D.O.A. all fired up and lookin’ for a fight
Seminal punk band marks 40 years of protesting injustice
Bon Jovi are 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. D.O.A. are not.
Apparently, being legendary innovators of hardcore punk doesn’t matter as much as being Jersey pretty boys who only sing about being wanted dead or alive.
Joey Keithley doesn’t give a toss.
The founder and only constant member of the Vancouver-based punk rock institution has bigger things to worry about than being honoured by the mainstream music industry. His band celebrates its 40th anniversary this year with a new album and festival titled Fight Back. By his own reckoning, it’s the band’s 17th full length release under the D.O.A. banner.
In a career that has included such highlights as Hardcore 81, War on 45 and D.O.A. & Thor — Are U Ready, Fight Back ranks with the band’s best. From the opening salvo, titled You Need An Ass Kickin’ Right Now, to the closing notes of World’s Been Turned Upside Down, the group is fired up.
“I knew we had to do an album for the 40th Anniversary and we didn’t really have an idea of what the theme would be, until we had eight or 10 tunes done and the clear theme was inequality —racial, economic or gender,” said Keithley. “People always say, what was the point of D.O.A. when you started, and that was to speak out against racism, sexism, greed and warmongers. Today, we’re still fighting against the same thing.”
The rightward swing of the pendulum in the West with the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, Brexit in the UK, and nationalist/racialist parties getting elected in many European countries such as Poland, Hungary and Austria, gave the singer plenty to yell about. But he was aware that there was no point in doing it by name, the way the band had done in the past with such neo-Con icons as former president Ronald Reagan.
“Yeah, there is no point in mentioning Trump’s name again, we all know it and we know about him,” he said. “If we are Vancouver’s protest band — as someone once called us — then we are happy to partly fill that role along with all the other dedicated contemporaries who have blazed that activist path in the past and present.”
The first Fight Back Festival brings together a number of Keithley’s contemporaries into a multistage, multiple performers showcase for grassroots democracy and taking a stand against that dark quartet of racism, sexism, hatred and greed. Among the headliners are Roots Roundup, one of the first “world groove” acts in the city, In the Whale and others. There are also street performers included in the show and an exhibition of music photographer Bev Davies’ punk rock image archives.
It’s not the first time the group has headlined a conceptualized festival.
“We did something called the Intensathon at Graceland decades back (that was) modelled on the old Trips festivals that happened in the ’60s,” he said. “The idea was always to bring together the community under one banner to celebrate change and promote dialogue around changing the world for a — hopefully — better place.”
Of course, D.O.A. hasn’t really changed one bit. The template the group set with such classics as The Enemy, Whatcha Gonna Do and The Prisoner on its 1980 debut album, Somethin’ Better Change, has continued through the decades. Keithley knows this. “I think if you’re a band, sound like that band,” he said.
“Go ahead and progress, but keep your sound and progress within that. A lot of the first wave of punk rock bands switched up to try to be glam rock acts and people still go ‘yeah, they had some good albums and then went to complete s--t.’ Whenever they reform, they usually stick to playing the music from those early albums because they had more than 10 fans.”
It’s a bit of a debate in the local music scene whether D.O.A. every really broke up or even took a hiatus. What can’t be disputed is that the group has played a number of “retirement” gigs over the years. These often tied in with Keithley’s runs for political office. He has unsuccessfully run for the Green party in several ridings.
The 62 year-old Burnaby resident is running in his hometown, trying for the mayor’s seat for the Burnaby Civic Green party.
Would he retire if he got elected?
“People ask about that. I think I would still do some recording and play a few festivals such as the Fight Back Festival, which I would love to make an annual thing if the public demand is there,” he said. “But touring as heavily as we have done all these years would be out of the question, because I would be much, much too busy doing my job for the citizens of Burnaby.”
D.O.A.'s Fight Back is available on the band’s Sudden Death Records label, which is owned and operated by Keithley.
The singer/guitarist says he’s excited to be hitting the stage again with the “super tight and driving power trio” he’s formed with drummer Paddy Duddy and bassist Mike Hodsall. Expect this version of D.O.A. to be quite live indeed.
sderdeyn@postmedia.com twitter.com/stuartderdeyn