Alice Bag: The Punk Rock Scene That Soundtracked a Serial Killer
DISGRACELAND
This episode of Disgraceland explores the intersection of Los Angeles' burgeoning punk rock scene in the late 1970s and the terror of the Hi
Key takeaways
- The punk rock scene in LA was born out of resistance to mainstream culture and served as a sanctuary for marginalized youth.
Main topics
- Los Angeles punk rock scene in the late 1970s
- The Hillside Strangler murders and their impact on LA society
Notable quotes
'Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.'
Conclusion
Alice Bag's story illustrates how music and community can become lifelines in times
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:01) This is exactly right. Double Speaker 5 (0:11) Elvis. Speaker 2 (0:13) I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 3 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want. Speaker 8 (0:29) Cindy said I had to choose between the truth and my family, and I had to choose the truth. Speaker 2 (0:34) Listen to Season 3 of Burden of Guilt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:43) On August 4th, Speaker 5 (0:44) 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died. The third way. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Hollywoodland is part of the Exactly Right Network. Listen to new episodes every Monday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (1:18) It's Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. This season, we've got some awesome guests ready to dole out advice. Guests like Tiffany Haddish. Kind of slide into people's DMs. I like Bumble. Also, Speaker 8 (1:30) girl, FarmersOnly.com. Estate sales, funerals, auctions are usually good. There's a lot of good men there. Grocery stores near Speaker 3 (1:39) gyms. Darcy Carden. Sherry Oteri. Anna Faris. Dave Franco. Madeline Klein, Adam Scott, T.S. Madison, and more. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (1:57) This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. Speaker 5 (2:20) This is a story of how punk rock took root in Los Angeles, just as a prolific serial killer began to terrorize the city. It's the story of an underground punk club where seminal LA bands like The Germs and The Bags got their start. And it's also about one of the regulars at that club. A regular who turned up dead, strangled and dumped on a freeway off-ramp near Griffith Park. It's a story about the murders of many young women, ten to be exact. All of them killed within the span of four months. The murders sent Los Angeles into a paranoid frenzy, and it fortified the community of punk rockers who found strength in numbers in the guidance of one of their protectors, Alice Bagg of the Bags. Like many in the LA punk scene circa 1977, Alice Bagg made great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Unpleasant Valley Sunday MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to You Light Up My Life by Speaker 1 (3:37) Debbie Boone. And why would I play you that specific slice of Pat Boone descendant cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on November 23rd, 1977. And that was the day that 28-year-old Jane King, a regular at L.A.'s underground punk shows, was found dead. causing the local media to finally take notice of a killing spree that had been going on for weeks. Speaker 5 (4:07) This is the story of Alice Bagg and Los Angeles punk rock being born Speaker 1 (4:12) in the shadow of the Hillside Strangler. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Speaker 5 (4:49) There's a quote, often attributed to Dorothy Parker, that goes, Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city. Which is kind of funny because, yes, although L.A. is defined by its sprawl, you don't typically think of the city having an identity crisis. Los Angeles has long been pitched as the glitzy, glamorous, sun-kissed flip side to New York City's gritty, mean streets. Los Angeles is home to Hollywood, after all. If you've gone Hollywood, Speaker 1 (5:20) you've leveled up, big-timed us all, and sold out. New York had television and the Talking Heads, and L.A. had Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan. New York had the Velvet Underground, and L.A. had the fucking Eagles, man. Speaker 5 (5:34) And in the late 1970s in L.A., the titans of the entertainment industry, the big three, that's music, movies, and pornography, cavorted, canoodled, and did tons of blow at some of the chic-iest and freakiest nightclubs in the entire country. Spots like the Paradise and the Starwood, the Seven Seas and the Kit Kat. Speaker 1 (5:55) Most of these clubs were owned by the notorious L.A. crime dude, Eddie Nash, where one could get Speaker 5 (6:02) down to a soundtrack of disco and what we now lovingly refer to as yacht rock. But what if you rejected the hedonist offerings that Eddie Nash and his ilk were serving up on silver platters? What if you were allergic to the dulcet tones of Captain Antonio and Al Stewart? What if your platonic ideal of Los Angeles was not a room full of herbs doing the disco duck, but instead was a collective of others, misfits, weirdos, outcasts? All of them brought together by something that wasn't plastic or artificial, but by something that was real. Cultivated by real people, not by Speaker 1 (6:42) phony rock stars. They didn't want you to have this. And by they, I mean the ones running this town. Warner Brothers, Paramount, CBS. Eddie Nash didn't want you doing your own thing. Eddie Speaker 5 (6:54) Nash wanted you doing his thing. Eddie Nash wanted you partying in his clubs and buying his overpriced and shitty watered-down drinks and snorting his cocaine, especially on his turf. Because the misfits, the weirdos, the outcasts, They set up camp just down Hollywood Boulevard from the Seven Seas. Eddie Nash's super macho, super hetero hotspot. Speaker 6 (7:19) Walk Speaker 5 (7:19) past Musso and Franks, bang a riot on a North Cherokee, and then let the smell of cigarettes, stale beer, and sweat guide you down an alley and into the basement directly below the Pussycat Porn Theater. This is where the other L.A. was happening. A room and a scene that you had to protect at any cost. Even if it meant kicking the shit out of Tom Waits in front of the entire staff of the Troubadour to prove that you weren't fucking around. