Tim Kinsella's first gig
More Gotta Start Somewhere
No matter how successful an entertainer becomes, they'll inevitably always remember the first gig—whether it was disastrous, wonderful, or absurdly strange. Gotta Start Somewhere embraces these nostalgic moments by asking established entertainers to retell the first time they ever graced a stage. In this edition, The A.V. Club caught up with Joan Of Arc frontman Tim Kinsella before he and the rest of the Joan Of Arc family celebrate the release of the Don't Mind Control compilation at Empty Bottle on Jan. 22.
Tim Kinsella: The very first time I ever played in front of people was in 8th grade, at St. Mary's Catholic School in Buffalo Grove. It was for the variety show, and the band was The Schmittheads, after the Dean Of Students.
We played two songs: “Bored” by Death Angel, and “Theme” by M.O.D., which we changed the lyrics to so it was about being in 8th grade.
The A.V. Club: What about the first time you didn't play covers?
TK: That was October of my freshman year, at a church rec room in Wheeling near where we lived.
The band was called Toejam, and it was me, my brother [Mike Kinsella], Victor [Villareal], Sam [Zurick], and two other dudes. Sam didn't actually play an instrument. He was supposed to be the proverbial Flavor Flav to my Chuck D, except in actuality he never said anything. He just danced around while we played.
This church had a young minister, Wade, who would dress “punk,” with multiple flannels and torn-up jeans. They'd have these shows as kind of a way for the youth ministry to lure teenagers in and show us how “cool” they could be.
We had to turn in our lyrics before the show to the minister for approval. I'd written all these songs about being a Satanist, and I had to explain to him that they weren't about being me being a Satanist, per se, but more about what it would be like to worship Satan.
There were maybe 100 people there, and we played because we knew the headliners, a Christian thrash band that changed their name all the time, so I'm not sure what they were called at the time. We'd always talk to them about M.O.D., S.O.D., C.O.C., D.O.A., and a bunch of other initial bands, and then they'd try to ask us about The Crucified and The Altar Boys.
We played at least 30 minutes, but most of our songs were less than two minutes long. They were just these two chord as-fast-as-we-could things. Two of them were about coffee and homework, respectively.
For some reason, we decided to cover “Jane Says” by Jane's Addiction, which seemed to go on forever. It brought the set way down. There was this organized circle pit, and there was organized stage diving, trying to get people psyched up to keep coming back to hang out at the church. A kid would jump on the stage, wave at the crowd, and they'd move over to catch him when he jumped off.
The headliners, that Christian thrash band, had a song that went, “This world sucks / It's a living hell! / Listen up people, got a story to tell! / There's a man who died on a tree / Crucified for you and me!” Needless to say, we only played two shows at this venue.
