reviewed by Suzanne Alyssa Andrew
Toronto Star Sunday, December 14, 2003

I used to go to every punk show when I lived in Ottawa, where my friends and I had countless thoughtful, albeit drunken, arguments about the environment, poverty, police violence, anarchism, anti-racism and direct action.

At one point, those debates inspired us to start up a chapter of Food Not Bombs and serve free vegan food to gutter punks, squeegee kids, the homeless and political protesters. Like punk itself, the experience was simultaneously fun and meaningful.

D.O.A., one of North America’s most important and resilient punk bands, has toured for 25 years, delivering its slogan of "talk minus action equals zero" to more than 30 countries. In his new autobiography, I, Shithead: A Life in Punk, Joe Keithley (a.k.a. Joey Shithead), D.O.A.’s lead singer/guitarist writes, "if you work hard enough at something, you can change the way things are. You can take one idea and spread it around the world." The band’s played countless benefit concerts over the years with politically charged songs such as "Royal Police," "General Strike," and "Smash the State."

I, Shithead is a humorous ramble of band anecdotes Keithley has undoubtedly been honing and retelling for years. The band has drunk enough beer to fill several swimming pools by now, and as Keithley puts it, "when you’re young and out of control, strange things happen."

D.O.A. bandmates have been known to use McDonald’s parking lots as hotels. They’ve also been threatened by rednecks in a northern logging town, they doused New York City tourists with beer and orange juice and Keithley admits to once pissing onstage. But as it turns out, you can drain the keg and be politically subversive at the same time.

Like L.A.’s Black Flag and San Francisco’s Dead Kennedys, Vancouver’s D.O.A. was one of the first hardcore punk bands to emerge from the West Coast. Formed in 1978 after Keithley’s first punk band, The Skulls, broke up, the band has gone on to sell a combined 500,000 copies of their indie label albums, sharing the stage along the way with every important punk band to emerge since the late 70s. It’s been around for so many years, D.O.A. has seen enough band members come and go that I Shithead includes a family tree chart.

Keithley remains the one constant in the chaotic swirl of D.O.A.’s history, surviving the A to Z of punk band life: agents, benefit concerts, cop violence, damage (to eardrums), ethics, fun, gear theft, hostile crowds, (bandmate) idiosyncrasies, jamming, Kraft Dinner, lost royalties, mosh pits, nicknames, odd jobs, puke, quitters, record companies, squats, touring, unemployment, (broken down) vans, wild parties, Xeroxed posters, yahoo skinheads and zines.

The experience has been anything but easy, especially financially. "A lot of people think the music biz is nothing but fame, glory and money," writes Keithley. "I’m not sure of the fame and glory part, but I do know the money part sucks."

In 1990, Keithley found himself tired of touring and rowdy audiences and decided to call it quits. He sold the band’s infamous backdrop, a modest cloth banner emblazoned with the D.O.A name, on what was considered its final tour. But after exploring solo projects, including spoken word and acting, Keithley restarted D.O.A. in 1992, claiming that no other band had stepped up to "gleefully send a punk boot right into the establishment’s groin."

True punks never give up, it would seem, but the movement has learned to mature, if not always gracefully. Keithley is now married with three kids and has tried converting his sloganeering choruses into political platforms, twice running for the Green Party in B.C. provincial elections.

As the title of his book suggests, Keithley’s no literary genius. English PhD candidates with a penchant for John Donne will enjoy this book as much as classically trained flautists appreciate the three chord sledgehammer musicality of punk rock.

Despite numerous dropped names, "colourful" language and a surfeit of tangents, the book is clearly written and enjoyable. Only D.O.A. fans will be interested in some of the book’s band minutiae, but Keithley has a knack for keeping things interesting. He cracks jokes as easily as he lobs potent political commentary, such as the band’s reaction to the Squamish Five: "We believed that injustice and inequality could be dealt with through words, ideas and people power, not through violence and bombs."

Unlike Get in the Van, the dark, unrelentingly harsh autobiography of Black Flag singer Henry Rollins, Keithley’s memoirs serve as a positive, albeit realistic, inspiration tract for punk rockers. Where Rollins prefers to analyze his scrapes and bruises through increasingly embittered diary entries, Keithley refuses to wallow. Both Rollins and Keithley have suffered their share of troubles and tragedies, but Mr. Shithead has endured his experiences with his wit and passion intact, always firmly believing that "D.O.A. could take on any kind of adversity, conquer it and adapt it to suit our own purposes. Anybody can, if they use their spirit and mind in a strong and positive way."