PERFECT YOUTH: The Birth of Canadian Punk (18 page)

“I phoned Tom Harrison, who was the respected music critic in town, and I said, ‘My band, the Skulls, started a riot!’ And he goes, ‘Okay, first off, who is this?’ And I went — I’d never told anybody my nickname — and I went, ‘It’s Joey . . . uh . . . uh . . . uh . . . Shithead.’ He says, ‘Okay. Mr. Shithead, tell me what happened.’” The band opened up the paper the next week to find a three-inch column about themselves. “Vancouver’s most-hated band,” it said. And they hadn’t even played the city yet. “You can’t go wrong with a title like that,” says Keithley. “That was fucking gold.”

The Skulls convinced the Furies to let them open their second show when another band dropped off at the last minute. For a moment, punk looked poised to take over. The Skulls were subsequently asked to play a rally for the Satan’s Angels (a local precursor to the Hell’s Angels who patched over in 1983), where Keithley tried, and failed, to shit in a bucket while onstage mid-performance. They were asked to play the 10th anniversary of the
Georgia Straight
, but had the power cut midway through their set.

Frustrated by the lack of support they felt in Vancouver, the Skulls decided they needed to move to Toronto, where they assumed a bigger punk scene would be churning just north of New York City. The Furies broke up when it became clear that there wasn’t going to be a punk scene for them to be a part of, and the Dishrags were still teenagers in Victoria, honing their adolescent attack in their parents’ basements. Vancouver punk was put on hold.

“We were seen as interlopers and intruders on the scene,” says Keithley. “Lumberjacks, or whatever.” The Skulls didn’t find punk Mecca in Hogtown. They found a scene already in decline, with its own strict social structure and little room for or interest in outsiders. They managed to land a gig on their second night in the city, when an evening of heckling infamous Canuck classic rock survivor Greg Godovitz during a show at long-hair bastion the Gasworks led to them being invited onstage for an impromptu four-song set on Goddo’s gear. It would be one of the few highlights of a demoralizing four months.

“I found out they came from Vancouver, and I said, ‘Oh shit, man. It’s all over!’” recalls Ralph Alfonso, manager for the Diodes and their DIY venue, the Crash ’n’ Burn. Toronto’s legendary punk social club for one summer, it was also the inspiration for the later D.O.A. song, “Let’s Wreck the Party.”

“That place had gained fame all the way up to Vancouver,” says Keithley. “I guess it was kind of Ontario’s cool bar. So we went over there for a party one time, and we sort of did wreck the place. And I guess we summarily got thrown out, as we probably deserved. So I don’t really think we made friends with those guys.” The Skulls never got settled in Toronto. The band made plans to move to London, continuing their Eastern pursuit of punk’s promised land. But only half the band made the trip; the other half stayed behind, insisting they would leave any day, eventually balking and returning to Vancouver in shambles.

Two bands emerged from the rubble of the Skulls. First came the Subhumans, which featured the band’s drummer and guitarist, Ken Montgomery and Brian Goble, along with their roadie, Gerry Hannah. In response, Joe formed D.O.A.

Comprised of Keithley on vocals and guitar, bassist Randy Rampage, and drummer Chuck Biscuits, this early power trio incarnation of D.O.A. became the inspirational blueprint for literally hundreds of bands across Canada. They were the best, the hardest touring, and the most dedicated to the cause. D.O.A. truly was about spreading a message of political radicalism and fostering an alternative culture. Pulling a slogan from a local anarchist zine, the band adopted the simple “Talk – Action = Zero” as their mantra. It is a truth that defines them to this day.

The band played their first show on February 11, 1978, at the same Japanese Hall that hosted the first Furies show less than a year prior. They played three songs, the only ones that they had written, over and over again, until the headlining band noticed and kicked them off. They gigged around town, getting a feel for the explosive punk scene that had formed in the city since they left. Thanks to the embers left burning by the Dishrags and Stone Crazy alum Brad Kent with his band, Victorian Pork, the Vancouver scene had slowly grown over the winter of ’77, and by the time D.O.A. was ready to hit the city, the city was ready to hit back. Or, at least spit back in their face and yell something unintelligible about anarchy.

