dinah Cancer, Don Bolles, previously of the Germs and Nervous Gender, Paul Roessler of The Screamers and Nervous Gender and Paul Cutler. 45 Grave was influential in the creation of goth rock. Graves died in 1990 of a heroin overdose. [8]
Alice Bag joined the death rock band Castration Squad, which included Phranc and Dinah Cancer among its many members. In the 1990s, she formed Cholita! with punk rock drag queen Vaginal Davis and the band released several videos. After this, she performed with Las Tres and then formed Stay at Home Bomb, her most recent musical project. According to her official website, since the deaths of Lee and Ritter and her estrangement from Morrison, she considers the Bags to be permanently disbanded, and has refused to perform Bags songs in public.
A collection of recordings from the group has been released on Artifix Records [9] as well as a reissue of the original Dangerhouse single.
At the 2008 exhibit "Vexing: Female Voices From East L.A. Punk" at the Claremont Museum of Art, Armandariz performed punk versions of mariachi music (and some Bags songs too). [10]
In 2011 Alice Bag published her memoir, Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, A Chicana Punk Story [11] and embarked on a reading and performance tour across the United States. [12]
Chicano rock, also called chicano fusion, is rock music performed by Mexican American (Chicano) groups or music with themes derived from Chicano culture. Chicano Rock, to a great extent, does not refer to any single style or approach. Some of these groups do not sing in Spanish at all, or use many specific Latin instruments or sounds. The subgenre is defined by the ethnicity of its performers, and as a result covers a wide range of approaches.
The Gun Club were an American post-punk band from Los Angeles that existed from 1979 to 1996. Created and led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce, they were notable as one of the first bands in the punk rock subculture to incorporate influences from blues, rockabilly, and country music. The Gun Club has been called a "tribal psychobilly blues" band, as well as initiators of the punk blues sound cowpunk – "He (Pierce) took Robert Johnson and pre-war acoustic blues and 'punkified' it. Up until then bands were drawing on Iggy & The Stooges and the New York Dolls but he took it back so much further for inspiration."
Nervous Gender is an American punk rock electronic band formed in Los Angeles in 1978 by Gerardo Velazquez, Edward Stapleton, Phranc and Michael Ochoa.
Phranc, is an American singer-songwriter whose career began playing in several bands in the late 1970s Los Angeles punk rock scene. Her musical style later shifted during the 1980s as a solo artist, into a self-proclaimed "All-American Jewish lesbian folksinger."
Patricia Anne Rainone, better known by her stage name Patricia Morrison, is an American bass guitarist, singer and songwriter. She has worked with Bags, the Gun Club, Fur Bible, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Damned.
Nickey Alexander is an American drummer.
Dangerhouse Records was a punk music record label based in Los Angeles, California.
Varrio Nuevo Estrada, also known as VNEx3, is a Chicano criminal street gang founded in Boyle Heights, California, in the Estrada Courts housing projects. VNE is one of 34 gangs in a 15-square-mile area east of downtown Los Angeles.
Yes L.A. is a six-song compilation EP featuring first-generation Californian punk rock bands. It was also the final release of the short-lived but influential Dangerhouse Records label.
The Mechanics (1977–1981) are considered to be the first punk band to come out of Fullerton, California.
Catholic Discipline was an American punk rock band, formed in 1979 in San Francisco, California, by Slash Fanzine editor Claude Bessy. The initial line-up of the band featured Bessy on vocals, Phranc on guitar, Rick Brodey on bass guitar, Richard Meade on keyboards and Craig Lee on drums.
Since the mid-1970s, California has had thriving regional punk rock movements. It primarily consists of bands from the Los Angeles, Orange County, Ventura County, San Diego, San Fernando Valley, San Francisco, Fresno, Bakersfield, Alameda County, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, Oakland and Berkeley areas.
Revenge is the fourth studio album by the American rock band T.S.O.L., released in 1986 through Enigma Records. With increased exposure brought on by continuous touring, and influenced by the growing hard rock scene in their native Southern California, the band moved away from the punk- and gothic rock-influenced sound of their past in favor of simpler rock numbers. To promote the album, two songs were used in film soundtracks: "Nothin' for You" in The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and "Revenge" in Dangerously Close (1986). "Revenge" and "Colors " were also made into the band's first music videos.
Alicia "Alice" Armendariz is an American punk rock singer better known as Alice Bag. She is the lead vocalist and co-founder of the Bags, one of the first punk bands to form in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. Her first book, Violence Girl: From East LA Rage to Hollywood Stage, tells the story of her childhood in East Los Angeles, her eventual move to Hollywood, and the euphoria and fallout from the first punk wave.
"Forming" is the debut single by American punk rock band the Germs. Released on What?, an independent start-up label, in July 1977, it is regarded as the first true Los Angeles punk record.
White Fence is a predominantly Mexican American street gang in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles.
Rob Graves, also known as Rob Ritter, was an American guitarist and bassist, born in Detroit, Michigan. Graves was known for his work in the 1970s and 1980s punk scene in Los Angeles, performing with Bags, the Gun Club, 45 Grave, Thelonious Monster and the Loafin' Hyenas. Prior to relocating to LA in February 1978, Graves had played in Phoenix punk band the Exterminators.
Women in the early East Los Angeles punk scene were part of a subcultural movement associated with a brand of feminism that combined the ethics and politics of the Chicano movement, Second-wave feminism, the LGBT community, and punk rock music during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The Linda Lindas is a rock band from Los Angeles. The all-girl group comprises Bela Salazar, Eloise Wong, and sisters Lucia and Mila de la Garza.
Punk 45: Chaos in the City of Angels and Devils is a 2016 compilation album released by Soul Jazz Records. The album compiles early music from the Los Angeles punk rock music scene from various intendent music labels, such as Dangerhouse, Upsetter and Bomp! Records.
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