Alice Bag: “I Helped Invent This” — LA Punk, Chicana Identity & Embracing Her Weirdness | De Los Podcast

Hosts Fidel Martínez and Suzy Exposito sit down with Alice Bag, founding member and frontwoman of The Bags, one of the pioneering bands of the LA punk scene for a wide-ranging conversation about five decades of fighting for space, staying loud, and refusing to ask anyone's permission to belong. Alice traces the arc from attending the Chicano Moratorium at age 10 with her father, being laughed off by a MEChA recruitment table for looking "too weird," and eventually deciding she didn't need anyone's permission to call herself a Chicana, a resolution that became the foundation for everything that followed. She talks about what it felt like to grow up in East LA and walk into the punk scene knowing she belonged there; about the Hillside Stranglers creating a climate of fear in the late 70s that forced the punk community –particularly its women– to protect each other in ways that showed what the scene was really made of; and about how seeing Patti Smith perform taught her that a woman could seduce an audience entirely with her mind. Chicana rock star Alice Bag addresses the revisionist narrative that punk was a white male invention and that others joined in — because, as she tells in her memoir “Violence Girl,” she was there from the beginning. She also talks about her recent inclusion in the Great Wall of LA, her band’s last show with Bikini Kill and her work with the youth summer camp Chicas Rockeras Plus: how a TV gig for a Peacock show filmed in Puerto Rico led to Juanita and Juan, her musical collaboration with Kid Congo; why she applied for Mexican citizenship after a phone call from her aunt in Mexico City; and what she saw at her final LA show opening for Bikini Kill that made her believe the next generation of punk is in very good hands. Produced by Los Angeles Times, L.A. Times Studios, and Sonoro. 🎙 De Los Podcast drops new episodes every week on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation. From the Los Angeles Times and Sonoro comes the De Los Podcast — a weekly conversation where music, pop culture and Latinidad collide. Hosted by De Los editors Fidel Martínez and Suzy Exposito, the show pulls back the curtain on the stories, people and cultural moments shaping the Latino experience in the U.S. and beyond. Every episode is a front-row seat to conversations with the artists, actors, filmmakers and thinkers who are moving the culture forward — not just talking about it. Guests include Leslie Grace, Sen Dog of Cypress Hill, Xolo Maridueña, Fabrizio Guido, producer and singer Empress Of, among others. Think of it as the cultural conversation that major American media rarely makes room for — a space where Latinos get to talk, unfiltered, about what they create and who they are. Produced by Los Angeles Times, L.A. Times Studios, and Sonoro. New episodes every week — available on YouTube and all major podcasts.