At MacArthur Park in downtown, Alice Bag raged to a crowd sprawled among trees and under twinkling lights on August 30. The Los Angeles punk pioneer released an album, Blueprint, earlier this year. Playing a set of new and old songs (from her days in The Bags), Bag put on a set inspiring activism and headbanging alike.
Bag started with The Bags’ “Babylonian Gorgon.” After, she asked, “Are you ready to sing along? This song has easy lyrics.” She followed with “Turn It Up,” beginning a series of songs from Blueprint. “The Sparkling Path,” “Blueprint” and “77” came next. Bag always made sure the crowd knew what she was singing about. Before each song, she would give a brief explanation before punching into the track. A handful of times, a man’s voice shouted from the crowd. It was hard to hear what he said, but it was indeed a strong attempt to talk over her. To whatever he said before “The Sparkling Path,” Bag replied, “Well, no actually. I’m going to do what I want… I hope you like it, because I do.”
Allison Wolfe, of Bratmobile, made an appearance for “77.” In singing about the gender wage gap (women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar, and yet is worse for women of color, as Bag noted), Wolfe and Bag belted at each other as if validating one another’s anger. Such energy fueled the rest of the performance, shouting “77!” from opposite ends of the stage. Wolfe remained for a bit more of the set, including “No Means No.” The song, according to Bag, sounds like a pop song and yet is about date rape. “It’s something that happens right here… They need to know we will stand with them,” she said. Bag was unapologetically honest and educational throughout the evening, but the mood never felt too somber. Before beginning “No Means No,” she said, “This next song is about a serious subject… And no it’s not about being tangled up in the cord,” as she wound out of the long microphone cord.
Toward the end of the set, Bag took a deep dive into her intersectional feminism. She touched on El Chicano Moratorium in “White Justice.” In the song she sings, “This march feels like a parade,” which could be explained during her introduction: “People don’t want to hear when people of color protest… [it’s] shut down violently… white justice does not work for me.” Bag continued on the topic of her identity in “Programmed.” With both poise and feeling, Bag told the crowd about how growing up she felt she had to leave her culture at the door when coming to school: “That’s not education. That’s indoctrination.” She made a call-to-action: “We need to empower our children so they can steer this country right.” She then, no less, sang “Reign of Fear,” a song about President Trump’s rule. “We reject your reign of fear,” she drawls out over fast guitars, renouncing the anxiety and despair one may so often feel during this political chaos and doom. Without even a pause, Bag and crew launched into The Bags’ “Gluttony.”
Bags and the band exited but returned for one more song after the event’s host hyped up the crowd with a chant for their return. It was the first time Bag talked that night about being in The Bags. She discussed an incident in the ’70s with some bands from across the pond: “We had these people from England come over and they said… you guys have a lot of good bands but a lot of them are just copying the English bands.” The insult to The Bag’s creativity and originality inspired their guitarist to write “We Don’t Need the English.” A classic “1, 2, 3 ,4” tick off, and Bag was a whirling vision of white, bounding across the stage, exclaiming, “We don’t need the English telling us what to be!” In continuing with punk standards, the song capped in less than 90 seconds. Bag left the crowd with one final piece of advice: “That is all we have for you tonight… and if you haven’t done so, register to vote.”
Set List:
- Babylonian Gorgon (Bags song)
- Turn It Up
- The Sparkling Path
- Blueprint
- 77
- No Means No
- White Justice
- Programmed
- Reign of Fear
- Gluttony (Bags song)
Encore:
- We Don’t Need the English (Bags song)
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