Drugs [in the rain] Are [very] Nice [indeed]
Lisa Crystal Carver is the author of Drugs are Nice which is publishing this week. Lisa'a having a wild shindig tonight, first at KGB, 85 East 4th Street, where she will give an unconventional and unforgettable lecture on post punk: why it happened and what went wrong. Accompanied by ethereal comic artist Dame Darcy on the singing saw, Lisa will draw diagrams and dry erase, explaining how chaotic, self-violent, transgressive performers like GG Allin, Suckdog, Lydia Lunch, and The Swans came to be. Also why they didn't wear colors and why they smelled so very bad. She will then turn the room (by top secret methods we would die rather than disclose here!) into a physical representation of ten minutes of the era she like to call "the late 80s, early 90s."
Then, since that's not enough, she's going to have a full-on party at Galapagos at 70 North 6th St in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I can't really say what exactly will happen there, but check out this interview with her in this weeks Philadelphia Weekly
Speaking of love from the alt weeklies (and this is what earns this the Shamelessing Hussying and Gloating categories), here's some more links to all the great things being written about Lisa this week: The DCist ; this from the Providence Phoenix: Provoke, provoke, provoke, spew, spew, spew, rant, rant, rant. Lisa "Suckdog" Carver has a million ways of foisting her opinion on you.; and from the Philadelphia City Paper, which requires me—because of content rather than any required subscription, to quote it in its entirety:
The Further Decline of Western Civilization
Lisa Carver must be post-post-punk. All the press photos for her new book, Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir, have her looking sorta sedate, posing with her kid and her dog. Like aw, the former fuck-off frontwoman of Suckdog has decided to drop her guitar and spend more time with the family. Of course if she were completely over it, she wouldn't be on tour reading from the diary of her misspent youth and lecturing on where post-punk went wrong. Yes, lecturing. Like with diagrams, time lines and a dry erase board. She'll expand on it with musical asides, backed by Meat Cake zine-maker Dame Darcy on the singing saw. Even when she was called Lisa Suckdog, everybody knew her as one of the most analytical minds in punk — that wasn't supposed to be a backhanded compliment — so she's exactly who you want discussing punk in scientific terms. Because when the lesson gets to the part where G.G. Allin smears shit on himself and calls it art, trust me, that's not pop culture, that's anthropology.