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My point is that the punk scene of Los Angeles in the late 1970s was different and strange and unlike anything you've been led to believe about the sprawling city. And because it was different and because it was strange, it was identified by the status quo as dangerous. And because of that, as I said, It had to be protected at all costs. Speaker 5 (8:12) Alicia Armendariz had been preparing her whole life for this moment. She wasn't born a protector. She was made one. The gangs of East L.A. weren't under any obligation to step in when Alicia's father beat her mother with his belt in front of the entire neighborhood Speaker 1 (8:27) and then dragged her back to their cockroach-infested house by the hair. It was Alicia who stepped in. It was Alicia who got between her father, the abuser, and her mother, the abused. Protection was necessary. Protection. was life or death. Protecting yourself was another matter entirely. The urge to Speaker 5 (8:47) assimilate with white culture tugged at Alicia like a magnet. The desire to be called not Alicia, but Alice. These small concessions, they start to add up, stripping a person of their own identity and Alicia of her rich Chicana heritage. But the bullies at school Speaker 4 (9:05) pushed her too far. They mocked how she looked and how she talked. Speaker 1 (9:09) She was heavier. She had darker skin. She pronounced words funny, and whatever they could find, they attacked her with it. She had no choice but to protect herself. Words were no good. Words never won a battle. It had to be skin on skin. It was fist on face. Protection was a contact sport. It was violent. The bully that Alicia shoved up against the wall had a pen in her teeth when it happened, and the blood splurted fast with Alicia's hand pushed the pen into the back of the girl's throat. From that day, Alicia even had the respect of some of the hardest, most violent gangs watching the streets of East L.A. Alicia Arandari's not only had the respect of the gangs, she had self-respect. She didn't have to assimilate. Punk rock taught her that. Punk rock gave her permission to be herself. Even if that looked and sounded different from what most everyone else in L.A. was doing. So when she began hanging out in Hollywood, gravitating to like-minded misfits, weirdos, and outcasts, it was only natural that she did so as the punk rock scene's resident protector. Only now, she wasn't Alicia anymore. She was Alice. Alice Douchebag, that is, or more simply, Alice Bag. Protector of the punks and leader of the bags. One of the seminal bands at the heart of LA's late 70s counterculture. The bags made loud, fast, take-no-prisoners rock and roll. Just as their song titles like We Will Bury You and Disco's Dead can attest. And though you won't find the bags on any taste-making lists like Rolling Stone's recent 100 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time, at this very brief moment in time, in this very specific scene, they were a guiding light. Alice Bagg's onstage charisma and energy were infectious, as was the way in which she easily morphed into an alter ego. Every L.A. punk in 1977 was becoming someone else. It was a rite of passage. Jean-Paul Beam became Bobby Pym and then Darby Crash, Speaker 5 (11:20) co-founder of The Germs, along with his friend George Ruthenberg, who is now Speaker 4 (11:25) going by Pat Smear. And there was Helen Killer, Donna Rhea, Jane Drano. And in Speaker 5 (11:32) 1977, all these newly christened punks were hanging out in the basement of a building in Hollywood at a small club that welcomed their eccentricities. Speaker 1 (11:43) The punk rock club known as The Mask was a former bomb shelter. It was opened in the summer of 1977 by a Scottish transplant named Brendan Mullin. There was little ventilation, no dress code, anyone was welcome. On any given night, it would not be Speaker 4 (11:59) unusual to see leather jackets, black gloves, blue eyeshadows, spray-painted shirts, white Fruit of the Loom tank tops, polyester button Speaker 5 (12:07) -downs from Sears, studded belts, dye jobs, flat tops, crew cuts, mohawks. and bags. Alice Bag and her band, The Bags, wore paper Speaker 1 (12:17) bags over their heads. That was their thing. They didn't have an Arturo Vega curating their image like the Ramones did back in New York, so they had to get creative with self-styling. Alice, bassist Patricia Morrison, aka Patricia Delicia, guitarist Janet Speaker 5 (12:34) Kuntz, and Giza X, and drummer Joe Nannini used markers and scissors to decorate them. The Bags, both the band and the cheap image they brought to the mass tiny stage, were a statement. A middle finger thrust in the face of the Hollywood establishment. The bullies, the Eddie Nash's, the big business of Hollywood. They were all put on notice. Alice Bag and her band were the first line of protection against corporate rock and disco cheese. But the real threat that Alice Bag was up against was Speaker 4 (13:05) not, in fact, Captain Antonio or Al Stewart or even Sean Cassidy or the fucking Eagles. It was the darkness and the danger that the mask Speaker 1 (13:15) and the L.A. punk scene's open-door policy let in, right under all of their noses. A darkness and danger capable of just about anything, even murder. Speaker 1 (13:30) Jane King was a 28-year-old aspiring actress doing what she did every Wednesday night after her acting class. She was sitting on a bench at the corner of Franklin Avenue and North Bronson, waiting for the bus to take her back to her apartment in West Hollywood. It was just after 11 p.m. The lateness of the hour did not faze her. Neither did the footsteps that she could now hear approaching where she sat, all alone. She hadn't heard about