Best of Suckdog (a compilation of tracks from Drugs are Nice/Rape GG) is a Lost in the Groove exclusive. Click to sample the music or purchase.
Suckdog
Drugs are Nice
(self-released, 1989)
Forget the hilarious GTOs. Forget even the mighty Shaggs. Suckdog (which isn’t really a band on this record, just a gathering of drug-addled friends conducted like an alley-cat orchestra by Lisa “Suckdog” Carver and her friend Rachel Johnson) captures adolescent female adrenaline-fueled angst and aggression like no recording artist I’ve heard before or since.
This is not a record for the squeamish; in fact, I have used it myself (in one of my most prankish moments) to disturb and annoy random passersby by shooting its screams and hoots down to street level from a safe rooftop perch (dare I say “sonic terrorism”?). If you want to hear the raw, primal energy of raging puberty, you won’t get any closer than this LP. It manages to create a sonic landscape which is scary, funny, outrageous, and poignant all at the same time, much as Ms. Carver’s later output in the small press world (which includes Rollerderby magazine and several underappreciated books) did with words and images.
It is not by mere happenstance that Spin magazine proclaimed this record “one of the top hundred records of the eighties.” Drugs are Nice certainly changed my life, as did seeing Ms. Carver perform a semi-nude roller skating opera with minimalist indie-rocker Bill “Smog” Callahan and French noise guru Costes in 1990. What makes the world of Suckdog work so well is that it never descends into pretension, or anything other than pure geeky life in its most frightening, silly, ridiculous extremes. And that, for me, is the best kind of art. (Russ Forster)