DOA frontman Joey Keithley is a member of the CBC jury picking the new theme song for Hockey Night in Canada.

For young punk rockers in the late '70s smitten with the "no future" ethos of the Sex Pistols and company, there was little concern as to where their lives would be when they came to be their parents' age.

Yet, at age 52, 30 years after forming DOA in Vancouver's burgeoning punk scene, Joe "S---head" Keithley is still at it and his band's brand new release Northern Avenger is no less aggressive than the stuff he was playing in his early 20s.

DOA will arrive very much alive on Monday night, playing between local stalwarts the Wednesday Night Heroes and long-running Southern California punks Rancid at the Shaw Conference Centre.

One of the early leaders of Canadian punk, DOA has been cited as an influence by bands ranging from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Green Day and is widely credited as the progenitor of the term "hardcore" in reference to the early wave of over-the-top west coast punk bands that also included the likes of Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys.

But things have changed for punks over the last 30 years.

"It used to be kind of dangerous to be a punk ... People saw punk as weird and threatening and strange and sick and violent," Keithley says. "Now you can buy punk rock at the mall."

With the growing acceptance of punk rock in mainstream society has come a gradual recognition of DOA's achievements. In an ostensibly bizarre move five years back, Vancouver's then-Mayor Larry Campbell declared Dec. 21 to be DOA Day in B.C.'s largest city.

"It was gratifying, because it's a long ways from being busted by the police and dragged off from the Smiling Buddha (bar) to the Vancouver holding cells," he says.

It's no surprise that the event he considers to be the most punk rock experience of the band's 30-year existence came in those chaotic early years of hardcore punk, when the band played a hall show in Berlin, Germany.

"There was about 500 or 600 people inside and about 100 kids outside who didn't want to pay the money to get in," he recalls. "They picked up rocks and boulders and bricks and, from the outside, threw them up onto the roof so they came crashing down through the skylights - the bricks and the glass and all - on top of the crowd on the dance floor as we were playing. And then they bum-rushed the door to get in.

"At the same time, the people inside weren't about to take a bunch of s---, so they repelled them and chased them down the alley with two-by-fours and whatever they could find to get some revenge on these guys."

DOA has never been a proponent of senseless violence, but has always maintained a political edge, something that Keithley has taken up in a new way in recent years, running as a Green Party candidate in two B.C. elections and also making a run at Burnaby city council.

Finding politicians to be "generally dislikable," he's decided he's better off sticking to rabble-rousing and punk rock. "What I found there is that people will always vote for s--theads, just not necessarily Joe S---head," he quips.

In another instance of unexpected mainstream recognition, Keithley has just been granted a spot on the jury to pick the new Hockey Night in Canada theme song.

"I thought it was really outrageous that they didn't renew the contract. Or, stopping short of that, then they didn't just try and buy up The Hockey Song by Stompin' Tom Connors," he says.

The long-time hockey fan promises to vouch for something rocking and upbeat. "I will do my best to stop a song that's complete shiza from appearing every Saturday night," he says. "Hockey fans out there in Alberta and across the country, you can count on Joe S---head to serve you well."