Dinah Cancer is the stage name of Mary Simms. She is a vocalist, best known for her punk band 45 Grave, one of the founders of the genre of music known as "Death Rock".

Her first band was called Castration Squad , the legendary all women punk band formed by Alice Bag of The Bags. It was in this band that she went by the moniker "Mary Bat-Thing". She was also in Vox Pop and during the 1980s sang backup for Nervous Gender. In 1981 45 Grave was formed by members of various original punk bands. Bassist Rob Graves had been in The Bags, keyboardist Paul Roessler had played in The Screamers and Nervous Gender, and Don Bolles had drummed for Nervous Gender and The Germs. With the addition of Pul Cutler on guitar, the band found success with the release of their first single "Black Cross" in 1981, and their contributions to the compilation Hell Comes To Your House. They are considered one of the originators of "Death Rock" and helped form the sound and aesthetics of what would come to be known as Goth.

Dinah married Rob Graves while they were together in the band which eventually broke up in 1985. Due to the success of the LP Autopsy, posthumously released in 1987, the band reformed the next year and commenced touring and recording a new album, Only The Good Die Young, released in 1989. But the band came to a permanent halt with the death of Rob Graves in 1991 from a heroin overdose. Dinah remarried briefly and had two daughters named Ilse and Eirika before separating from her second husband.

For 12 years after her first husband's death and seperation from the second, Dinah went back to using her birth name, Mary Simms, and focused all her energy on raising her kids. She became an early childhood development teacher. During this time her music was featured in the movie "Return of the Living Dead". She resisted calls by people to start playing music again for several years until she felt her daughters were old enough to understand what she was doing.

She then joined the band named Penis Flytrap who released an album before she and drummer Hal Satan left that group to form Dinah Cancer and the Grace Robbers .

Dinah dealt with having a heroin addiction, but after 12 years of it she was able to give it up. She said, "Instead of going to get high, I would buy a piece of jewelry. So now I have this amazing jewelry drawer. Some days, I think I'd still love to get high, but then I realize I have responsibilities to my kids and my band."

Refrences

• Phoenix article on Dinah Cancer and the Grave Robbers
• Dinah Cancer's website
• Dinah Cancer History
• From a 45 Grave to a Penis Flytrap
• Las Vegas City life Article
• Dinah Cancer Interview