It’s been a bit more than five years since D.O.A. performed in the Lehigh Valley, and the Canadian punk band has gone through some changes.
The quartet, which returns to the area tonight for a show at Airport Music Hall in Allentown, has realigned its lineup (drummer Jon Card has replaced Greg “Dimwit” Jones, guitarist Chris Prohom has taken Dave Gregg’s place).
The band suffered through a protracted legal battle with Profile Records, but its latest LP, “Murder” on Restless Records, recently made the Billboard charts for five weeks, something the band’s 18 other LPs, EPs and singles couldn’t do.
Lead singer Joe Keithley got married and fathered two children. (The youngest, 9-month-old Georgia, is starring in the upcoming movie “Look Who’s Talking Too.” Her voice is being supplied by Roseanne Barr.)
Keithley himself made his acting debut recently in a cult film called “Terminal City Richochet,” which starred former Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra. “It’s a black political futuristic comedy,” said Keithley during a recent telephone interview from Memphis, Tenn. “I played a cop. Jello played the head of the secret police. D.O.A. plays a song in the film, ‘That’s Progress.'”
Keithley said Biafra and D.O.A. worked together so well that Biafra asked the band to back his “ranting, singing and raving” on Biafra’s new LP, “Last Scream Of The Missing Neighbors,” which is being released on Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label.
But for all the changes of recent years, two things have remained constant: D.O.A.’s commitment to forging an accessible punk/hard-rock sound and avoiding compromising its socially aware lyrics. “We want to be the perennial fly in the ointment, the pebble in the giant’s boot,” Keithley said with pride.
In the battle to raise social consciousness, Keithley and Biafra are veteran comrades-in-arms. When D.O.A. first formed in Vancouver 12 years ago, the group did many low-budget, “baloney sandwich” tours up and down the West Coast. Along with the Dead Kennedys, the Dils, Black Flag and the Avengers, D.O.A. helped pioneer what became the West Coast punk/ hardcore circuit, an alternative set of venues where “underground” bands considered untouchable by mainstream clubs and promoters could perform.
Keithley tries to practice what he preaches. Late last year, for example, he joined forces with fellow Canadians Terry Jacks (perhaps best-remembered for a bit of treacle called “Seasons in the Sun”), Bryan Adams and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, as well Little Cesar and other bands, for A Night For The Environment, a benefit show to fight the pollution of British Columbia waterways by the pulp and paper industry.
Keithley conceived the show after seeing a TV report about Jacks’ efforts as head of a small group, Environmental Watch. “He (Jacks) wasn’t trying to revive his career … It was just him and some friends trying to attract some attention about a problem — that people living near the pulp mills were suffering abnormally high rates of cancer — and raising hell about it.”
The Terry Jacks song “Where Evil Grows” was released as a benefit single (it also appears on the cassette and CD versions of “Murder). “Obviously we’re not pop stars with a huge audience, but if people don’t use the means they have to get things done the right way, pretty soon (no one) will have a pot to p— in.”
D.O.A., Italian punk band Negazione, and Quakertown punk band Step Back play tonight at Airport Music Hall, K mart Shopping Center, Airport Road, Allentown. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the show begins about 8:15. Tickets for the Makoul Productions show are expected to be available at the door. For information, call 433-6788 or 821-0906.
