Anti Diva - Hardcover

Pope, Carole

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679310487 ISBN 13: 9780679310488

Publisher: Random House of Canada Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

Known for their sexual lyrics and provocative act, Carole Pope and Rough Trade ushered Canada from the punk movement of the 1970s to the new wave sound of the 1980s and vaulted themselves into the international music scene. Attracting what she calls "a diversified audience, and other artists who were practising their own forms of nihilism," Pope learned how to preen with the best of them and let the raunch shine through.

In Anti Diva, Pope offers a no-holds-barred look at her adventures in the music scene -- on the concert stage, in the recording studio, in the bedroom -- and tells of all the mind-blowing, gender-bending parties along the way. Here Pope takes readers along her life's trajectories: from her early days partying with Gilda Radner, Martin Short, Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd in their Saturday Night Live heyday to her love affair with Dusty Springfield; from starring with drag queen Divine in the stage play Restless Underwear to singing high opera; from touring with David Bowie to playing the Womyn's Festival.

Throughout her career, Carole Pope has blazed a trail for the diva and anti-diva in all of us. And in sharing her thoughts on AIDS, sexuality and sexual politics, and the new breed of music divas that dominates the charts today, she never hesitates to risk it all.

About this title

Review:

"This book is about my experiences as a sexually confused teenager who became a disgruntled rock icon. It's a comment on the times, beginning in the summer of love. It drags me kicking and screaming into the 21st century." --Carole Pope
"I have to bear the flower-bedecked cross of the baby boomer. For me the sixties consisted of taking every drug possible, hallucinating Shiva and Vishnu cartoons on hardwood floors, and having really bad sex with everybody. I almost forgot, we actually thought you could deal with your emotions with the aid of psychedelics and, yes, we did try to perpetrate the myth of a Utopian Atlantis-like lotus land where we could live together in peace and harmony. Yeah, right. Put me in a room with those losers now and I would run screaming to the nearest exit." --From "The Sixties (What Were We Thinking?)," Chapter One of "Anti Diva
"Praise for "Anti Diva"
"Apart from divulging/confirming some undeniably hot gossip...the book details the rise of a challenging and uncompromising rock band." --Kieran Grant, "Toronto Sun," 8 Mar 2001
""Anti Diva" is stacked with hundreds of similar caustic toss offs, thrown about with the kind of casual abandon you'd expect from a self-confessed and inveterate name-dropper...It's the kind of book you take in a single gulp, for fear of losing step with its breathless, pulp-noir pace..." --Greg Quill, "Toronto Star," 19 Nov 2000
"Pope's humour and sexual bravado have translated well onto paper. "Anti Diva "is a subtle but scathing attack of those who have drifted into complacency both on a cultural and personal level. It is both a challenge and an invitation, especially to women and cultural producers, to keep kicking at the pedestals." --Donna Lypchuck, "National Post"
"[It's] an entertaining, saucy, naming-names kind of book that no fan of rock'n'roll in Canada ought to miss." --Bill Reynolds, "eye," 23 Nov 2000
""Anti Diva" [is] a partly affectionate but mostly sc

About the Author:

With three Juno Awards, a Genie Award, and four Gold and two Platinum records to her credit, Carole Pope (top, with Divine; above, with Anne Murray) is an icon of transgressive music. A new CD as well as a TVO production of Shaking the Foundations, a musical based on Rough Trade's songs, are expected in the fall. Carole Pope now lives in West Hollywood, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House of Canada Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0679310487
• ISBN 13: 9780679310488
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1