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Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage To Hollywood Stage, A Chicana Punk Story

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    Ian Jane
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  • Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage To Hollywood Stage, A Chicana Punk Story

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    Written by: Alice Bag

    Released by:
    Feral House
    Released on: 9/27/2011

    Purchase From Amazon


    As much a story about growing up and finding your own identity as a retrospective look at the Los Angeles punk scene that once was, Alice Bag's Violence Girl is written in short, informal chapters that take on a very conversational nature. Bag, born Alice Armandariz, begins by explaining what her family dynamic was like. She talks about the influence of her older sister and how that made her want to grow up fast in certain regards but spends more time explaining the relationship that existed between her abusive father and her unusually strong mother and how that shaped her as she grew up.


    Self described throughout the book as chubby and ugly in her middle school years, she took refuse with a few likeminded music junkies as she got older and started to find a voice of her own as she matured. After obsessing over Elton John and jumping head first into the Rocky Horror Picture Show phenomena and the glitter rock scene, Bag started dating Nicky Beat of The Weirdos and, after seeing The Germs open for her boyfriends band, eventually wound up forming The Bags with partner in crime Patricia Morrison. Named after a gimmick they used in their early days of wearing bags on their heads to conceal their identities, the band would slowly but surely climb the ranks of the Los Angeles punk scene which would lead to various adventures and misadventures not the least of which involved Sid Vicious rolling around on stage stoned out of his mind and a fistfight with none other than Tom Waits.


    As the seventies turned into the eighties Morrison would leave the group and The Bags would be filmed for Penelope Spheeris' seminal punk documentary The Decline Of Western Civilization alongside other popular bands from the scene like FEAR, The Germs, Black Flag and X, the latter of whom Bag notes she initially had disdain for after making some assumptions about their singer, Exene Vervenka. When The Bags broke up less than a year later, Alice would then form Castration Squad and then, as she aged, take up other interests in her later years - all of which are detailed with unflinching honesty in the three hundred plus pages that make up this funny, fascinating and interesting book.


    Bag's honesty is what makes this work here and it's her details of her family life, the difficulties they struggled with and the dysfunction she grew up in that help flesh her out as a person here. As such, her voice and personality come shining through, with that sort of trademark irony and sense of humor that made much of her music as fun as it was. She's also surprisingly honest about her sexuality, burgeoning as it was in the early part of her coming out of her shell to the point where she was experimenting and how she would later learn to use it in her favor. It's interesting to learn how she went from introverted and awkward kid to sexual dynamo on stage, mixing up interesting anecdotes from her Mexican heritage making for a great read that anyone who has ever felt ostracized will not only relate to but take inspiration from.
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