Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir

"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. Agent, Erin Hosier. (Jan.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In this eye-opening memoir, Carver recalls her extraordinary youth and charts the late-80s, early-90s punk subculture that she helped shape. She recounts how her band Suckdog was born in 1987 and the wild events that followed, in this definitive account of the generation that wanted to break every rule.