D.O.A. One of the most "road-seasoned" bands on the club rock circuit
today. D.O.A. A band that loves to Rock. D.O.A.-Concerned inhabit-
ants of this earth. D.O.A.-Rock 'n roll interview after a recent show
at San Francisco's Market St. Cinema. D.O.A.- Are; Joey Shithead
and Dave Gregg on guitars, Wimpy Boy on bass and Dim Wit on drums.
D.O.A.-By Sir Geeky Dummy Sr.IV
Give me a brief history of the
band, D.O.A.
That was around 79 We did a single
after that, "Prisoner of 13 Prisoner
is still a mainstay of our set. I guess
from there we carried on and did a
"Live" record, actually recorded dur
ing a six-gig tour "Triumph of the lg-
noroids," which was live at a "Battle
of the Bands at this place called
The Bodyshop." Of course, all of
these records are impossible to get
now, they're all out of print cause
the record companies have folded
J.S.: Hmm. Well I guess we started
out in February, 1875, with Randy
Rampage on bass and Chuck Buis-
cuits on drums. We always lived in
Vancouver BC Back then, there
wasn't too much going on, there
were a few original bands around,
but we decided to do our own band
Basically, the way we got the name
was, this guy by the name of Harry
Homo came up and said, "Lol's startup.
a band called D.O.A, and make a
million dollars. We never made the
million dollars, but we still got D.O.A
He didn't last loo long. he wasn
a very good singer. So we were a
three-piece for a long time and we
did the first record about four
months later, the "Disco Sucks EP.
which became pretty popular and
enabled us to come down here,
'cause it was played so frequently
on the radio around San Francisco
D.
A.
tocks
na
GLO
TOCC
and
rocks
Were these releases centralized
in Canada?
J.S.: Mostly. We got some distribu-
tion in Western Canada, down the
west coast like Seattle, and Califor
nia Like, we sent a hundred down to
Bomp We had to go sit in their of-
lice, wait for hours and hours waiting
to get paid and sort of demand our
lousy $99 or whatever it was.
In 1980, we actually did our first
album, which was called, "Some
thing Better Change," that's when
Dave Gregg (guitar player) joined
the band. We went out on our soc
ond trip. We travelled East, out Des
troit and Chicago way
At that point the band line-up was)
the same except for one addition,
and one subtraction; am I cor-
rect?
J.S.: Yeah. We've had a couple
guitar players off and on. A DOA
family tree would be real hard it
could go on for hours.
How were things going for you. I
know you've toured a hell of a lot?
J.S.: We try to blaze new trails wher
ever we go. We went over to Europe
this year, for two months
Tell me a little about that.
J.S.: We worked our way across
Canada, drove across the frozen
tundra. There was snow everywhere
we went once we left our hometown
of Vancouver. I'm surprised we
didn't kill ourselves out on the high-
way We later did, when we came
back from Europe, go off the high-
way But when we got across tundra-
land, we started off in England, and
did about eight gigs there Got some
real good press in some of the music
papers. Then we played in Holland,
Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy
and Yugoslavia
How was your reception as com
pared to the United States and
Canada?
J.S.: Basically people are pretty
similar all over the place, only they
have different backgrounds The
crowd reaction was real good,
cept for maybe one city where they
didn't like any of the bands. They
didn't Boo, but they didn't cap, or
do anything. Sort of docile ink it
was more because of a big confron
tation between sort of owing
youths and right-wing youth and
they were walong for this to happen
So they were mare preoccupied with
that. That was in Germany So, alot
of interesting stuff there, we played
at a lot of places City governments
give the youths these buildings and
tum them into "Youth Centers"
They'd have music going on, a res
taurant, a bar, and maybe some
workshops. They're quite interest-
ing, because they're actually do
nated by the city government, but
that's where all the young people go
out and plan all their anti-govern
ment activities in these furnished
centers. So it's kinda paradoxic
We stayed at some squats. They
were really good people we met
there. In Denmark they had this little
five floor apartment building, I don't
know how may people were living in
it, but it was pretty self sustained,
they didn't pay any rent. They got
the power hooked up, and when the
power authorities tried to cut them
off, they dug up the street and sort of
cemented the whole thing in so the
authorsies would have to shut off a
gigantic area in order to cut them off
again Pretty self reliant. The youth
over there are pretty aware, just the
history of the place means alot
being run over by war after war. So
the kids there are pretty up on it re-
ally political, they grow up quick in
order to survive.
Back to your releases, the next
one after "Something Better
Change" was, what?
