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| By Jessie Lynn |
How many punk bands can you think of who wear suits and fancy dresses on stage, and encourage their fans to do the same? How many punk bands can you think of who reference in their songs topics as varied as astral projection, Peter Lorre, Paul Robeson, The Master and Margarita, The Wild Party, Dante Alighieri, Leni Riefenstahl, Cabaret, The Three-Penny Opera, Philip K. Dick, and The Great Pumpkin? How many punk bands can you think of who sound less like punk and more like a circus cabaret jazz swing klezmer goth calypso ska orchestra, but whose ideals and energy are more punk than the crustiest d-beat band living in your local squat? I can only think of one: the World/Inferno Friendship Society.
This summer marked three anniversaries in one, for me: eleven years since I first heard the World/Inferno Friendship Society, ten years since they became important to me, and nine years since I first saw them live and became, dear gods, an Infernite. It seemed like a perfect time for me to write a column about the World/Inferno Friendship Society, and to maybe get you, dear reader, hooked on my favorite band and have them ruin your life, too. Yes, WIFS ruins lives, but I mean that in the best possible way.
The way I’ve arranged the songs in this column is a bit of a return to the old Mix Tapes from the Midwest format, but it’s not supposed to be a mix tape. Consider it my ultimate World/Inferno setlist: if I could have them play any songs at one of their shows, these are the ones I would choose. Which is also why I’ve only included one song from their most recent LP – it’s not that I don’t love many of the songs on that album, but the songs in this column are ones I’ve lived with longer and love more. Also, there’s no companion podcast this time – I’m on vacation, away from that sort of technology – which is why I’ve embedded videos.
Initially, I thought this column would go in a more traditional sort of direction. I thought I’d tell you how each song sounds, and fill you in on the long, strange history of the band. While writing the rough draft, though, I realized that I didn’t want to write about all that. First of all, it’s impossible to sum up their history, because there are so many stories about World/Inferno and how they got their start, most of which are lies…er, legends. Second of all, it’s impossible to sum up the sound of their music in words, at least it is for me, and perhaps that means I am not very talented as a writer. All I know how to tell you is how the songs make me feel, and the legends of my own life that they remind me of. If the stories interest you, if they remind you of your own stories, maybe you’ll buy some of WIFS’ records, sit down and listen to ’em back to back if you can, live inside the songs for a while. And after you do that, hopefully you’ll go see ’em live. See them live, and then you’ll know. (We know. We know. We know.)
I don’t want to exaggerate the Inferno’s importance in my life, but I don’t want to downplay it either. I fell hard for them because they gave me an excuse to indulge in all my bad ideas and do foolish things, and because they helped me fall back in love with punk by showing me that punk could be so much more than “1-2-3-4! Fuck the system! Oi oi! 40 oz.!” And since then, well, they’ve been there to send me off into each new chapter of my life, and to reaffirm for me that I shouldn’t quit living my life, shouldn’t quit doing foolish things; to reaffirm for me that it’s more than okay to be my intoxicated, anarchistic, witchy self. Oh, World/Inferno. Because of you, I’ve met a lexicon of friends and enemies. Because of you, I’ve been watched by the government. Because of you, I’ve been hungover and heartbroken. But all of those things probably would’ve happened without you, you just happen to be a convenient scapegoat. So cheers! To bad ideas!
In September of 2003, I went on tour with the Perpetual Motion Roadshow. I drove from Chicago to Cleveland to meet up with one of my tour mates, then he and I drove from Cleveland to Toronto to meet our other tour mate, and to do the first show of the tour. The three of us traveled from Toronto to Ottawa, Montreal, New York City, back to Cleveland, then on to Cincinnati, and we ended up back in Chicago. On that journey, I fell in love, twice. On that journey, I had people tell me my stories made them cry, I got interviewed a couple times, I was endlessly inspired, I met the saints and sinners of Montreal, I met two pirates in the Adirondacks, I fell asleep on a couch in Brooklyn while listening to the Velvet Underground. And I came to know that all I really wanted in life was to wander around, telling my stories and collecting new ones. It was beautiful. It was also sad: meeting people on the road and knowing we might never meet again, every morning waking up in a different unfamiliar room, staring at the ceiling, then embarking on a long drive to a different city, over and over again.
