Thursday, May 27, 2010

D.O.A. "Men of Action" DVD, "Talk-Action=0"

(Sudden Death) Joey Shithead has spent decades making Canada safe for hardcore punk...or unsafe. The retrospective DVD is super awesome. Thirty years of raw, rough concert footage and no budget music videos truly brings both the d.i.y. spirit of punk and the Joey's never-say-die, sometimes corny, but never compromised radical spirit to screen. I love how the 2009 music video, with cable access greenscreen and discount halloween store police costumes, cost the band about the same to make as the live video of them playing an anarchist picnic in 1981. Doubling the value you can also watch the video with  a commentary/history lesson from Mr. Shithead as he tells the story of the band, using the not quite chronological videos as talking points. The reason watching hardcore shows from 1980, 1987, and 2002 are all kosher is that Shithead has always had the same dedication to and energy for his band and music, and thus, the new album is as fast, furious and uncompromising as ever. "They Hate Punk Rock" may be a song so prototypical it borders on parody, but the beauty of D.O.A. is that, yes, they often sound like the fake punk band a TV show would invent to to show how ridiculous punk is...BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY SINCERE. Honesty may not get you far in this world, but apparently it can make you stick around forever. And it can imbue everthing with importance: tracks like "I Live in a Car" are serious and political and a tribute to the characters on Star Trek is just as serious and also kind of political. Wow!

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