The Dishrags had remained active the whole time the Skulls were off wrecking parties in Toronto, honing their skills in Victoria before leaving home and splitting for the big city across the strait. Despite the concerns of their parents, the band dropped out of school and attempted to make their mark in Vancouver, a move that Jade Blade calls “very, very scary.”

“It was also very, very exciting because at that age you can survive off nothing,” she says. “And it was so good to be immersed in that scene. There was so much energy.” The band played regularly in the city and across the border in Seattle, travelled to San Francisco, and toured to Calgary and Edmonton. Through their tireless work, they became one of the biggest names in the exploding scene and ended up recording a pair of singles in the States before falling apart. They band’s final release came tagged with the RCA England logo, an inclusion several reviewers failed to note as satire, remarking that it was a shame that the band had broken up after finally signing to such a real-ass label. During their time in Vancouver, Blade also began dating Pointed Sticks guitarist Bill Napier-Hemy; today, they are happily married with children.

Meanwhile, D.O.A. was busy cementing its status as one of the city’s most promising bands at an anti–Canada Day concert in Stanley Park, on July 1, 1978. Keithley burned the flag, and the band performed with the kind of inspired vitriol that thousands were faking all over the world in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ success. But with Biscuits and Rampage, D.O.A. was more than a facsimile of someone else’s rebelliousness. It was the most streamlined expression of a purely Canadian outrage embodied by hardcore. They wrote about Reagan, because he affected their lives, too, but they also wrote about hockey, about Vancouver, and about the Canadian government. And about disco, and how much it sucked.

In the summer of 1978, D.O.A. recorded their first single, “Disco
Sucks,” with the unemployment insurance money being collected by Keithley’s girlfriend. “She owed me a ton of dough because she hadn’t been working for eons,” he says. “Finally, we were just fucking broke beyond belief, and I said, ‘Okay here’s the payback. We’re gonna use your cheques and we’re gonna get the record out.’ And that’s what we did.” The band recorded and mixed four songs in eight hours, releasing the EP on their own Sudden Death Records, a label that Keithley operates to this day, keeping crucial albums from the first wave of Canadian punk in print, while releasing new records from spiritually sympathetic modern artists.

“Disco Sucks” was hand-delivered by the band to record stores, college radio stations, and dedicated punk zinesters all across British Columbia. When they couldn’t deliver records in person, the band mailed out copies to radio stations in New York and San Francisco, focusing on cities where vibrant punk scenes already existed. Their reputation, combined with the undeniable strength of those four songs, garnered the band their first taste of international recognition, as the song “Disco Sucks” climbed the college radio charts in San Francisco.

Seeing the single’s success, Keithley figured it was time to book a tour. He called up the Mabuhay Gardens and asked for a show. The band was offered a two-night stint, but lacking any official D.O.A. vehicle, they were forced to improvise on their way south. Keithley took the train, Rampage took the bus, and Biscuits hitchhiked. The trio met in California at the home of Will Shatter of Negative Trend, later of Flipper, and borrowed the band’s gear for their first show, opening for the Avengers. The gig went well, but the next night went epically; Keithley, feeling The Urge mid-set, took out his dick and pissed all over the venue’s dance floor. The show lives in infamy. The next night, they returned to the venue to watch the Dead Kennedys. When the venue’s staff tried to eject a wasted Keithley, Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra stopped the show, refusing to continue until “that Shithead guy” was let back inside. He was. The band was accepted as part of California punk culture; it’s how they ended up in
American Hardcore
20 years later.

“The first time I saw D.O.A. play was at the Starwood, opening for X,” says California punk legend Keith Morris, the original vocalist for Black Flag and brain trust behind the Circle Jerks. “They were a three-piece. It was a whiteout. X is one of my favourite bands, but I couldn’t believe they had to play after D.O.A. It was like the Who and the Clash. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.”

By 1979, D.O.A. had morphed into Canada’s only national punk band. With another single, “The Prisoner,” under their belts, they struck out across the continent, playing a legendary Rock Against Racism concert in Chicago in the summer of ’79 and continuing on to New York, Ottawa, Toronto (where they received a warm reception), and everywhere in between. Let’s break this down — D.O.A. pioneered the punk and hardcore touring circuit still used by bands today. Along with Black Flag in the States, they created a truly alternative culture that prized community over cash, one that sought to encourage fans in each city to become active participants in their own culture, rather than passive observers of someone else’s.