After my tour mates left, I was alone in my apartment, and I felt more alone than I’d felt in a long time. My ex-boyfriend had come while I was away and taken the last of his stuff, and I had to think about what I was going to get rid of and what I was going to pack up and take with me, because it was almost time to leave that apartment, my first-ever apartment, which I’d lived in for two years. In between bouts of packing and cleaning, I sat drinking bottles of La Fin Du Monde and chain smoking and working on a mix that was sort of the soundtrack to the past month of my life. As I selected songs for the playlist, I looked at my tattoos – which, though I’d only had them for a few years, were already not as vibrant as they’d once been. I looked at the posters falling off the walls and the paint peeling off the ceiling, I thought of everyone I’d met on tour that I’d probably never see again, and there was no other song but “Tattoos Fade” that knew that feel. I know you’re hoping for some permanence, but there really is no truth to this. Your tattoos, they’re gonna fade.
The first time I saw World/Inferno live, they opened with this song. I pumped my fist in the air as I sang along: “Fay-ay-ay-ayde…” A gorgeous circus girl from the pine woods and turnpikes of New Jersey said: “Oh, no, honey, not a fist. A claw.” She showed me how to form my fingers into the correct configuration, something like a cross between Captain Hook’s hook and the talons of a griffin, and with that, I was inducted. One of the Infernites. If you’re ever at a WIFS show, and they play this song, find someone in a suit or a prom dress and watch what they’re doing with their hands. That’s the claw.
Zen and the Art of Breaking Everything In the Room
What is the sound of one punk moshing? There’s a little zen koan for you, and if you can figure that one out, you’re well on your way to understanding Zen and the Art of Breaking Everything In the Room. Or, you know, just get drunk and break things and that will probably get you to enlightenment just as fast.
One of my best friends in the whole world, my sweet Ratticus, who was a huge proponent of my introduction to WIFS, has a tattoo in the center of her breastbone, a tattoo of some important words from this song: Bury me on the lone prairie, where children still wanna grow up to be pirates and bank robbers, not lawyers or CEOs.
And Embarked On A Life of Poverty and Freedom
I was at the show where the above video was shot. While WIFS sang this song, I waltzed with a boy who, no kidding, looked like a Mad Love-era Peter Lorre. How appropriate, considering that this song is from Addicted to Bad Ideas, which is World/Inferno’s album/stage show about Mr. Lorre’s life, and all the words to this song are variations on lines Peter Lorre speaks in the film Three Strangers.
Let me go backward in time, for a minute. In the summer of 2007, I went on a Kerouacian odyssey out West, explored Colorado and Wyoming, and both southern and Northern California. When I returned to Milwaukee, I was broke and lonesome (missing everyone I’d met on the road, also I’d broken up with my boyfriend right before I went on that trip), but also inspired and fulfilled. I realized I’d been living a life of poverty and freedom since I struck out on my own for the first time, and it’s a hard life, but also a beautiful one. I made a zine shortly after my return, a zine in which most of the stories were about my recent journey, and I subtitled it “…And Embarked On a Life of Poverty and Freedom…” In mid-September 2008, my hobo sister Emchy (whom I’d first met on that trip out West) and I embarked upon Thee Hobo Love Tour, an accordion-and-poetry, guitar-and-storytelling extravaganza that took us from Milwaukee to St. Louis to New Orleans to Louisville to Chicago. That tour changed my life, much as the Perpetual Motion Roadshow changed my life five years prior. Then, I returned to Milwaukee, and my boyfriend broke up with me (why is it that tours and break-ups seem to go hand-in-hand?), and even though it was good that relationship ended, well, as always, I was broke and lonesome, but also fulfilled and inspired. And a little lost, unsure whether I was going to stay in Milwaukee, move back to Chicago, or try my luck in New Orleans. Shortly after my return, I took one of my Milwaukee friends down to Chicago, to see my friends there, and to see World/Inferno.
