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Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Chicano punk icons Juanita y Juan keep on rocking for new generations
Punk rock is not the first thing one might associate with a children's puppet show. But on Sunday morning at the Ford Theater, L.A. punk pioneers Juanita y Juan and puppeteers from the Bob Baker Marionette Theater put local kids to the test. After a morning spent crafting their own paper marionettes in the foyer, children marched towards the stage to revel in the weirdness of Juanita y Juan's electro-cumbia guitar jams — a musical fusion they call 'loud lounge.' The duo was accompanied by vintage marionettes and their handlers, who played backup dancers in the shapes of jellyfish, cats and aliens. Families bounced and gently moshed along to the drum machine beats as 'Juan,' also known as Kid Congo Powers, regaled them with a story about his hair catching on fire while playing a candlelit punk show with the Cramps. And when a couple of rowdy kids started to climb onstage, bouncers swiftly intervened. 'Oh, that's very punk!' said 'Juanita,' better known as Alice Bag. It was a familiar scenario for Bag and Powers. When the two first crossed paths in the 1970s — one being the front woman of the Bags, the other a guitarist in such bands as the Gun Club, the Cramps and later Pink Monkey Birds — they could hardly surmise how influential their scrappy community would become in its nascent years. 'We were all trying to create some kind of new subculture or protest against the bland music of the day,' said Kid in a Zoom call before the show. 'We bonded under the flag of punk rock,' added Bag. In the storied history of the Los Angeles punk scene, Chicanos were, and remain, permanent fixtures. But after predominantly white bands like Germs, X and the Go-Go's were commemorated in countless books and documentaries as architects of the genre, Bag and Powers decided to start sharing their own perspectives as Mexican Americans who broke the mold. First, they committed the stories of their lives to the page. In 2011, Alice Bag published a memoir titled 'Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story,' and in 2022, Kid Congo Powers followed with 'Some New Kind of Kick.' But it was after collaborating on a song for the 2022 Peacock mystery series 'The Resort' that their duo, Juanita y Juan, was born. They spoke to De Los about their salad days, their new album, 'Jungle Cruise' and how young Latinos can navigate this time of upheaval in the U.S. The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Tell me about your supergroup, Juanita y Juan. What sparked this idea for you? Kid Congo Powers: Juanita and Juan are the alter egos of Alice and I. Our reference was Marty & Elayne, who were a cabaret covers act at the Dresden Room [in Los Feliz]. They got a huge following; they were in the movie 'Swingers.' And the songs are fun. We first reconnected as friends after Alice [released] her book, 'Violence Girl.' Then we got asked to write a song for a [2022] TV show on Peacock called 'The Resort.' Me and Alice are on the same label, In the Red Records, out of L.A. They asked for a song by 'a beach lounge act,' and they wanted it to be in Spanish. We are both Mexican Americans, Chicanos, but I thought, 'Alice is much more fluent in Spanish.' She was like, 'Why don't we try to do it as a duet?' And they liked that idea. Alice Bag: With 'The Resort,' we had a springboard of this 'loud lounge' idea. But it morphed into several different things that were very much our personality, and very much not something we would normally do — exploring different rhythms, like Latin rhythms and tropical rhythms. I spent a month in Tucson, and we actually wrote and recorded songs [that became the album] 'Jungle Cruise.' So how did this puppet show come into play? K.C.G.: The [Bob Baker] Marionette Theater heard our music and thought it would be appropriate for a kids' punk thing. A.B.: I have actually worked with Bob Baker's Marionette Theater before. We did a video together for a song on my 'Sister Dynamite' album, which was released in 2020. Also, I'm a former teacher. I used to take my classes to the old theater, so I have a very warm association with childhood and how enchanted kids are when they see a puppet show. You both are really inspiring to me as Latinos who helped shape punk in its very early days. Learning about you and other Latin punks like Jeffrey Lee Pierce (The Gun Club) was affirming to me as a young Latina and punk. How did you two connect over your Mexican American