By “Tampa” Earl Burton
Film Review: “Something Better Change”
The punk rock band D.O.A. is one of the formative groups in punk rock history. But what happens when a punk rocker gets older? By all appearances in the 2024 documentary Something Better Change, which focuses on the leader of that band, Joe “Joey Shithead” Keithley, there is still a great deal of fire left in the old punk. While still living by the passion of the old D.O.A. classics, Keithley has now found a way to focus that passion – as an elected official in a Canadian city.
From the Punk Walls…
Something Better Change (also the title of a D.O.A. album), directed by Scott Crawford and released in 2024 from Sudden Death Records, Envision Films, and New Rose Films, examines the life of one of the punk world’s biggest acts. Back in 1978, D.O.A. invaded from Vancouver, bringing their passionate and aggressive sounds to the West Coast of Canada and the U.S. Led by Keithley, the band would be the contemporaries of such artists as Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and Circle Jerks, with D.O.A. being hailed as the “godfathers” of Canadian punk rock.
In many ways, Something Better Change is a typical rock documentary, tracing the band’s history from their beginnings through a 40-year career. In that time, Keithley and the band demonstrate that they weren’t typical “punks” – there was a purpose to their music, something that you did not normally see in the usually anarchistic punk acts. “Music is one of the most powerful forces to fight against hate and fight for love,” Keithley says at one point in the doc. “I wanted to try to change the world.”
If you were graded on simply changing the world, then D.O.A. and Keithley would have achieved that in spades. Several prominent members of the punk and hard rock communities, including Keith Morris of Circle Jerks, Duff McKagan of Guns ‘N Roses, a YOUNG Dave Grohl from Nirvana and Foo Fighters, Henry Rollins of Black Flag, East Bay Ray and Jello Biafra from Dead Kennedys, Ian MacKaye of Fugazi, and even Texas politician Beto O’Rourke regale the viewers with stories of the “old days” of the punk world, and especially how Keithley and D.O.A. put their imprint on it.
For McKagan, he confessed to being a fan of D.O.A. in their early days, crowding the stage when they hit Los Angeles. “The ferocity of how they…did their own thing, blew my mind,” McKagan says. Rollins, for his part, confesses to having copied the entirety of D.O.A.’s library of club connections for touring, then hitting the road to try to emulate D.O.A… they would come up short.
If the documentary stopped there, it would have been worth the price of admission. But there was a whole second part to the documentary, which followed Keithley putting his “money where his mouth is” and, through his punk rock mindset, trying to effectively change the world.
…To the City Halls
In talking about Keithley, McKagan points out that he “wasn’t surprised” to find out that Keithley entered politics. According to Keithley, he first took an interest in the politics of his home city, Burnaby, British Columbia (a neighboring city to Vancouver), in 1996, when he was upset about some forests in the area being cut down. He mobilized a petition drive that eventually netted 1,600 signatures and, as Keithley puts it, the punks would “barnstorm City Hall,” to express their displeasure. Although Keithley was able to garner speaking time in front of the City Council, their actions would be for naught – or so Keithley thought.
“Punk has to have something to be angry about – rock has to have a point of rebellion against something,” Keithley states, and it would be a mantra that he would carry into his political life. A month after that ill-fated “barnstorming,” the Green Party came calling for Keithley to run for political office. After initially rejecting the proposition, Keithley eventually came to see that this was the course his punk progressions were leading him toward.
As with most things, it is never easy, but Keithley said, “Being in a punk band for forty years prepared me for the worst!” He would run for the Burnaby City Council six times before breaking through in 2018 as the last member of the eight-member board. This is the second half of Something Better Change, the 2022 re-election campaign of Keithley and the rest of his Green Party members.
The documentary talks to a former mayor of Burnaby, whose name we won’t even bother mentioning here except to say he was a whiny little bitch. Keithley was in action throughout the documentary, campaigning door-to-door for another term (an excellent personal touch) or bringing his Green Party to fight against the Trans Mountain Pipeline Extension. The pipeline, which extends from Edmonton through Kamloops and to Vancouver, was eventually passed. Still, the efforts of Keithley and the Green Party at least brought the issues of climate change and the potential poisoning of the land from chemical accidents (used to increase the flow of oil through the pipeline) to the public.
What is interesting about these current interactions in the political world by Keithley is that they harken back to his days in D.O.A. A video from forty years prior shows Keithley nailing the problems of that time and, unfortunately, those same problems still exist today. “Those in charge aren’t looking out for people,” Keithley says, “They are looking to make money, and we’ve got to change that.”
The conclusion is simultaneously heartwarming and disappointing. The Keithley Family reflects on Joe’s time with D.O.A. and his political campaigns. As to the punk days, Keithley reflects on the members of the band that have passed away in the forty years of the band, saying, after clearing his eyes, “Some didn’t make it through the lifestyle; some had terrible luck…all I can do is walk in their footsteps.”
The 2022 campaign was a brighter light for Keithley, as he won reelection to the Burnaby City Council by a much more comfortable margin than in his 2018 election. On the downside, none of his fellow Green Party candidates could join him on the panel. “It’s all about money and organization,” Keithley says, noting that the Green Party spent $25,000 on the election; their opponents spent more than ten times that amount.
What made the documentary for me was that it was a story about two lives, but how they were explicitly intertwined in one man, Joe Keithley. He followed through on his punk rock ethos, not as someone who sought to burn things down, but as someone who believed “the best way to change something is from the inside.” “When you do something,” Keithley remarks, “and you stand up for something…then people remember that.”
If you’re looking for a story about one of the preeminent punk rock bands in the genre’s history, then Something Better Change will educate you about the band D.O.A. If you are looking at a story of how to interact in a political climate that is sometimes difficult, then Something Better Change shows how you might go about that. And if you are looking for the story of a highly unique and impressive individual in Joe Keithley, who has not only walked the walk but also talked the talk, then Something Better Change will be a 75-minute film that will impact your thoughts and your actions.
Something Better Change is available on Amazon Prime and Vimeo.
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