They played this song, and a gorgeous boy I’d been flirting with all night, who, as I said, looked like a taller version of a Mad Love-era Peter Lorre (and perhaps I should mention here that I’m in mad love with Peter Lorre), asked me to waltz with him. He spun me around, my skirt swirling out around us and my striped stockings flashing beneath. Later that night, as I was leaving the venue, he told me that the world needs more people like me. It was perfect.
Three months later, I was in Pittsburgh, with a different guy I’d met at that same Inferno show. Our final night in Steel City, we bundled up against the December cold, took a bottle of whiskey, and went wandering around in the dead dry grasses near the train tracks, finding secret places to get drunk in. At one point, sitting on the tracks, with a cigarette in one hand and the whiskey bottle in the other, I looked up the hill at all the houselights glowing through the coal-black Pittsburgh winter night, and I heard this song in my head, as clear as a prayer: I was looking at the lights in these houses. Each light cuts a circle from the darkness. Each circle is the center of somebody’s life. People swing around these lights like planets spin around the stars. And my heart leapt.
Less than a month after that, I went to a tattoo parlor in Chicago, and got a banner on the left side of my chest, a banner that reads: & my heart leapt.
Charming Side of Drunk
This sad and sexy tango has been one of my personal theme songs for many, many years now. It has been a theme song in two senses – both the ‘these are some tenets I aspire to live by’ sense, and the ‘this is the story of my goddamn life’ sense. I try to take the Inferno’s advice in this song, when they tell me to stay on the charming side of drunk, and leave without saying goodbye. (When I met them for the first time, I did precisely that.) It is the story of my life when they sing: “You’ve had too many lovers, and not enough friends,” I said to myself, looking ’round the room. “You’ve had too much to drink, and not enough dinner – time to go soon. It is both the story of my life and rather sage advice when they sing about doing foolish things to see what change it will bring.
And oh, listen to the accordion in this song. In my opinion, World/Inferno were at their best when Franz Nicolay was in the band. Then again, maybe I’m biased – being an accordion player myself, I mean. And because he was part of the ever-rotating Inferno lineup when I fell in love with them. I am so partial to that lineup, and I miss all of them deeply: Franz and Peter and Lucky and Yula and Benjamin and Dan and Maura and Semra, they were my World/Inferno Friendship Society.
I Wouldn’t Want to Live In a World Without Grudges
Speaking of Ms. Yula Be’eri, she wrote the lyrics for this one. That same night I met my World/Inferno Friendship Society for the first time, she saw the glitter I was wearing on my eyelids and said: “I love your sparkles. They make everything wonderful.”
And speaking of stories of my goddamn life, aw hell. There have been far too many nights where I’ve met someone at some party or at some bar, hooked up with them, and not too long afterwards wondered what the hell I was thinking. I guess rose-colored beer goggles will do that, eh? As I type this, I’m sitting alone at a bar. I’m so damn lonesome right now that if a mysterious (or even just mildly attractive) stranger sidled up next to me and offered to buy me a drink, I would be tempted to accept. Which, in turn, could lead to events like the ones mentioned above, and lead to me looking back on the whole debacle and saying: It was one of those nights when everything seems like a good idea; one of those nights when every drink was free.
Me and the Mad Monkettes
If I close my eyes when I listen to this song, I am back in a tiny art gallery in a rundown neighborhood on a hot June night in Pittsburgh, during the sordid summer of ’04. Ratticus and I are dancing together while World/Inferno, only a few feet in front of us on the makeshift stage, play this song. Ratticus’ hat is falling down, covering her green eyes, and my rock’n’roll nurse dress is creeping ever farther above my knees; we are dancing together but with the way this song is, with the amalgamation of the slow, slinky parts and the wild, cacaphonous bits, and with the changes in time signature, well, dancing together is really more like falling all over each other. This is a perfect song for that, the music and the lyrics are about falling all over each other, falling all over yourself, spilling out into the world.
