Juanita y Juan –a historic punk duo for our time
I am a little hazy about when I first encountered Alice Bag. It was in the 2000s, possibly at the Echoplex or Los Globos clubs in LA. A friend told me there was a cool punk band led by a remarkable woman playing that night, and I should go. I wasn’t a fan of punk, but I have always been a fan of remarkable women in music, so I decided to see what the excitement was about. The excitement was about Alice Bag.
Of course, I had heard of her. Best known as the fierce frontwoman of the pioneering punk band The Bags, she was a vocal force for feminism and Chicana identity within rock for decades and had been playing in East LA (and other places) since then -way before I returned to LA, my hometown.
I was blown away. This was not the punk I knew – the raw, fast-paced, and rebellious form of rock that emerged in the mid-1970s with bands like The Slits, The Runaways, The Avengers, and, of course, the Bags. It was all of that, but it was also clever, smart, brash, funny, pointed, and thoroughly enjoyable. I started to follow Alice, interviewed her on my radio show, and followed her albums Alice Bag, Blueprint, and Sister Dynamite, released in the 2000s.
Now she has a new album out with Kid Congo Powers, Jungle Cruise, under the duo name of Juanita y Juan, a dynamic collaboration born from their longtime friendship. They debuted Jungle Cruise in April, which showcases their “Loud Lounge” sound—a genre-bending fusion that reflects punk roots while incorporating lounge, synth pop, and a distinctly Latin flavor in melodic, sometimes talkative, and sometimes muted songs full of nostalgia mixed with vibrant innovation.
Kid Congo Powers, Juanita y Juan’s co-founder, is a celebrated guitarist whose credits include foundational roles in bands like The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and his own Pink Monkey Birds. His unique, reverb-heavy guitar textures, combined with Bag’s dramatic vocals and stage presence, evoke the experimental spirit that first brought them together in LA’s 1970s punk scene, but in a cooler, more sophisticated way. Together, their music embraces Spanish- and English-language lyrics, cumbia, punk, glam, and the improvisational flair of cabaret—what they have described as “a party at a Mexican beach,” with a punk twist.
Jungle Cruise originated from a commission to write a song for the Peacock series “The Resort” in 2022, where they discovered the creative spark that would become Juanita y Juan. This collaboration gave them a platform to express their Mexican-American heritage and to experiment freely with music that invites both dancing and reflection.
Live, Juanita y Juan have extended their 2025 punk ethos to new audiences: their performances have included collaborations with the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, using marionettes as playful backdrops for their eclectic, genre-twisting sets. Through their music and visibility, Bag and Powers continue to inspire a new generation of Latinx punk and alternative artists, keeping the revolutionary spirit of East LA punk alive and relevant for 2025 and beyond. Check out the album on Spotify and major platforms.
Patrick O’Heffernan