experience? A.B.: There were a lot of Latinos in the early punk scene. Not just Kid and I, but like, Trudie Arguelles, who was the face of L.A. punk. K.C.P.: Yeah, she was the it girl. A.B.: And Margot Olavarria, who was the original bassist for the Go-Go's, was a big shot in the scene. Tito Larriva, who formed the Plugs. Robert Lopez, Hector Penalosa, all the Zeros! There were a lot of Latinos around. But I think one of the things that happened is — I'm Alice Bag, although Bag is not my last name. Our last names got lost, and people just thought of the band names as our family names, like the Ramones! We banded under the flag of punk rock. Our ethnicity was present, but it wasn't always the first thing that you noticed about us because of how we dressed. People did not know what punk was. They would make comments like, 'Is the circus in town? Are these people in a gang? Are they they gonna beat us up?' So we bonded, and we had to hang out together as self-defense. We were the weirdos. Alice, in your memoir ('Violence Girl') you spoke about the tension between the Mexican cultural mores that you grew up with and what you were creating anew with punk. A.B.: I think people got the wrong idea about me very early on because they knew I was from East L.A. I grew up around gang culture and learned to stick up for myself, so people thought I was scary. Even Kid Congo Powers said I was scary. Did you think she was scary? K.C.P.: I thought she was intense. Anything could happen when Alice Bag got on stage. And that was what drew me to her and the band. There was a menace to them, something volatile. This could be a riot, or it could be an orgy. And Kid knows chaos very well. You held your own in bands like the Cramps. Could you think of a Latin entertainer who helped influence your own performance? K.C.P.: Iris Chacón. Wow, I didn't know you got down like that! K.C.P.: My mom watched her on TV. That was exciting. A.B.: That's where he got his maraca work from. K.C.P.: And my outfits. But there was Ritchie Valens, of course. I like old rock 'n' roll. And then when I met Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club in 1978 or '79, we bonded on being Chicano. We both grew up in San Gabriel Valley — me in La Puente, Jeffrey in El Monte. We'd reference riffs coming out of a garage in La Puente, some Chicano garage band playing Santana or War. We shared the outsider-ness of being born in America, but we were in Chicano world. And throw in the fact that I knew I was queer from a young age ... I didn't know if I was in or out. A.B.: My influences were from Spanish-language music. Raphael was a Spanish singer who's very intense and very dramatic. And I also am a big fan of José Alfredo Jiménez, who wrote all these ranchera songs that were very emotional. I think there's a connection between ranchera music and punk — it's for everybody. It's better when everybody joins in and sings along. Punk and ranchera are the people's music. That calls to mind the resurgence of corridos among young people. Some of the songs generate controversy, but it's interesting to see a similarly rebellious spirit as punk. What do you think? K.C.P.: People are always saying to me, 'Don't you feel sorry for young people today? They don't have what you had, this and that.' But I would never in my life underestimate younger people. There's something going on, and I don't know about it. You don't know about it, because it's not for us to know about. You both have shown many Latinos how to live authentically to your identity, to your values. What's a quick bite of encouragement or advice for young, weird Latino kids? Especially now, when it's hard not to feel demoralized about what's happening across the country? K.C.P.: Well, to live authentically is a path that can be lonely. But it's also very empowering. And I get to be in my 60s and say I've done music exactly as I've pleased. That is possible. I had no idea how to play guitar until Jeffrey Lee Pierce said, 'Here's a guitar. I think you can do this. And you're gonna do it.' I thought, 'If this one person believes in me, then I'm gonna try it.' You just have to say yes to yourself. A.B.: I would also say you're not alone. Every day, there's a bombardment of things in the world and in the U.S. that you want to resist. It's very easy to become despondent and overwhelmed. But you don't have to feel like you're lifting this whole weight by yourself. It's important to know that you do have a community that stands with you. We're all working in different ways. We're all a band. We're going to make it through this together.