In 1978, live venues in most cities across Canada were still employing cover bands, expected to play three sets a night and usually booked for a full week. These bands would start working originals into their set until regulars began to recognize and request them; it’s the system that birthed Rush, Trooper, and a thousand others. These bands functioned on a totally different plane than D.O.A., whose shows were designed to be an energized, destructive spectacle that couldn’t possibly last three full sets. This physical technicality doesn’t even take into account the importance placed on opening bands, who were a crucial part of keeping local scenes fresh.

“Without D.O.A., touring, getting in a van, just going . . . It didn’t exist then,” says Duff McKagen, who started his musical career with Seattle punks the Fartz before ending up in one of the biggest rock bands of the ’90s, Guns N’ Roses. “There was no internet. No one had cell phones. You didn’t know where the clubs were. You’d play at people’s houses. D.O.A. was the first band to do it. Black Flag picked it up from them. SST was born, and all those bands started touring.”

The audience for these shows was never going to be as substantial as those looking to hear pasty renditions of Neil Young songs. The old model of playing a whole week in a single city wasn’t sustainable, because bands couldn’t hope to draw consistent crowds from Wednesday through Sunday playing frantic originals, exhausting themselves after half an hour of leaping across the stage. This necessitated an endless schedule to stay solvent, bouncing from small city to small city and moving on the next day. In those cities, enthusiastic fans would book a show in whatever venue would have them, inviting their friends’ bands to open. This happened in every city between Vancouver and Toronto. Once a D.O.A. show had happened, a Subhumans show could happen; the Modernettes could come to town, and the Young Canadians wouldn’t be far behind them. There now existed an alternative to the bar scene that had set the rules in Canadian music for so long; an alternative that wasn’t making anyone rich, but was inspiring kids across Canada to think outside the box and realize the potential for cultural revolution and upheaval in every tiny Canadian town. Punk in Canada owes D.O.A. its life. It’s hard to imagine a punk world before all-ages venues and hall shows, especially since viable alternative culture is the source of so much great art in this country. Truly, it only exists because a guy named Shithead didn’t know any other way to get his band to Ottawa and back.

In Canada, D.O.A.’s influence was greater than the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, or the Clash, because they showed kids in Regina that you could be from here, sing about the things that mattered to you, not disguise your accent or your enthusiasm for hockey, and people would care. They influenced countless young fans across Canada to form their own bands, start their own zines, and put on their own shows. Once you’ve demystified the creative process, anything is possible, creating a rich culture that doesn’t have to rely on mainstream avenues to find an audience.

It’s never easy being the first, and early national tours were fraught with endless trouble. “We were so fucking broke, grateful for any free beer or food that we got, and usually we’d just stay with people and eat them out of house and home before they’d kick us out,” says Keithley. “Like, ‘You guys should be moving along now.’ In Toronto, somebody slashed our tires. But we just had a leak, so we blew one out by Thunder Bay. That was a big problem because we didn’t have a spare. And then the other one we blew out on the other side of Thunder Bay. And then we blew a ball joint in Regina. We didn’t have a show, so we had to sleep in the front of the repair shop. Ten shows in about three weeks.”

D.O.A. broke up for the first time following that tour, soon after a disastrous opening slot with the Clash at the Pacific National Exhibition grounds. The band’s final show came at a student-organized show at the University of British Columbia, when engineering students, acting as security personnel, started getting unnecessarily rough with fans trying to climb onstage. A fight broke out, and Chuck Biscuits threw down his sticks to fight the security detail; the band’s kit was destroyed in the fight, and they broke up soon after. A few weeks later, they were back together, booked to play outside the Republican National Convention in Detroit. If UBC was a riot, the RNC was the rapture.

“This other march came up the street — about 2,000 people,” says Keithley. “They were waving the American flag, big pictures of Ronald Reagan, and all these signs: ‘Commies Go Home.’ We could see this coming up the street as we played. So the two mobs got together and they started to fight by bashing each other with placards and kicking. Then about four or five Detroit police vans pulled up, and about a hundred cops ran out and snaked between the two fighting sides and joined arms. They were in full riot gear, and people were kicking underneath and punching over top of the police line.” The band looked at each other and began to play “Fucked Up Ronnie.”