Not dead yet
>> If punk is ancient history, nobody told DOA’s Joey Keithley

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Punk rock has never really aged well. Once the mohawk starts receding and the bullet belt has to be let out a couple more notches, things rapidly approach game over. Smash-the-state sentiments sung through stained dentures tend to come across more like the kvetching of grumpy old men nursing coffees at McDonald’s than anything close to direct action. While sleepwalking through the hits of yesteryear is all well and good, it seems that most of these ol’ yellers have really lost their bark. Check out the latest limpers from the Misfits, the Damned, Buzzcocks, Stiff Little Fingers or TSOL. Yeesh! Somebody should take these blue-rinsed spike-tops behind the barn and put them—and us—out of misery. Well, most of them.

“I’m still pretty much full of piss and vinegar,” says 45-year-old elder statesmen Joey Keithley (aka Joey Shithead) of seminal Vancouver punk band DOA. Just shy of 25 years swinging at the punk rock piñata, Keithley has been through the tragic deaths of band members, numerous lineup changes and countless passing fads in rock. Thing is, he’s still sounding as charged as the day he first sang punk anthems like “Fuck You,” “Disco Sucks,” “The Enemy” and “America the Beautiful.”

Having given the retirement thing a go in 1991, Keithley quickly found out his job was not done yet. “Usually, when you retire, you are supposed to do it when you have money. I did it when I was dead broke. I worked at a job for a while and after about two weeks after I stopped DOA, I found myself already working on new songs. I guess when you’ve been at it as long as I have you just never stop.”

Green machine

Keithley’s penchant for being a grade-A shit disturber hasn’t slowed down much lately, either. Having gotten his “political thorn in the side” start while still in high school, Keithley was spurred on by the Greenpeace movement at the time and also began taking part in protests against nuclear testing. Later, in DOA, Keithley was famous for holding benefits for the Vancouver Five.

In case you might’ve forgotten, the Vancouver Five was a collective of anarchists accused, tried and convicted for the bombing of Red Hot video pornography outlets and the Litton plant which, along with making microwaves, also dabbled in the highly lucrative field of manufacturing nuclear tracking devices. Keithley has more recently taken the idea “if you can’t beat them, join them and then beat them” to heart and has run for the Green Party. He fared well, once in provincial elections and twice in municipal elections. A little strange for a self-proclaimed purveyor of pseudo-anarcho anti-politics, but Keithley finds it all part of the plan.

“I never suspected I would get elected, but I was trying to get the public’s attention to what was going wrong in B.C.—not just environmentally but economically as well. The people who support (B.C. Premier) Gordon Campbell are from the business sector or from high-income districts. People wanted a change but I don’t think that’s what a lot of people voted for. There are two ways to take down a system, one is from within and the other is from without.

“If you want to take down a brick wall, you can throw stones at it or drive a tank through it, but probably the best way to do it is to talk your way through it. I believe in people power and people protesting. I don’t believe that violence works in our society. With the Vancouver Five, I didn’t agree with their method but I agreed with what they were protesting about.”

Folk the system

Keithley raised some eyebrows in the punk community recently when he toured across Canada armed with just an acoustic guitar and some stories. Of course, the punkers shouldn’t have got their bondage trousers in such a knot as, after all, it was folky Woody Guthrie who first stood on the soapbox against the oppressors and affixed his guitar with the slogan, “This machine kills fascists.”

“I think someone once called DOA ‘super loud electric folk,’ and I think it is. If you look at our songs like ‘General Strike,’ I think that could fit in with that electric folk thing. Woody Guthrie popularized American folk music until he got blacklisted for being a conservative leftist—same thing with Pete Seeger and the Weavers. Punk rock and folk are pretty similar in a lot of ways. They are both music from the people and both say something. I still believe you can change the world with the power of words if you really put your mind to it. Beyond that, it’s also just fun to play.”

After a quarter century of strapping on the machine that kills fascists, it seems that Keithley’s main motivation in keeping DOA going against the odds is quite simple—the guy is still having fun. “We try and make our live show the most mayhem possible, that’s what it’s about. The message is all well and good and really important to me, but the first thing that draws people to a band is the music, the groove and the feel and that’s the most important thing. If you go at it hard then the people will respond and the show will start taking up momentum. We are a rock band and that’s what we do. Nobody wants to go see a lecture. Some people don’t want to hear a message and that’s cool too. Some people just want to pick up a girl or a boy. I think punk rock has always had this edge of hedonism and we haven’t abandoned that.”

DOA’s legacy is a big one to measure up to. On the new record Win the Battle, however, Keithley does the name proud while continuing to take potshots at what he deems wrong in the world, be it with the anti-free-trade song “Just Say No to the WTO” or singing from the people’s perspective on the fallout of Sept. 11 with the song “All Across the USA” (a duet with Bif Naked). The new songs are top shelf material but Keithley, whether he likes it or not, has become one of the only punk rock icons still standing strong. “When people come up to me and tell me I’ve helped change their lives, I don’t know what to say at that point. All I can do is just hope it’s for the better. The reason that I still play music is because as a kid I got really inspired by my heroes, like John Fogerty, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Leadbelly and Bob Dylan. When I was in school I knew that you can do a lot with the power of music and I never stopped believing that. What I do now, or since I started playing in a band, is just like payback.” :

With Fishbone at Café Campus on Monday, April 22, 8pm, $18