Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir (Paperback)

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Dancing Queen: The Lusty Adventures of Lisa Crystal Carver by Lisa Carver 4.4 out of 5 stars (7)

Drugs Are Nice: A Suckementary 1988-2005 DVD ~ Suckdog 3.7 out of 5 stars (3)  $15.49

Man, Interrupted: Welcome to the Bizarre World of OCD, Where Once More is Never Enough by James Bailey 4.9 out of 5 stars (8)  $13.45

Rollerderby: (The Book) (Popcult Series ; No. 1) by Lisa Carver 5.0 out of 5 stars (3)

Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton 4.4 out of 5 stars (5)  $13.94

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From Publishers Weekly
Shock-performance artist Carver (Dancing Queen) offers a spunky, well-fashioned memoir devoid of self-pity but heavy on moral-of-the-story hindsight. Carver grew up in Dover, N.H., with a sickly mother, but spent her 15th year with her father in California, when he got out of prison for murder. His hard-knock lessons "shame and shock [her] out of everything [she] knew to be and think," so that when she returned to Dover, she was transformed and fearless. Meeting "scum-rocker" GG Allin inspired her and a friend to start a "band," Suckdog, and join the wave of atonal, angry prankster gigs then in vogue (it was the late 1980s). Connected to the DIY underground, a cassette-trading society that eliminates the need for producers, seed money, even talent, Carver met and married French music rebel Jean Louis Costes; together they achieved notoriety with their outlandish performances (one act involved her peeing in a litter box). Other jobs include publishing the early zine Rollerderby, which segues into an infatuation with the troubled neo-Nazi Boyd Rice. Carver had Rice's child, born genetically disabled, and the family collapsed when Rice revealed himself to be an abusive alcoholic. Carver slides into a chirpy concluding regeneration, while the overall ride of this iconoclast is surprisingly tame.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Carver's observations are dead-on and she tackles everything with a sharp, clean honesty." -- Chicago Reader

"The 31-year-old married mother from Dover may well be the country's supreme cultural anthropologist: part literary provocateur, part social analyst. She's been called everything from this decade's ultimate underground Renaissance woman to America's horniest optimist. Hunter S. Thompson in a miniskirt." -- Boston Magazine

"When Newt Gingrich wakes up sweating in the middle of the night with a hard-on and a sense of nameless dread, the face that he sees might be Lisa Carver's." -- Time Out New York

"With her tart writing and unswerving devotion to lowbrow culture, Carver sound like Camille Paglia channeling both Tonya Harding and Liz Phair." -- Dwight Garner, Details

Shock-performance artist Carver (Dancing Queen) offers a spunky, well-fashioned memoir devoid of self-pity but heavy on moral-of-the-story hindsight. Carver grew up in Dover, N.H., with a sickly mother, but spent her 15th year with her father in California, when he got out of prison for murder. His hard-knock lessons "shame and shock [her] out of everything [she] knew to be and think," so that when she returned to Dover, she was transformed and fearless. Meeting "scum-rocker" GG Allin inspired her and a friend to start a "band," Suckdog, and join the wave of atonal, angry prankster gigs then in vogue (it was the late 1980s). Connected to the DIY underground, a cassette-trading society that eliminates the need for producers, seed money, even talent, Carver met and married French music rebel Jean Louis Costes; together they achieved notoriety with their outlandish performances (one act involved her peeing in a litter box). Other jobs include publishing the early zine Rollerderby, which segues into an infatuation with the troubled neo-Nazi Boyd Rice. Carver had Rice's child, born genetically disabled, and the family collapsed when Rice revealed himself to be an abusive alcoholic. Carver slides into a chirpy concluding regeneration, while the overall ride of this iconoclast is surprisingly tame. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- Publishers Weekly