J.S.: The next one we did was,
Hard Core 81. Which was at the
start, when that term came into
widespread usage. That album got
good distribution in the states and
we did a two-month tour, the longest
we'd ever done around north
America
How many tours has D.O.A. en-
dured in its history?
D.G.: What was the quote on how
many cumulative hours were spent
in the van?
J.S.: I figured this out personally,
all the hours spent driving between
places were added up, this is only
the band we got in 81, none of the
time from two years before that, me
and Dave have spent six months in
whole days inside that van out of the
last three and a half years.
D.G.: Yeah, last night was about the
sixtieth time we'd played Frisco, or
the Bay Area, you know, down in
San Jose and Berkeley. We got a
map on the wall back home, with a
ittle black pin every place we've
ever played, a big map of the world.
San Francisco only gets one. If we
put a pin for every time we'd played,
we'd cover all of northern California.
J.S.: I think we've gone around
North America about six times, or
something like that. When we got
back from Europe, we played up in
the totally isolated part of Canada,
up in the Atlantic Provinces. We
were the first band of our type out-
side the area that had ever been
there. And that was 1984. Were talk-
ing supreme isolation. The draw
wasn't that big, a couple hundred
D.G: In Fredericton we played in
this little cabin in the middle of a
feld, about five miles out of town, in
a raging blizzard, a full bitch to get to
this place. I don't know how they got
electricity out there, it was so iso-
ated
In a cabin?
J.S.: It wasn't really a cabin.
D.G.: It was one room.
J.S.: It was three rooms, there were
two bathrooms
D.G.: But I'm sure those people out
there will never forget it
Tell me what some of your songs
are about, what you're trying to
say?
J.S.: "War on 45 which came out at
the end of 82, or the beginning of
83, dealt with a bunch of aspects.
People fighting amongst each other,
ske internally and externally,
Kind of a concept?
D.G.: Sort of a concept album. We
tackled it with a couple of different
styles af music. We kept the lyrical
content kinda the same throughout
D.O.A.
one side of the record, which was all
about war. Because every single
day, X-amount of people die from
war, and we all feel pretty strongly
about it. One can live pretty high on
the hog at somebody else's ex-
pense, so it's a pretty legitimate sub-
ject matter to talk about. So, we kept
the subject matter the same and
music different. And the idea was to
let people know that, what we
thought was important, was where
our sentiments were, what was in
your heart rather than if you played
fast or slow, or hard or soft music.
You wouldn't determine your
selves as political?
1
J.S.: Most people call it political,
just think of it as social reality. So
many people want you to play music
that is so harmless, and doesn't re-
ally say anything. I don't really think
you can avoid looking at the situa-
tion that we're in, you know, in your
home town, around the country and
around the world. We'll stand up and
stand for anything that we feel is
right, in our hearts.
Then you guys came out with
your Greatest Hits?
J.S.: Well, that's what everybody
calls it, but it's sort of like an anthol
ogy or whatever, because the songs
were on those records that went out
of print. We took 'em, sort of remixed
them and reissued 'em just so
people could get an idea of some of
the stuff we've done I was very
happy with the way it came out
Some of the other stuff we did, like a
benefit single for the Vancouver
Five. Which is basically five people,
one guy who's a real good friend of
ours, the other people we knew to
various degrees. They did some, us,
what the government calls, "subver-
sive activities, and blew up some
stuff, some "ariti-people institu
tions, where they make guidance
systems for cruise missiles, video-
pornography shops, stuff like that.
They blew them up?
J.S.: Blew 'em up sky high, millions
of dollars worth of damage. But we
got behind them because
thought that the issues that they
raised through that made a lot of
sense.
we
They didn't just go out and blat-
antly blow up some places?
J.S. No, no. There was a lot of
thought put behind it.
D.G.: They got branded as ter
rorists, and you know what that word
connotates, and that's bullshit be-
cause these people were sane. A lot
saner than most people, thinking, ra-
tional people, environmentalists,
anti-war
J.S.: They put a large part of their life
on the line for it. They've since
pleaded guilty to these things and
got a total of about eighty years be-
tween the five of 'em. I don't think
their chances for parole are very
good. They'll let someone like a
rapist out after a third of their sen-
tence, but these people, all they
damaged was property. But they'll
probably have to serve most of their
time or all of it, because it is of a
political nature,
Did your single raise any con-
sciousness?
J.S.: I got tons of response, and
made alot more people aware of it in
all sorts of places, in Europe, here
(US) and different parts of the
world. Plus it helped raise some
money for them. So it was a worth-
while thing
All the money went to them?
