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| Kitsilano - 5 July 2025 |
I first met Joe Keithley aka Joey Shithead sometime in 1979. Both his D.O.A. and Art Bergmann’s numerous bands exist wonderfully to now. Both Bergmann and Keithley serve as my inspirational mentors to keep at it even though I am 82.
At yesterday’s performance at the Burrard Stage of Kitsilano Day, Keithley and drummer Jim Jones played punk that seemed to me the music of right now. It was fresh even though folks in the crowd were mouthing the lyrics.
I can assert, even though I am an amateur, that the D.O.A. I heard yesterday, minus a bass player (definitely not needed), was one of the best two-man bands I have ever heard.
Keithley, who is a Burnaby councillor, has never let go or changed his views on what is right. He has been inflexible in the direction of the lyrics of his songs. In that last century we had folk music. I would assert that folk punk is alive and well in Vancouver thanks to Keithley and Bergmann.
My fave Joe Keithley song is his Men for All Ages which is all about the original cast of Star Trek. Indeed at yesterday’s performance, where I saw people of all ages, I was introduced by Keithley’s wife to their two very young grandsons who were in attendance.
We are indeed lucky.
Addendum: This former professional is indeed slipping. My Fuji X-E3 camera informed me that the battery was about to go. I used my new Galaxy phone. Not one of the pictures I took with it were up to my standards. The five I took with the Fuji, until the battery went dead, had the only decent photographs. At one time, on assignment, I would have taken two cameras, one extra battery and definitely one extra storage card.