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Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Hampshire, Boyd Rice, San Francisco, New York, Dancing Queen, Chris Sakey, Bill Callahan, Cindy Dall, Dame Darcy, Les Pendus, Lost Kittens, Shaun Partridge, Center Way, Church of Satan, Lydia Zamm, The Swans New!
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25 Reviews 5 star:  (16) 4 star:  (5) 3 star:  (2) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:  (2)           Average Customer Review 4.3 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   7 of 7 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars slippery deep beauty you have to hold , October 20, 2005 By  Jill Soloway "Jill S" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    You know how sometimes a book is a friend? You ignore your family and your work and getting sleep because you've just met a brand new best friend? That's how nice the book Drugs Are Nice is. Are. Line after line after wow after whoa after no way, she lived this and came out of it funnier and smarter and even more able to distill beauty, dripping it in perfect drops across her uterus-wrenching prose? Seriously? Seriously. Lisa Carver makes me want to write, and every time she writes another book, it gets better, which means I have to get better, which means we all do. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   6 of 6 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars This book DID make me want to burst into flames!, October 15, 2005 By  Rachel Wakefield - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    There aren't that many drugs in this book - Lisa's whole way of thinking and living are the drug. Her writing, especially in her fabulous magazine Rollerderby, has always been intoxicating. When you drink it, you enter the secret twisted world just under the surface of the normal-seeming one, where everything is fascinating and sexy and on fire. In Drugs Are Nice, she takes that passion for exploring weirdness and turns it on herself, and you know it's going to be entertaining but it's also a serious and genuine study of an amazing life. From a uniquely messed-up relationship with her drug dealer father, to becoming the star of the underworld, to her nightmarish time with industrial musician Boyd Rice and having a child with serious health problems - every chapter of this book seems like the climax. Every chapter is full of characters too intriguingly warped to have been made up. It's the history of an underground movement, and the Boyd Rice part is a horror novel that you can't put down until the horrible end. But the best thing is that over the course of the book you are watching Lisa slowly become human, watching her come to understand what motivates her and develop a heart that can love. You end up quite moved as well as burst into flames. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   5 of 5 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars Drugs are nice are nice indeed, October 10, 2005 By  JT "ManyHands" (Chicago) - See all my reviews Right after "Good Vibrations", a little song called "Pennyface" is my favorite song of all time. Every once in a while i hear it on a mix tape and think, "what ever happened to Lisa Suckdog"? I was in a bookstore yesterday when I saw some familair words in pink lettering on this book's spine and was staggered with vague memories. Reading the copy on the back cover I was truly enticed and figured that for a few bucks it would be worth finding out "whatever happened". I guess she never really went away and has fascinated a bunch of people younger than I and this isn't even her first book. Nevertheless, in those great days before some loser named Kurt signed a big money contract, Lisa Carver was among a dingy pantheon of musicians (or whatever) who were truly fascinating, inspiring, and confounding to me. I would not have guessed however that reading a memoir about one of the dingiest in the pantheon - glorious Pennyface notwithstanding - would be so fascinating, inspiring and confounding as well. Her story is much more interesting than I would have guessed and she tells it with surprising eloquence and verve. Any time she writes about her father is particularly riveting. As for her life in the underground world... Those days... those days were incredibly fun and mysterious. But her book reminds me that they were also desperate - emotionally and fiscally - and perilous. The person who wrote this book 'got' at a young age that she could stare down the nightmare and come back for more just for the sheer aliveness of it all. And that aliveness is all we have. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 25 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 4.0 out of 5 stars True Voice of A Gen X-er Lisa Carver's journey to self-discovery and realization isn't fueled by her daddy's money or a trust fund that supports a jet-set lifestyle. Read more Published 12 months ago by Roxanne Adams 5.0 out of 5 stars Enter the Underworld Drugs are Nice is a dizzying and shocking autobiography that reads like a piece of fantasy. The life of Lisa Crystal Carver--once girlfriend of GG Allin, Jean-Louis Costes, and... Read more Published 14 months ago by Ashley Rieflin 4.0 out of 5 stars I <3 Lisa Crystal Carver I recommend this book to anyone with an open mind. I cant say its for everyone, but as a fan of Roller Derby (her zine) from my college days (I have been out of college for 12... Read more Published 18 months ago by Christine A. Huneke 5.0 out of 5 stars This book is so good it made me burst into flames! Read it. Now. Really, stop reading this review and go read the book. Go! Go! Go! Published 23 months ago by Lydia Fultz 3.0 out of 5 stars the soccer mom's pathology: a bad taste in men 1)At least Carver writes good sentences. 2)Her choice of subjects, always so lame. These are two points that I raise when I think of Carver. Read more Published on June 5, 2007 by chym-a 5.0 out of 5 stars a wild surprise I picked this little gem from the shelves of a sanitized chain book store. I don't know what prompted the choice - maybe it was idle curiosity, a little perversity, belated... Read more Published on April 11, 2007 by Rachel Northcott 5.0 out of 5 stars Emotionally Raw and Unflinching This is one of the bravest books I've ever read. In the age of faux-memoir and carefully groomed public personas, Lisa Carver has the brass ovaries to reveal herself, warts and... Read more Published on May 9, 2006 by Julia Sullivan 5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of the Artist as a Young Suckdog Many readers are, understandably, wary of memoirs written by people who aren't yet pushing 70, but "Drugs Are Nice" is very much an exception. Read more Published on May 5, 2006 by Badicecream 4.0 out of 5 stars Coloring outside the lines I had never heard of either "Suckdog" or "Rollerderby" before picking up this book, so this was really my first introduction to Lisa Carver. Read more Published on March 16, 2006 by Douglas King 3.0 out of 5 stars starts strong The book draws you in, then doesn't seem to really go anywhere. Certain observations by Lisa are dead on, making the reader why things go wrong in other parts of her life. Read more Published on March 3, 2006 by agenth Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 25 customer reviews...

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