Rebels with a cause

Lysa Flores looks far too stylish to be one of the female voices of East L.A. punk, to borrow the subtitle of an exhibition opening next week at the Claremont Museum of Art. Waiting one cloudy morning recently for a table at a trendy cafe in her Los Feliz neighborhood, the singer-songwriter is sporting a red silk scarf under a long gray herringbone overcoat revealing black leggings that stop just above her buckled ankle boots. There are no pinks or blues in her curly black hair and no pins, hoops or studs in her nose or eyebrows.

She brings a burned CD of new music she's recording and that doesn't sound punkish either, despite a guest appearance by John Doe of X fame. The autobiographical work, "Immigrant Daughter," is acoustic, reflective and often poetic, suited for the artist who's been called the Joni Mitchell of Chicano rock.

So what's she doing in a museum show focused on a punk scene that exploded in East L.A. in the early '80s when she was still a schoolgirl?

"To me, the punk rock idea was always about having this oppositional identity, which is very Chicano to me," says Flores, a vegetarian who orders fruit and granola. "Even though that was the music I was raised listening to, it would be completely inauthentic to wear the punk rock uniform. You have the ideology and then you have the look. And I think so many people settle on the look without the actual thought behind it. For me, I'd rather turn heads with a song."

She will try turning some heads with a performance next Saturday at the opening reception for "Vexing: Female Voices From East L.A. Punk," the exhibition that takes its name from the legendary Eastside punk club, the Vex. She'll be joined on stage by some of the original Chicana punks who influenced her, including Alice Bag (nee Armendariz) of the Bags and Teresa Covarrubias of the Brat. In their act, Flores and Armendariz plan to unveil a brand-new genre called "punkcheras," or punked-out mariachi standards.

The exhibition documents the often untold story of L.A.'s Chicano punk scene not just through music but via the entire aesthetic of this aggressively subversive genre or, more accurately, way of life. In addition to vintage video of rarely seen performances, the show features paintings, photography and performance art to trace the history of the scene and its legacy. A closing concert will spotlight two younger female bands, Go Betty Go and the Sirens.