With three Juno Awards, a Genie Award, and four Gold and two Platinum records to her credit, Carole Pope is an icon of transgressive music. As the lead singer of the band Rough Trade, Pope and her songwriting partner Kevan Staples pioneered new wave music in Canada, and Pope became an artist of enduring mystique. Carol Pope now lives in West Hollywood, California, but travels back and forth to Canada.
"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 scathing look at
herself and at the decade that brought her fame.” —Heather Malick,
Globe and Mail
“Anti Diva is deeply enjoyable, nasty without apology, and
unexpectedly deft…Pope is saucy and willing to say just about
anything… ‘Unrepentant’ is the word that best applies…Refreshingly,
Pope does not feel the need to apologize in any way for this
behaviour, or to seek forgiveness. There is no closure, no
reckoning, no teary epiphanies on mountaintops or Costa Rican yoga
retreats.” —Elizabeth Renzetti, Globe and Mail
“14 years after the official retirement of Rough Trade, Carole Pope
has produced what is probably the raunchiest, trashiest, funniest
autobiography ever penned by a Canadian celebrity.” —Paul Gessell,
The Edmonton Journal/The Vancouver Sun/Ottawa Citizen/ The Telegram
(St. John’s)
“Pope…made sexual politics the grist of 80’s rochers Rough Trade a
decade before k.d. lang started cross-dressing..[she] distinguishes
herself by her frankness…Pope’s confessions are those of an
unreconstructed celebrity.” —Elm Street
“[Anti Diva is] a titillating walk on the wild side.”
—Maclean’s
“It’s the personality behind the words that makes Anti Diva an
enticing read.” —Chart magazine (Toronto)
“A provocative and enjoyably trashy autobiography.” —The Edmonton
Journal
“Those hungry for bits and pieces of dirt won’t be disappointed.
Pope is a world-class namedropper (and I mean that in the best
sense of the word).” —Montreal Mirror
“Carole Pope manages to dish the celebrity dirt in an attractive
manner by not taking herself—or anyone else—too seriously.” —The
Vancouver Sun
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