This week, Canadian punk legends D.O.A stop by Lethbridge on their farewell tour in support of their latest and likely last CD “We Come in Peace.”
Frontman and lone remaining member Joe Keithley is retiring the band after 35 years so he can pursue the provincial NDP nomination for his home riding of Coquitlam.
D.O.A’s farewell tour comes to Studio 54, Feb. 20 with special guests the Scallywags and No More Moments.
Keithley said the band’s farewell tour has been very successful including a couple of sold out shows in their home of Vancouver.
The show includes a lot of the older and politically charged songs the band built their reputation on in the late ’70s and early ’80s, plus several off of their latest, and possibly last CD “We Come In Peace.
“What we’re doing is we’re playing a couple songs each off the last couple albums and a few songs from the ’90s we're leaning pretty heavily on the classic records everyone knows like the first album “Something Better Change,” “ Hardcore 81, and ” War on 45. So I think we’ve pretty well learned all of the songs from “War on 45.” So people can expect that and a wild, rambunctious untamed rock show that D.O.A is known for,” he said.
The new CD “We Come In Peace” has a lot of variety on it and performances by several former D.O.A. members plus old friend Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys, Billy Talent frontman Benjamin Kowalewicz and even Headstones frontman Hugh Dillon performing on the CD.
“ It’s great to have that variety in there because you hear the different voices and just the strengths those people have,” Keithley said.
“ I didn’t really go into this thinking okay well this may be the last D.O.A album or something like that. Because I had thought about politics for the last couple of years but didn’t really make up my mind about this until after we’d finished the album,” he said adding variety has always been a hallmark of punk rock, especially original punk rock.
“I love variety. When the Vancouver scene started out we’d do shows that involved, you’d have a punk rock band and a new wave band, maybe a reggae band and some avant garde experimental type thing. So it really would be a big mix up. I usually find it’s lot a more enjoyable way to see shows rather than having four bands who all sound the same,” he said.
The variety is reflected on the new CD which has the straight ahead punk D.O.A is known for, plus some reggae, spaghetti western music and even a Celtic punk song.
“ That was intentional for sure, right. You know punk rock, when it started out, had a lot of different varieties to it. It’s actually got more now than it had when it started with. It’s since branched out adding emo and various sub genres, so to speak, but our bread had butter has usually been straight up punk rock songs with a little bit of ska or reggae thrown in with a little bit of humour. I know on this album, obviously one of the different ones is “Man With No Name” which is a kind of rocking spaghetti western one,” he described.
D.O.A. also has a cover of the Beatles’ “Revolution” on their new CD.
“Yeah, absolutely, probably the greatest rock band of all time, I guess, besides the Rolling Stones. And it’s one of their top songs,I mean they’ve got so many great songs. Obviously unbelievable right . I found it just fit the mood of the album. I’d always wanted to do it. And we recorded it so it had the same kind of feel… a bit of a shuffle. The original has a shuffle and we tried doing that so we listened to ours and we thought it just sounded like crap. So we straightened out the beat and gave it a more normal D.O.A kind of beat and it worked really easily. We got it pretty much on the first take,” he said.
The CD also explores contemporary events like the Occupy Wall Street. “We Occupy” features Jello Biafra on lead vocals.
“I really loved the idea. I kind of knew like as the movement was getting bigger that it probably couldn’t sustain itself. You having these encampments and stuff like that and then cities eventually would get sick of it type thing and close them down. Which they did obviously. But I think the cool thing about it was it actually alerted people who weren’t conscious of the fact that you have you have one per cent of the people in the world probably control between 80 and 90 per cent of the wealth right, so the idea is not to make it so there is no more rich people. There will always be people with different incomes. That’s just the way the world is obviously. Just the rich people should pay a little bit more of their fair share.
They also redid General Strike, a popular track from early in the band’s career.
“ Yeah, that was done at the suggestion of my friend Jello Biafra who used to sing for the Dead Kennedys and cause he sings guest vocals on the track “ We Occupy. So as we did the tracks he said why don’t you do a some sort of version of “General Strike” as well, so we ended up doing an acoustic version of it, which was fun. So we just got this old piano that was sitting in the studio and I grabbed an acoustic guitar and half a drum set and an acoustic bass and rattled it off in one take,” he said.
It has been several years since they have been to Lethbridge, though they have been to Coaldale a couple of times.
“We have not been to Lethbridge in a while. We played some weird warehouse … Yeah it was strange. We did an all ages show which was terrible, That didn’t work and then an overage show which was okay I thought , not really well attended though and we also played in Coaldale a couple of times which I know is not Lethbridge. So I’m thinking this should be pretty good actually,” he enthused.
Keithley is pretty humble about D.O.A's influence on other punk bands.
“I guess there’s been a lot I suppose people tell me anyway. From the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Green Day to Rancid you know, a lot of people right, Sonic Youth and newer bands too I suppose,” he said.
