By Alix Snell

She was once Lisa Suckdog. That was one legendary 'zine (Rollerderby), three books, two children, a pair of breast implants, a Nerve.com column, a handful of marriages, and who-knows-how-many body-fluid-soaked performances ago.

Most recently, Lisa Carver, as she is now commonly known, is the author of the autobiography Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir and one of the most engaging personalities in the realm of oft-kilter media.

Although Lisa no longer publishes Rollerderby and only occasionally collaborates on live musical-theater sensory overloads with former collaborators such as Dame Darcy, she remains an endless font of wickedly inventive entertainments.

She talked about many things with MrSkin.com, including her romance with French performance artist Jean-Louis Costes and her passion for soap operas.

Where did the name Suckdog come from?
Funny, I have been asked that but I haven't read it in print. I was working in a Photomat booth, and if you don't remember what those were, they were little glass booths in the middle of mall parking lots. Some guy called me on my little Photomat phone and said, "I'm looking at you and you're in your Photomat booth. Do you want to be in a porno?"

And I said, yeah, and I gave him my home number. I had my friend Rachel come over and get on the other line when he called. He told us the details like where to meet him and what we were going to do.

Since I had small tits and I was young--like sixteen or seventeen--I was going to get banged by an old man. Rachel was going to have sex with five people at a Texas bar--I think that's what they told us. We were like, "Yeah that would be great!" I realize now that he wasn't part of a real porn company and just wanted to either harass us or get off.

Since we agreed to everything he said he kept upping the ante. Finally he said you have to have sex with a horse. I said no, I couldn't do it with a horse but Rachel might. Rachel once jerked off a dog because it kept on following her around and she was young and Catholic so that's why that happened. So Rachel got on the phone and said, "Ok I'll suck off the horse." Then I said I'd ride the horse, like really ride it on its back. So he told us where to meet him and then he never showed up.

At the time we were forming the band and we decided to call it Suckhorse. But we thought that was too aggressive and we changed it to Suckdog, which was close to what Rachel really did. We thought Suckdog sounded better than jerk dog.

The first Suckdog show was really supposed to be a GG Allin show that you organized at a Veterans Hall in Dover. GG didn't show up, forcing you and Rachel to go on stage with a Bee Gees album. Would you thank him or spank him if he were alive today?
I wouldn't want to punish him for getting drunk and lost; I feel that it was a good performance. I went to go see Whitehouse recently and William Bennet threw his scarf over his shoulder and walked off at the beginning of the show because he got pissed off at something. He just sat there staring at the four other guys and didn't even participate in the show.

I thought that was cool, I could really experience the show rather than just hear the music. If I just wanted to hear the music then I'll listen to the CD, but I like something unexpected to happen so I thought it was cool that GG got lost and drunk. That was 1987; we lasted for eleven years. Our last tour was in 1998.

When I was seventeen I was in a Catholic school very afraid to leave. Rachel was hardcore Catholic, and she didn't go to Catholic school but she was very disapproving. I mean she was there in the first show and she took off her clothes, but she was drunk, and when we went on tour she wouldn't play. We went on to New York and then Atlanta and she just refused to go on and, I don't know, like she felt like it was wrong and bad and mysterious. She just didn't go on tour again. And that was it for her, I had to really push and prod for her to move forward or get her really drunk.

What were you trying to accomplish with Suckdog?
I was trying to turn everything upside down. It was a big deal to me to be kicked out of the punk scene and branded a poser. And I was also very influenced by Dadaism. Those two things, being branded with the big P and the thought of these guys just staging riots in coffee houses gave me the idea. I just combined these things where I was already on the outside, nobody liked me, so it was like a big feud, there was a lot of aggression in it. It was also aggressive how bad the music was and offensive that people paid to see this really bad music and behavior and then there were actual fights.

You hit the audience and they liked it?
Yeah I wasn't counting on that part. People are strange. It was also just trying to shake everything up for the audience and for myself and then seeing what happened because I never knew what was going to happen at a show. It was different every time depending on how the audience reacted and how my insane band mates reacted, or tour mates, whatever they are--troupe members.

Jean-Louis, Brett Kirby, and I came up with the formula, that it would be a war between the rich and the poor, men and women, and eventually when we moved to Europe where there were more active race problems between the races I made sure I was raped, murdered, and then an avenging angel in every show. Jean-Louis made sure that he had to take out his penis and shoot a big load, often more than once.

And Brett had his thing where he would have to be crucified. Whenever we had other players, they just had to keep that basic structure because that just worked for me. They could bring whatever their fetishes or unresolved issues were as long as we used the basic formula.

Darcy had a thing about twins, so she and I were Siamese twins in both tours. I think she just always wanted another her. Everyone was allowed to live out their sick little problems.

Jean-Louis had to have shit in every show--that was a big thing for Jean-Louis. Jean-Louis had a lot of big things.

It wasn't real, right?
No, he needed his fake shit and I had to pee in every show, which was just another way to make everyone feel like this isn't the norm, like something real is happening here. They're really naked and that's real pee, so they're obviously not just, they're not just running around doing normal messy theater. It's not easy to pee in front of people.

What about sex on stage?
There was real cunnilingus on more than one occasion, but there was no penetration.Also, there was no puking. Actually Jean-Louis now has incorporated puke in his shows. He is going on tour later this year in America; the last one he did I think was in 2004. There was a triple pee regurgitation between him and this girl.

It was so revolting that my friend passed out--and she wasn't drunk. She just passed out because it was so disgusting. She passed out and fell down these cement stairs and opened up her lip and it was like a fish gill flapping between her nose and her teeth and we had to go to the emergency room. So I didn't even know what more he could have in the show.

We only saw the first ten minutes, so I don't even know what more he has. He did tell me that this girl that he was touring with would puke on command and that was just part of the show and I can just imagine.

We all loved Rollerderby at MrSkin.com You say you're not the first zine publisher, but people do credit you that way because yours was the most popular.

Actually I had two big influences on my style. One was a book about The Velvet Underground. Andy Warhol had Edie Sedgwick (Picture: 1 - 2) interview the band and Edie Sedgwick--who had no background in journalism or anything--focused on the drummer, Moe Tucker.

Edie asked Moe about her bra size and what kind of bras she liked, and the drummer was like just one of the band, she was like, "Who cares about bras?" You really got to know her and the band. You really felt like you knew what it was like to live with them for a day.

I can't remember what the second influence was.

The way you write is really familiar. When I read a Spin article I have to use a dictionary, it is so over the top and pompous. With Rollerderby, I related to you and you spoke like me and I could identify a lot.
I think maybe the writers for Spin and everything are aware all the time that they are journalists or that they are the conduit--they're between their subject and the reader and they take their role and like they puff up with their role and they turn into something other than a human being, and that's what I tried not to be.

I just try to think the band, or whoever, was no different than the reader. I tried to have more respect for the reader, like they were a friend who was really cool. You don't want to impress your friends, you just want to tell them neat things--like "Check out this cool lipstick!"--because you like them. I don't think journalists like their readers. They don't respect them.

You recently said that you've become your enemy because you're married and have a house and you live above worms.
The compost (the reason for the worms), yeah, yeah I blew all that up. Yeah, I lost everything and I couldn't be happier. [NOTE: Lisa is getting a divorce].


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