In a messed up world, with increasing and repeated incidences of mindless death, destruction, climactic upheaval, economic desolation, the ascendancy of the bigoted, the ignorant, the incompetent, and a world that worships the vapid, the vacuous and the talentless as celebrities, it’s comforting to know that there are still a few folks like Joe Keithley fighting the good fight.
For nearly 40 years, Keithley, better known to legions of multigenerational punk fans as the leader, philosopher and activist frontman for the legendary Canadian punk band DOA as Joey Shithead, has used the platform of his raw, incendiary, in-your-face politically-charged, truth-filled music to (with apologies to Tom Morello) rage against the machine – be it corrupt politicians, greedy corporations, and the cult of celebrity.
Since the late 1970s, DOA has had varying lineups supporting Keithley, releasing 20 albums, including 2015s Hard Rain Falling, and touring the world to a still-expanding group of punk music fans who crave the sort of authenticity and integrity that very few bands outside of DOA bring to the dance floor.
A self-admitted news junkie for most of his life, Keithley has now set his sights on the large, undulated, hyperbolically engorged nation to the south of his home and native land for his latest musical missive, singling out presumptive Republican presidential nominee and former reality TV impresario Donald Trump with the release of the single and video F**ked Up Donald – 85 seconds of chord crunching protestation that is as honest as it is blunt.
“The funny thing is this song was originally written and released for Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s, but now Trump is making Reagan look like a moderate. I thought I would never say that in my life but there, I just said it. And that’s not to exonerate Reagan and his administration for all the crappy things that they did but, wow, that guy was nothing compared to what Trump is proposing,” said Keithley from his home near Vancouver.
“The Republican Party has always been right wing, but it’s just gone so far to the right wing that it’s become completely xenophobic. And they have this urge to restore American to some sort of age that never really was there. It’s like a fantasy world.”
The rhetoric of Trump and the sorts of discord and unfiltered hatred spewing from his mouth and those of his supporters is what really motivated Keithley to step up to the plate with a little bombastic truth of his own.
“The very first thing he did was he hijacked the Neil Young Song [Rockin’ in the Free World] which was a really smart thing because it got him on the news cycle once an hour. I heard it all the time on the radio, saw it online and saw it on TV. And I thought, ‘okay, this is really interesting, somebody who actually understands the priorities of today’s corporate media is actually going to run for president.’ But even I didn’t take him that seriously, initially,” he explained.
“And there were the things he said about Mexicans that were really unfortunate and lousy things to say. And then when he started adding on things about punishing women if they had an abortion and banning all Muslims, I guess it was the piling on effect that kind of motivated me. At first I thought it was an interesting component to the debate and I know I wasn’t alone in that thinking. But I quickly realized this guy might actually have a chance. Back when all the pundits on CNN or wherever thought oh no, sooner or later Jeb Bush will come to the rescue and restore the standard old horrible common sense to the Republican Party, I knew it was not to be. So we wanted to make a statement about that with this song.
“It’s a call to awareness and just getting people to think. We have had a ton of reaction to the song too. Normally if we do a Facebook post we might typically get from 50,000 to 200,000 people to look at it. But when we did the F**ked Up Trump video and posted it, we probably had three million people look at it. So that says to me what we are saying is not an original thought – a lot of other people were thinking the same thing about him. I think we are just expressing what a lot of people were trying to say.”
Keithley knows he touched a nerve, not only because of the positive reaction, but because of the online backlash that also greeted the release of the song and video – something for which he is quite proud.
“We got a lot. We got called every name in the book you can think of and I won’t even bother repeating them. But for every time that happened online there would be 20 to 30 people who would jump to our defence. We were called aging hippies and were told that Canadians should mind their own business, and a lot worse,” he said.
“And it’s not like there are three million DOA fans out there. This thing was passed along so much because the message made sense because this guy is such a f**ker.”
Keithley didn’t waste a lot of time. As soon as he got the idea down on paper, he called in DOA bandmates Paddy Duddy and Mike Hodsall to lay down the track, under the supervision of producer Cecil English (No Means No, Jello Biafra, The Smalls). With a wry sense of humour, DOA also recorded their version the classic Barry McGuire song Eve of Destruction for the ‘B Side’ of the single.
DOA’s official slogan is Talk minus Action equals Zero and Keithley and the band has been using their music and the stage created by their notoriety to promote political stances against racism, globalization and its impact on working people, freedom of speech and environmentalism.
In the early 1970s, a teenaged Keithley and his classmates participated in anti-war and anti-nuclear protests organized by Greenpeace throughout British Columbia’s lower mainland, and a progressive, protest-oriented punk rocker was born. After all these years, those issues are still top of mind and perhaps in a worse state than they were back in the more idyllic late 1970s.
