BOOK REVIEWS
I, Shithead: A Life in Punk
By Joey Keithley
(Arsenal Pulp Press)

Review by Thom White

If you want the WHOLE story on D.O.A., don't expect it from I, Shithead. At one point towards the conclusion, Joe Keithley says that the contents of this book are merely 5% of all the notable tales and experiences he could relate about the life and times of D.O.A.

Joey goes to great lengths to describe every beer and spirit D.O.A. ever ingested, every van or touring bus that ever broke down, and every nasty toilet they filled to the rim during the peak 1980-86 period. But the author himself disclaims at the outset that "substance abuse" was sometimes "rampant" in the D.O.A. crew, and so "out of respect for people's privacy and because stories about people being drunk and stoned are a waste of time, I'm not going into detail about it in this book."

Still, there are enough choice episodes of the notorious "shit disturbing" of D.O.A. and their crazed roadies to fill a book.

The tale takes a strictly chronological path through Joey's youth in Vancouver, B.C., and into his first serious punk band, The Skulls. He and the band moved to Toronto with plans to fly to London to join the renowned English punk scene, but as it happened, things didn't work out so, and Joey returned in January 1978 to Vancouver.

Soon after was formed the original D.O.A.: Randy Rampage (Archibald) on bass, little Chuck Biscuits (Montgomery) on drums, and Joey Shithead (Keighley) on guitar and vocals. D.O.A. first capitalized on the rising backlash against disco in 1978-79 with their debut single, "Disco Sucks." After conquering the punk world in Van, D.O.A. made their way to S.F. With promotion from Dirk Dirksen, D.O.A. played a series of shows in S.F., and developed connections with rising bands like The Dils, The Avengers, and Dead Kennedys.

D.O.A then began playing extensively on the West Coast and became one of the first bands to tour across North America with their summer 1979 tour with The Dils. They headed through Texas, then to a big "Rock Against Racism" show in Chicago, and finished with a few more gigs in New York and Ottawa.

After a dispiriting meeting later that summer with Bachman Turner Overdrive manager Bruce Allen (who reportedly started his chat with the band with, "All right, boys! How much money are you gonna make me?"), D.O.A. chose "writer and general shit disturber" Ken Lester to manage the band.

Under Lester's direction, D.O.A. put out their "World War III" 7" single with revised artwork, and then their first full-length LP in 1980, Something Better Change. D.O.A. then appropriated punk rock's latest buzzword with their LP the following year, Hardcore 81.

Along with play-by-play coverage of the D.O.A. touring machine's rampages across Europe and America, Keithley also throws in some great accounts of "run-ins" with stars of rock.

The most interesting incident may be when D.O.A. opened for The Clash in Vancouver in October 1979. The band was treated shabbily, denied a soundcheck, and then, while playing before more than 2,000 local fans, their set was cut short so the next band could go on.

After coming off-stage, Shithead and Co. were refused access backstage to chat with the headliners. "Now we were seriously pissed … As [The Clash] came out of their dressing room to head onto the stage, I blocked each one's path and yelled in their faces 'You guys are bullshit!' There was no security, so they cowered and scurried away. They started playing, sounding good."

D.O.A.'s manager Ken Lester began "catcalling" Clash guitarist Mick Jones, who "challenged Lester to come up on stage and fight him." Mick Jones would later complain that what he hated most in Vancouver was that "crappy metal band D.O.A."

Fortunately, Keithley's encounters with punk rock stars like Black Flag, X, Hüsker Dü, Jello Biafra, and Bad Brains, were more amicable.

Keithley details all of D.O.A.'s "emergency singles" and many political protest concerts, often environmentalist affairs pushing to protect the lives of Canadian trees, birds, and fish. By the mid-1980s, D.O.A. emerged as a major recording artist for Alternative Tentacles, but went through a series of lineup changes over the years. Guitarist Dave Gregg joined early on to make the band a four-piece, but then Biscuits and Rampage left the band by 1982 to later be replaced by two Shithead cronies, Dimwit and Wimpy.

With this four-piece line-up, D.O.A. did a series of tours of Europe and North America. In 1986, Ken Lester managed to get D.O.A. on a bill with Danzig, Red Cross, No Means No, and Celtic Frost at the New Music Seminar in New York City. Joey relates, "After the show, we signed a five-record deal with Profile Records in New York … Our label-mates included the Cromags, the Nils, and Peter and the Test Tube Babies, among others. Unfortunately, signing that deal would turn out to be a bad move."

True Strong and Free was put out on Profile Records in 1987, but Keithley complains that six months after the release, the record company did nothing more to promote it. D.O.A. stalwart Dave Gregg had left the band, and over the next few years, D.O.A. met with declining popularity and Keithley decided to end the band with a final show in 1990 with G.B.H.

D.O.A.'s finale went off but with some unexpected "shit disturbing." Some "geeks" hurled beers on Joey at one point during their final farewell, and earlier in the tour he had suffered a serious injury when he sliced off some of his ring finger during the oft-repeated "Lumberjack City" chainsaw routine.

After thirteen years of nearly non-stop shit disturbing, Joey describes his situation at the end of the "final" show on December 1, 1990. "I felt like a soldier finally coming home: badly wounded but still standing, bloodied but unbowed."

By way of plane, train, and an endless series of unreliable vans, Joey Keithley of D.O.A. had traveled more than 1,000,000 miles across the planet Earth by this point, and this was only the beginning. Joey reformed D.O.A. in 1993 and the band continues to rock far corners the world, most recently Japan in 2001. Look for future books from Joey to get the whole story.

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