It Sucks When Your Mum Drags Your Arse to Australia and New Zealand to Perform in Her Gore Opera

Image: Lisa Carver

Sadie Carver is a 14-year-old honours student specialising in pure math. She has a dry sense of humour and doesn’t like music. Period. No music. Her mother, a leading figure in underground publishing and punk performance, has been called the female GG Allin.

As the editor of the long running 90s zine 'Rollerderby', Lisa Carver was responsible for helping shape the late-80s, early-90s punk subculture. Her band Suckdog released an album called 'Drugs Are Nice' and were known for smearing shit on each other and peeing in litter boxes on stage.

Sadie thinks her mum’s band produced the worst music of all. But like a real life version of Edie and Saffron Monsoon from 'Absolutely Fabulous', Lisa is dragging Sadie out on tour to sing and dance in a gore opera that she is touring around Australia.

We got Sadie to ask her Mum what the deal is.

Sadie: Why did you start Suckdog?

Lisa Carver: I just loved music and opera and theatre and musicals so much and I thought there was no reason why my friends and I couldn’t do just as good a job as Andrew Lloyd Weber. Even though I’m a bad singer, bad dancer, and had no money. I had spirit.

Why did you name it Suckdog?

Rachel [Horsesuck] named it. We were trying to be as offensive as possible.

Why?

Everybody was doing it. We were living under Reagan and we felt like all the adults were the living dead and we wanted to shock them awake.

Why did you stop Suckdog?

I was drinking a lot and getting injuries all the time because it’s a very physical show and I was always losing money… for YEARS… and the lifestyle eventually lost its glamour. I did love all those things about it at first. At first I thought the more I suffered and still did it, that meant I was a hero spitting in the eye of fate. Does that make any sense to you?

Yeah. You’ve always appreciated getting hurt. Like if your hand gets burnt, you think it feels good because it makes you remember you’re alive.

Are you that way?

No, I hate getting hurt. I also don’t care about music and theatre is boring. I care about math, jobs, my life… interesting stuff.

Why are you going on this Suckdog world tour then?

Because I have to. Because [Dame] Darcy thought she was too good for it. Why did you say you don’t you like Australia?

I didn’t. I said I was more interested in the European leg of the tour because they speak in different languages and so I think their minds and cultures must be more different from ours than they are in Australia because they speak English. What I like about Australia is that it was settled by criminals, and now when I get messages from Australians, they’re so, like, wild. And saucy. They’re funny, enthusiastic. I don’t know what it’s going to be like when we get there. I picture people braying. Sticking their heads out of the sunroof and screaming.

I picture Australians as like us but more relaxed and not as racist.

I think there are some problems with policy prejudice against the aborigines. Aborigines are like Native Americans here… they were living there when all the hooligans got dumped off the boat.

What are you most excited about the tour?

Honestly? Food. The show we’re playing in Cuneo, Italy, it’s just this one guy who lives on top of a mountain and I think he’s rich and he has all these bands come to his house to play shows and he’s a chef and he just feeds us and then we do the show for him and he might be the only audience member, and he pays us and then we go to sleep and in the morning he makes us more food.

Do you think he’s in the mafia?

I don’t know. I think when people are in the mafia, they have to live downtown where the action is?

Suckdog Australia and New Zealand Tour:
July 27 - Brisbane at Junky Comics (5pm) to launch ‘The Jaywalker’
July 27 - Brisbane at the Bearded Lady with Scraps and Amazing
July 28 - Sydney at the Red Rattler with Angie and Terminal Infant
July 29 - Melbourne at State Library of Victoria, TINAtalks #5 “Writing While Female- Subverting Expectations” w/ host Jenny Valentish and guests Dee Fidge and Michelle Law
July 30 - Melbourne at the Tote with Sky Needle, Shrimpwitch and SMOXED
July 31 - Adelaide at Format with EN.V + Terminal Infant
Aug 2 - Auckland at the Backroom with Terminal Infant, Ducklingmonster and Ragged Veins
Aug 3 - Wellington at the Pyramid Club with Terminal Infant, HEX and special guests