Vancouver Sun

D.O.A. SAYS YOU NEED AN ASS KICKIN’ RIGHT NOW

- STUART DERDEYN sderdeyn@postmedia.com

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 agit-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 are still fighting against the same thing.”

The rightward swing of the pendulum in the West with the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., Brexit in the U.K. and nationalis­t/ racialist parties getting elected in many European countries 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 Annual Fight Back Festival brings together a number of Keithley’s contempora­ries into a multistage, multiple-performer 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 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 are 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 shit.’ 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. ever really broke up or took a hiatus. What can’t be disputed is that the group has played a number of “retirement” gigs. 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.

D.O.A.’s Fight Back is available on the band’s Sudden Death Records label, which is owned and operated by Keithley. He 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.

 ?? WARD PERRIN ?? Joey Keithley, seen in 2013, and the band D.O.A. are getting ready to present both their 17th full-length album and a festival called Fight Back to celebrate their 40th anniversar­y.
WARD PERRIN Joey Keithley, seen in 2013, and the band D.O.A. are getting ready to present both their 17th full-length album and a festival called Fight Back to celebrate their 40th anniversar­y.

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