J.S.: All the money we would've nor-
mally made off a record.
D.G.: We did benefit concerts and
stuff, but a singlo, we thought was
much better because it's longer
standing, plus it sums up the situa-
tion.
The way it looks to me is, you
guys aren't involved in any out-
side occupation, so D.O.A. is pre-
dominantly a big part of your
lives. So the question is, what is
your primary inspiration in what
you do?
D.G.: We get jobs when we can, but
we're predominantly on the road for
six months of a year.
J.S.: I was basically a cab-driver.for
a while, but I got too many tickets, so
they wouldn't hire me again. Inspira-
tion, for me, one is 'cause it is fun
and I like doin' that kind of music, I
like driving people crazy. It's fun
travelling around, meeting interest-
ing kinds of people. The other as-
pect of it is to try and say something
through the music. Music can affect
a lot of change on the culture of soci
ety. That's one of the things that
we're trying to do.
D.G.: When the band started out.
there was a real void in the music
world. There was nothing going on
worth getting excited about. There is
a much greater proliferation of
bands these days, but there still
aren't that many bands around that
can articulate and communicate
their ideas to a wider audience
There's a whole scene now. Back in
81 when we went on tour we played
everywhere that we could. Now,
there's probably twice as many
places to play. Maybe even three
times as many So there's a scene in
itself. We're still trying to go over the
top, to expand the scene. Many
bands are satisfied to play for the
scene. We want to bring more
people into it.
It seems possible. Especially
after last night's show, your set
sounded extremely tight. Like
playing the music was second na
ture, effortless. You'd think with
that quality and clarity, your
sound would be considerably
more accessible without selling
out.
D.G.: People who are outside of the
scene who might come to check out
a D.O.A gig.most people can rec-
ognize professionalism. The thing
that I think is real important, when
you do a gig, or something like that,
is to make people at the concert
aware that you're there mentally
You're mentally present at the con-
cert with them. So many people,
when they play music, look like
they're somewhere else.
J.S.: Yeah, it's true.
D.G.: If the playing is second nature,
then you can concentrate on con-
centration,
Or you could do tricks?
J.S.: Or like when all those people
come up on stage...it wasn't used
to playin', then it would be totally im
possible, right? So just try to hold
my guitar up out of the way
I saw that. I thought you were just
going for technique.
J.S.: Just sort of protect the guitar so.
they don't get knocked out of tune, I
didn't completely succeed, but
tried
I'm really impressed with the
drive you guys possess.
D.G.: It's the same thing when you
originally start. The desire to try and
make as much noise as possible.
and that never really fades. You
don't really, fully grasp the use of the
instrument
Try not to learn too-good?
J.S.: You can say a lot of stuff with it,
which is what we try to do, as well as
that drive of wild abandon that
makes you do it in the first place. If
you lose that, then you become very
unconvincing to poeople, then they
start not giving a shit about your
playing.
To me, there's no real, STAGE-
PERSONNAE-IMAGE that goes
with D.O.A. other than just being
up there and just playing, dirty-
ass...chords...power. There's no
image, no dancing and prancing
and black eye-liner.
J.S.: Right There's a relative
phrase that we use sometimes,
ROCK FOR REAL Just ordinary
people going up there and playing.
D.G.: It's great you know. Like I said,
we've played San Francisco fifty-six
times, and I can still walk around the
audience and nobody knows who
the the fuck I am i hear people
talking about D.OA, there was this
guy last night who had this leather
jacket on, with D.O.A. hand written
on the back. I said, "Nice jacket,"
and he turned around and said,
"Yeah, they're my favorite band."
Do you have any big plans for the
future, or will you let the cards fall
where they may? Does it matter if
you become really successful?
b.G.: We'll take it as far as we can.
J.S.: Outside the future, is pretty
open. We'll just try to do the best we
can
The possibilities seem pretty
good.
J.S.: Weve got big plans. It all de-
pends on how much we can pull off,
or what it will exactly lead to, basi-
cally not saying we'll be here in five
years, and be making this much
money
D.G.: The goal is to see the thing out
to the potential we know it has. I
know that's sort of vague, but that's
about as much as you can get. We'll
obviously play live music for a
couple years more, and make it
even better, more exciting. Go
beyond what anybody has done live.
We're not gonna do some kind of
Kiss trip and set ourselves on fire.
We want to do something
that's...real
You seemed pretty real last night..
D.G.: But we want to hone that finer.
so that the mental presence of the
band is even more clear.
J.S.: Well, we got the matching
silver guitars