“For a lot of people because we played so early on and played so many places where our style of band had never been before, we kind of set the template for a lot of people. You find a lot of people what the first punk rock show they ever saw, they’ll put D.O.A. as in being in one of the first three punk shows they ever saw like all around North America and a lot of places. Europe too because we travel there a lot too before you had 10 million punk rock bands. And D.O.A. stuck out with them because of the energy, I believe anyways, the humour and the social activism and the politics,” he said.
They have had some interesting fan experiences from traveling all over the world.
“Here’s the strangest one. It was about three years ago we were in Slovenia. You know, good show, lots of kids showed up, but some of the kids started drinking outside way too early like at three in the afternoon type thing. So as the show is going on at about 10, 10:30 we’re playing , I look out on the dance floor and there’s a guy who is like totally buck naked is making his way towards the stage, so I say to my friend, the roadie, a good buddy of mine we call him Tim the Hippie, as I’m playing and I’m motioning towards the guy Tim get this guy,” he said.
“ But he’s so sweaty. Tim goes to grab him to thrown him off the stage and he squirms away from Tim and falls back into the mosh pit. So about three minutes later he tries to come up on the stage again, so again I’m motioning to Tim ‘Tim, get this guy and throw him off,’ but he looking at like uh uh, you get him. I already did that once. Eventually the crowd corralled him and they threw him out. He crashed into the PA board and broke some mic inputs and stuff like that. He was harmless but obviously really drunk and also lacking of clothes,” he laughed.
“ So I made fun of him. I said ‘nice going guy,’ now all of the girls have a pretty good idea of just how small it is. But it was in English so I don’t know if he understood me though some people were laughing. It was bizarre.”
D.O.A does some unusual covers like Tom Jones’s “It’s not unusual.”
“I like Tom Jones. When I was a kid he used to do this like TV variety show. There's a lost expression. Ask a kid what a variety show is and they would have no idea these days that used to be shot in Vancouver so it was a big deal. And we were driving through Italy for maybe the second time in 1985. And I stopped in a tiny truck stop. And I was sitting in the back. So we, the people who weren’t driving, shared a bottle of brandy and made our way through a Tom Jones Greatest Hits as we were driving through beautiful Italy. So I really had a soft spot in my heart and maybe my head, who knows, for Tom Jones. I’ve seen him live and he’s great. We just thought it would be a fun song to cover,” he said.
While they have recorded a variety of covers, Keithley chose “War” as his favourite D.O.A cover.
“One the really sticks out is probably sticks out is War. It’s a solid message about something horrible. It’s a famous cover for us. People know it and it’s also fun because it’s so different. A lot of songs we take songs and kind of punk rockize them or D.O.A.ize them. Kind of like simonizing your car in that sense. And don’t speed them up too much but speed them up a little bit but straighten out the beats. But with War we sped it up a little but but basically stuck to the original arrangement. That one’s great,” he said.
“And we did another one a few years ago I really like a version of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” Two of the best anti- war songs of all time.”
As expected, a lot of bands have covered D.O.A, which has resulted in some unique arrangements of their songs.
A buddy of mine, Jimmy Joe Pearson he drums for the The Toxic Reasons a great band from Dayton, Ohio. He’s trying to put together a D.O.A. tribute album, people covering D.O.A. so I’d have to listen to what he’s got so far,” he said.
“One time we played with these guys from Spain, called the Parasitos and they said ‘oh you must come up and sing with us on a song called ‘Burn It Down,’ from like 1983, it was a popular D.O.A song at the time. So I said sure I’ll come up and sing it with you. So they motioned to me and I got up on stage and the arrangement and how they played it was so bizarre I was just guessing where you should put the vocals, and once I was finished singing it with them they were really happy. And I was like wow, okay that was strange,” he said adding they didn’t have the chords or main guitar riff right.
“It was like kind of like the riff but not quite. Now I believe in twisting around other peoples and adapting stuff, but there is the key thing to getting the basic notes right but that wasn’t happening. It was really strange I don’t have a tape but I’m sure it would be bizarre sounding. Usually I’m a good sport so I just went along with it,” he said.
The band that is best known for their song “Disco Sucks” is playing, well, a disco. Keithley doesn’t mind though.
“Well, you know. I actually find now if I’m driving along and I have on a commercial radio station that there’s a few disco songs I’d probably start tapping my foot to. You know, it’s just one of those things,” he said.
“They’re like people who crafted songs. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean. At the time disco was sort of a whole kind of commercial subculture, shall we say, that punk rock was vehemently opposed to. And over the passage of time it doesn’t have that kind of meaning anymore. But I still love the song. We still play it and people get people charged up over it. But that doesn’t mean we’re gonna come out and start doing covers of Donna Summer or anything, don’t get me wrong here. Let the kids know that’s it’s the same D.O.A,” he laughed.
The show begins at 9 p.m., Feb. 20 at Studio 54 with special guests No More Moments and the Scallywags. Tickets are $15 in advance.
— by Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
