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While Last Call suffers a bit from vaulting ambition - forty-eight songs is a tall order - this 1991 musical history of Vancouver music, punk and beyond, from Zulu Records (ZULU 5-2) is stellar document of a place and time. As a historical document, however, it is stunning. Note how the compilers cover so many of the different facets of the Vancouver Underground (punk, art-noise, garage-rock, alternative, power-pop, cow-punk and even CanCon radio stars 54-40! So while it's not the sort of collection most people will listen to straight through, the pickings here are rich and you will be rewarded with something new and shining each time you comb through it.Hey! Please come check out the ten great videos of the early Vancouver scene over at The Big Takeover!
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"(We had) a meeting with Bruce Allan (who was managing B.T.O. and Loverboy at the time), the first thing Bruce said was, "Alright Boys! How much money are you going to make me?" There was a stunned silence on our part. I had gotten into music because...I loved the words of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and because of Jimi Hendrix's guitar-playing. Money? What did that have to do with music?"Joey Keithley, D.O.A.
Sometime Keithley's dedication to plain-spoken punk-isms like, "Don't Bank on a Bank", can wear but his wild-dog growl and red-in-tooth-and-claw guitar sound gives the most focused tracks on this album a palpable menace. MySpace
(Thanks to musicgraphik for the image)
(A awkward album cover - the bald guy is Ken Lester D.O.A.'S Bernie Rhodes-like manager.)
(The almost Life Magazine like photo shoot for the North American cover.)
Like Neil's mid-eighties album (his sales were so bad his own label, Geffen, sued for making music "unrepresentative of himself") Let's Wreck the Party's new direction was not met with universal acclaim. In fact when, in-between songs, Joey Shithead threw a sealed copy of the album into the crowd it got tossed back on stage, unclaimed! Y'see D.O.A. had, under the tutelage of 80’s hair-rock also-ran Brian “Too Loud” McLeod from the Headpins, cannonballed into the Rock mainstream. Like a Chumbawamba for the mid-eighties, they tried to mix pop trappings (keyboards, Big Rock guitar, saxophone) with radical politics (“General Strike”, “Race Riot” - listen here). The album bombed; too many metal tempos and neat n’ clean backing vocals for the increasingly-conservative punk scene and yet too crude for eighties pop radio (check out Wimpy’s gnarled vocals clashing with the MTV-friendly production on ‘Singin’ in the Rain’). Let's Wreck the Party is, however, a logical successor to 1982’s nigh-on-perfect, War on 45. The anthemic tracks (like “Our World”) were, as their live show proved, still fist-waving and the song-writing had leapt forward. After covering Edwin Starr’s “War” previously, Joey Shithead then penned his own funk-protest tract, “Dance O’ Death” (a concert staple complete with The Rev. Joey Shithead and his flailing crucifix). While surely not a highlight of the album (even though it had a video!), the song showed that the band was no longer tied down by loud n' fast rules. Let’s Wreck the Party is like D.O.A.’s version of the Clash's Combat Rock (War on 45 being like a condensation of London Calling, with no parallel Sandanista betwixt) - outwardly commercial but deeply weird. If it’s a sell-out, it’s unclear who the target market was. The album blenderized unassimilable sources (listen to those Doors-ish keyboards on the otherwise gruff "Murder in Hollywood") together and spilled out a reasonably cohesive album. Let's Wreck the Party may not surpass their earlier work but it got an adventurous feel, not something you'd say about every album they've put out since. Speaking of new work, D.O.A.'s 2008 album, Northern Avenger ("Police Brutality" video here), with its giant production courtesy of Bob Rock is kind of a throwback to this album's sound, just with less musical diversity. Most of D.O.A.'s most crucial releases are in print on Joey's Sudden Death Records please go there and support the band.) Let’s Wreck the Party now available at Sudden Death!! Suuport the band! P.S. They're making a documentary on D.O.A. (after all Joey was the only non-American to get time in the American Hardcore documentary).
(D.O.A played Rock Against Racism, Rock Against Reagen and, yes, Rock against Radiation - alliterative action!)
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