Y’ALL BEST LISTEN TO DOA

Y’ALL BEST LISTEN TO DOA

Mike Gitter

What keeps the grizzly bearbashin’, brewskie-swiggin’, guitar-crunchin’ DOA going after nine years of sweat, thrash and message? Hailing from the frozen Northlands of Vancouver, the hard-rockin’ four-piece—propelled by lumberjack proportioned rubber-neck Joey “Shithead” Kieghley on rhythm and lead vox, the always exciting and nearly skeletal Dave Gregg on lead, Brian Goble on bass and ex-SNFU drummer Jon Card smashing with metronomic abandon—DOA live up to their name as one of the hardest working groups in rockdom.

‘‘We’ve been going for nine years now,” says Kieghley, ‘‘and we’ve all come to realize that there’s a great many things that music can do and that there are also a great many things that have to be done. Some people say that you shouldn’t mix politics and music and I will not agree with that. There are two types of bands: those that simply entertain and those that both entertain and educate. While everyone comes to be entertained, you basically have an hour of their lives to say something to them as well as entertain. A real good example of what music can do, given the right potential, was the Vietnam War. Interestingly, people that were written off as commies, fags and pinkos were the ones that stopped the war, not Gerald Ford.”

DOA are a band of commitment. As evidenced on each release from 1980’s Something Better Change LP to the recently unleashed True (North), Strong And Free (Profile/Rock Hotel), they’ve consistently retained their ties to the underground by charging up a battering, hardcore rock barrage with a distinctly anti-authoritarian stance. In their hands, even standards like Bachman Turner Overdrive’s ‘‘Takin’ Care Of Business” take on DOA’s trademarked, self-parodizing outlook.

Political venom spews forth with each of Kieghley’s spittleloaded yammerings. The new album’s anthemic “51st State” decries Canada’s economic, military and political reliance on the U.S. “A lot of the time, Canada is referred to as a U.S.-owned corporation and subsidiary, which isn’t completely true,” insists Kieghley. ‘‘But there is a huge American influence in Canada culturally, economically and militarily. Soviet missiles that are incoming into the United States pass the first line of detection in northern Canada. If Star Wars was ever installed, that would be the only place for it to make any sense.”

True, Strong And Free marks a slicker though nonetheless harder-edged rock direction for DOA. Vastly improved production allows them to touch on a variety of styles ranging from the metallic surge of ‘‘Bullet Catcher” to the outright funk of ‘‘Ready To Explode,” while maintaining their “thorn in the side of conformity” outlook. “Now, more than ever, we need people speaking out,” says Kieghley. “If you let people like the PMRC push you around, you’ll end up listening to Pat Boone or whatever they thought was cool when they were young. DOA has the means to reach out to other people with a diversity of styles, as opposed to preaching to the converted. The thread of the band’s consistency and lyrical outlook remain. We aren’t about to lose our credibility. We care a lot.”