Review
I, SHITHEAD: A LIFE IN PUNK
by Joey Keithley
Arsenal Pulp Press, 256 pp.
I first encountered D.O.A. on a sweaty August night back in 1996. The Night Gallery was packed and the band was unrelenting. Joey (Shithead) Keithley leaned into the microphone and snarled out at the audience. My friends, who had never been to a hardcore punk show, were riveted. That night, D.O.A. would play for hours and draw upon their wealth of songwriting history to beat us into submission.
That history, now more than 25 years strong, is on display in Keithley’s autobiography, I, Shithead.
Keithley may not win any awards for subtlety, but then, that made him a great front man for the hard-hitting, politically charged music of D.O.A. In I, Shithead, he has successfully found his literary voice or, rather, snarl. Fans of D.O.A. and hardcore punk will love it.
For people who were never into the band, however, I, Shithead is still a good read and perhaps one of the most important books on the history of Canadian rock ’n’ roll since 2001’s Have Not Been the Same. While Michael Barclay and his co-authors did an excellent job chronicling the so-called glory days of the Canadian music scene during the late 1980s and early 1990s, they missed out on the opportunity to explore what some consider to have been one of the most dynamic and exciting music scenes in North America – Vancouver circa 1978 to 1982. This was the heyday of D.O.A, when the band helped shape West Coast North American punk, together with other bands such as the Dead Kennedys and the Germs. It’s a shame that this important period has been ignored until now simply because it fell outside the radar of the Canadian rock bible, but Keithley’s book finally does it justice.
D.O.A. was a political band and Keithley does not shrink from displaying his political tendencies, although some might be disappointed that his political discussions do not go into depth or details. However, the book does capture in print Keithley’s trademark bull-in-a-china-shop style. The year-by-year, tour-by-tour retelling of adventures and misadventures not only shows the growth of the band, but also their engagement with political issues, be it playing in European squatter colonies or issuing benefit singles to support local causes.
I, Shithead goes a long way in demonstrating that, as well-known and popular as D.O.A. were, the general consistency of their performances and releases in the last few years of their existence might have caused many to under-appreciate their contribution and importance to Canadian punk.
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