Henry Rollins: The Column! Alice Bag's 
Punk Rock Legacy

See also: Alice Bag Reads And Performs at La Luz De Jesus Gallery, October 15, 2011

More than 30 years ago, in Washington, D.C., I secured a copy of a single by a Los Angeles band called The Bags. The two-song 7-inch, released on Dangerhouse, had a girl on the cover who looked right at you with huge eyes. The songs, "Survive" and "Babylonian Gorgon," were great and made many of my mix tapes.

A few weeks ago, the girl on the cover of the single sent me her new autobiography, released on Feral House Press. It's called Violence Girl, and the author is Alice Bag. I read it from cover to cover. If you are a fan of the classic, early punk music that was happening in the late 1970s here in Los Angeles, this is a well-written and informed read from someone who was there from the beginning.

Alice wasn't one of those who turned up late to the game and benefited from the hard work and innovation of the L.A. punk bands and musicians who came before her. Rather, she was in one of the bands that got the whole thing started. She was at shows you could only wish you had seen. She was there at the start of a musical revolution that not only changed the L.A. music scene forever but was an extremely influential part of the spread of punk and independent music all over America. The local punk scene in Los Angeles picked up speed very quickly and forced the LAPD to confront a youth movement that continues to this day. More importantly, she helped put a lot of females on the stage, where normally only men were allowed. Punk rock changed that forever, and Alice is one of the first who got up there.

This scene was so full of great bands that fans in those days would have been spoiled for choice on a weekly basis. The Germs, The Weirdos, X, Black Randy, The Controllers, The Skulls, Catholic Discipline, The Screamers, The Dickies, The Plugz and many others all played locally and frequently. Alice was there in the middle of all of it, for better and sometimes for worse. That scene was living very fast and dying very young, to borrow a phrase. (But it's true.) Many of those people are gone now.

Alice is real L.A. -- born and raised. In Violence Girl she details life with her parents. Her father was by turns kind and protective and also dependably violent, inflicting severe physical harm on Alice's mother on a regular basis. Alice's mother took the abuse, perhaps to keep the family together. Both parents are featured throughout Violence Girl; while they had their problems, they remained very supportive of Alice.