Interview With Joey Shithead Of D.O.A
I mean, honestly, what can I say about Joey “Shithead”Keithley that would properly serve his legacy? Besides being the father of hardcore, D.O.A and Joey have been a institution for nearly 30 years. Think about that… 3-0 YEARS people! While most of his peers from the time have either moved on to desk jobs or jail, Joey continues to hammer out songs and run Sudden Death Records. Pioneer, rebel, icon; Joey Shithead is all these things and will continue to be so until the day he dies. I recently had the pleasure of talking to Joey over the phone, while he was taking a break from his daily routine at Sudden Death.
So we’ll start off with Smash The State, you guys just put that DVD out recently. How did you guys decide on putting together the DVD, like compiling the early footage of DOA?
Joey: There’s a couple DVDs out there. There’s one of us called “Live At The Assassins Club” in England in 1985 or 1984 which is ok, it’s not bad. The sound quality is pretty good. There’s another one called “DOA: Greatest Shits” and that’s a collection of videos. I wanted to get something down to the raw, nitty gritty of what DOA was like live in those days and with the original lineup. I thought about doing a few of them, I had a lot of footage and I thought that it could all go on one package. It was just a matter of digging through all the tapes and a friend of mine dubbed them over from VHS. Just started going through them and seeing the stuff I thought might be interesting to people. I worked with what I had.