Washington Post
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The Everly Brothers, shocking talents whose sound was usurped by the 1960s
Somewhere near the end of Barry Mazor's fascinating 'Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story,' the long-retired and increasingly frail Phil Everly finds himself at a concert by Rosanne Cash at the Country Music Hall of Fame's Ford Theater in 2009. Introducing the Boudleaux Bryant standard 'Love Hurts,' first made famous by the Everlys' incandescent version, Cash remarked that she had learned the song from Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. She didn't mention that their rendition was itself an inspired imitation of the Everlys' take. As so frequently happened, history had skipped a step and the Everly Brothers had been overlooked again. Spontaneously, Phil struggled up in his seat, hands held upright, his face wearing a wry 'Aren't you forgetting something?' expression. The audience, as if recovering from collective amnesia, burst into applause.
New York Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Gloves Lincoln Wore to Ford's Theater Sell for $1.5 Million at Auction
A pair of leather gloves worn by President Abraham Lincoln to Ford's Theater on the night of his assassination fetched $1.5 million at auction this week, part of a trove of relics from his life and death that a debt-saddled presidential foundation had put on the block. One of two handkerchiefs that Lincoln had with him on that fateful date in American history, April 14, 1865, sold for $826,000, according to Freeman's | Hindman in Chicago, the auction house that handled Wednesday's sale. Like the gloves, which a friend of the Lincolns had framed for display on his dining room wall, the handkerchief was described in an auction catalog as having been potentially stained with the president's blood. And a cufflink-style gold and onyx button with the letter 'L' on it, which a doctor removed to check for Lincoln's pulse as he lay on his deathbed, went for $445,000. The auction of the items from the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, which was conducted in person, online and by phone, raised nearly $7.9 million, the auctioneers said. The total included a 28 percent buyer's premium, which auction houses tack onto the hammer price to help cover expenses from sales. The buyers were not identified by the auction house, which said that the proceeds had nearly doubled pre-sale estimates for the collection. But the piecemeal sale of the artifacts, known as Lincolnania, did not escape controversy, drawing criticism from a prominent collector who said that she had sold them to the foundation so that they could be displayed publicly. The foundation, the nonprofit that put the 144 items up for sale, said in a statement on Wednesday that the auction's proceeds would significantly help retire loan debt that it has been carrying since 2007. The group used the money from a loan to help buy a $25 million trove of Lincoln artifacts from the collector, Louise Taper, 90 percent of which were still in its possession after the auction, the foundation said. 'As a national nonprofit, this marks a significant step forward for our organization and its future philanthropic and educational mission,' Erin Carlson Mast, the foundation's president and chief executive, said in the statement. The foundation, which was created in 2000, did not say how much of the loan had been repaid. In 2018, the organization made headlines when it created a GoFundMe page, saying that it had privately raised $15 million to help it keep the $25 million collection but needed to come up with the remainder of the money in 20 months. That appeal raised $35,000, according to the group's GoFundMe page. The foundation had acquired the artifacts from Ms. Taper, a philanthropist and collector, for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. The museum opened in 2005 in the city where Lincoln practiced law and lived while he was in the Illinois Legislature and briefly in Congress. Ms. Taper did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, but she told the Chicago television station WBEZ this week in an email that she had never intended for the collection that she had painstakingly curated to be 'dispersed to the wind.' 'I am appalled,' Ms. Taper told the station. The auction also featured a War Department reward poster offering $30,000 for information leading to the capture of John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Lincoln. It sold for $762,500. A ticket stub from the April 14, 1865, production of 'Our American Cousin' at Ford's Theater, during which Lincoln was assassinated, fetched $381,500. In 2023, two tickets from that performance sold for $262,500. Not all of the sought-after artifacts were intertwined with Lincoln's assassination. A first printing of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address from 1865 sold for $165,600, and an 1824 book that was twice signed by Lincoln and believed to be one of the earliest surviving examples of his handwriting went for $521,200.