“It’s been terrible recently, actually. I know what people mean when they say they would love to turn all their news feeds off for a while. I am a pretty intense news junkie but sometimes on the weekends I just kind of shut it all off and watch sports or play guitar and just try to avoid the worst of the worst. It’s unfortunately one of the un-nicest times we’ve ever lived in in human history, modern history anyways,” he said.
“And when people ask me why DOA is still going, it’s because of that. When we started out we made stands against sexism, racism, war mongers and greed. And I look around 35, 40 years later and sexism, war mongers, greedy people and racists are still doing their thing and in some cases it’s worse that it was back in 1978.”
Keithley believes the advances in communication technology that are so good on some fronts are part of the problem, as it is creating ‘celebrities’ based on notoriety, not achievement or excellence in a particular field of endeavour.
“The world is amplified because we are more connected – that’s a lot of it. I hate to say this, but when horrible things happen, some people want to copy it. It’s a bizarre thing. I think that one thing that has changed because of the information age that we’re in is that people are so determined to make a name for themselves. It doesn’t matter what they do or how morally reprehensible it is,” he said.
“People will do just about anything to try and be famous for a bit. Or in the case of the Orlando shooter, famous for a long time. You couldn’t do something like that in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. People want to get famous quicker rather than working at it. Gordie Howe told Wayne Gretzky to practise his back hand, so he did that for an hour or more a day. Muhammed Ali worked the heavy bag, the speed bag, worked on his footwork. Obviously there is natural ability but they also just worked their f**king asses off to be that good. Like Jimi Hendrix practicing over and over and again.”
And he also hopes that musicians get back to utilizing their talents for the greater good, and create music that is meaningful and inspiring.
“I think there is still room for music to be important in this world. You’ve got to get young people doing it; middle aged and older people as well. But young people listen to younger artists – it’s always been that way and always will be that way. So we need the younger generation of musicians to pick up the mantle from me and my world and the people like me: Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye. And you don’t have to have a blanket philosophy and have to agree with everyone on every issues. But you have to know the difference between right and wrong. To me that’s what it comes down to at the basic level,” Keithley asserted.
As for changing the world, changing the vitriolic, simplistic, destructive and dehumanizing level of political and social discourse, Keithley is a firm believer in the old-school tenet that real change begins at home.
“If you’ve got a good idea, convince your neighbours that it’s a good idea and then if it’s actually a good idea, it spreads across your town or city and then across the province and if it’s a really good idea, maybe it can spread across the country. To me, real change is a local thing. To me, the big solution is that if people realize that they do have a lot of power within their own hands, things can change. That is my thing – grass roots democracy. The politician is supposed to be listening to you, but everybody has the perception that we need to be listening to the politician, or big media or big business – all of which are working together in so many ways,” he said.
“And a lot of times it doesn’t matter the political stripe of the party. They all want to maintain their power and priorities and money and status and that kind of thing. If you had regular people raising shit, things might change. People can get pushed a long way, but when they finally get mad, they rise up. People are not stupid for the most part, and then want things to get better. The Civil Rights movement was a great example of that, and also stopping the Vietnam War. The politicians didn’t stop the Vietnam War; farmers from Iowa stopped the war.”
As for music, Keithley said he never tires of playing often and playing loud.
“You have to try different things and play different places to stay fresh. We’ve been to China a couple of times and we’re going to go again next year. Stuff like that is a challenge. It’s so different than what we have ever done before. And no matter where we play, we go full tilt because we want to give people a good show and then we feed of their energy. People can always tell when the band is just punching the clock and putting in their shift, going through the motions. And that’s a deadly thing because then you become a nostalgia act,” he said.
“DOA has a lot of nostalgia attached to it because we came along so early in the punk rock movement. I think we have always been forward looking in what we write about, where we play and the things we get involved in. We’re always coming up with new ideas and talking about what’s going on currently rather than what happened 30 or 40 years ago. And I just love playing loud music and getting a charge out of the crowd. Plus it’s a great soapbox. I have been into politics since I was 16 and this is the way I feel I can make a difference and I have no plans on stopping.”
DOA is playing a few dates in Ontario before heading over for a summer tour of Europe. On June 23, the band is at Lee’s Palace in Toronto, followed by a set at the Amnesia Rock Festival in Montebello, Quebec. Peterborough’s Red Dog Tavern hosts DOA on June 25 before a show at Maxwell’s in Waterloo the following evening.
For more information on the tour, on F**ked Up Donald and the band in general, visit the website of their label Sudden Death Records at http://suddendeath.com, or the band’s page on Facebook, www.facebook.com/DOAPUNK.
Joe Keithley is also on Twitter at @DOAjoe.
* Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPSLmPokmtg
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