If I’m in a certain sort of mood, this song can make me cry. Like right now. I’m sitting at a bar because that’s the only place in this tiny northern town where I can get Internet access, and I’m waiting for one of my old friends from this peninsula to show up and squeeze me in a hug – but I know that won’t happen, because they’re all far away from me, now, either by miles on the map or rifts that grew despite my best efforts, and, my god: The night is never too long, not for me, anyway. How is it for you, so far away? How did you get so far away?
Secret Service Freedom Fighting U.S.A.
One of the best things about any World/Inferno show is Jack Terricloth’s between-song banter, and one of the songs with the best banter leading up to it is “Secret Service Freedom Fighting U.S.A.” I chose the above video, though it’s not the best quality, because it is one of my favorite of Jack’s many intros to this tune – he mentions President Reagan’s death, which occurred that fateful summer of ’04; he also mentions Joe Strummer, who, as you know, is my main man. The next best intro to this tune is on the Hallowmas Live at Northsix album, wherein he says: “In these nervous times, people often come up to me, and they say, ‘Perhaps, Jack, you should tone down your rhetoric a little bit. Perhaps the stuff you say between songs might be construed as, well, not very patriotic. Well, actually, Jack, you might get yourself in some big trouble.’ And I say to myself, ‘Oh, trouble is my business, friend.'”
For a while, in 2006-2007, I was being watched by the government. They tapped my phone and opened my mail. See, a vote in my home state of Wisconsin didn’t go the way I hoped it would. They hardly ever do, because the politicians and the platforms on both sides of our two-party system are broken, because the whole system is broken. But that time, in November of 2006, I got madder than I usually did, because the issue at hand was one that effected me personally. I got madder than I usually did, and I got on my blog and I posted this rant about how “voting never changes anything, maybe next time I’ll take Mr. Terricloth’s advice and…”
I won’t repeat the offending words because I would like to prevent that sort of thing from happening again – but, hey, Jack, quoting you on my blog got me watched by the Feds. Aren’t you proud? I hope so, cos: I’m giddy with all the trouble I’m in, oh god, if I could just get out of it I’d end up pushing my luck again.
Only Anarchists Are Pretty
In the late spring of 2000, I would watch Lissa pacing the sidewalks in front of Parkside, chain smoking and waiting for the bus; she had purple hair and patched-up pants and was so beautiful I couldn’t breathe. (With a flash of the ankle, snarl of the lip – I see you in the street and gasp.) After a while I got brave enough to talk to her, and pretty soon we were hanging out every other day, but it took me a little longer to find the courage to tell her I dug her in a more-than-platonic way. When I finally admitted it, she told me she felt much the same way. (A lot of gossip and glances, I’d had enough. I grasped you gently by your arm and said: “Hey, I got a crush.” You caught both my eyes, and gave me a push. You said: “Hey, you got one back,” and the room caved in.)
Alternately, this is the song I turn to whenever my current boyfriend/dude-partner tells me that anarchism will never work in the real world (and they all do, at some point). I stick my tongue out at them and I say: “Well then, my darling, I’m afraid you’re very ugly, because only anarchists are pretty.”
Go With It Girl
I was in love with this girl, once upon. Sensing a theme, here? I’ve had too many lovers and… I met her at the bar I always went to, which is another theme, it was one of those nights… All the songs are getting muddled up together. Anyway, she took me back to her place, we popped some pills (hey, man, I’m high on life…and these pills!), we drank some wine (my favorite kind of wine, in that my favorite kind of wine is usually whatever’s right in front of me), and then: “Oh, girl,” I purred, and we tore at each other’s clothes. “Look what you’ve done to your arms.” They were striped, like her tights, red on white.
One for the Witches!
Eleven years ago, a friend of mine from New York sent me a mix tape. Buried among songs by bands like The Damned and The Smiths (bands I adore, don’t get me wrong), there was this song. As soon as I heard the goth-swing-shuffle, heard Jack Terricloth crooning: You could become very dangerous…, I knew it was all very serious.
Nearly seven years ago, I got tattooed in a shop in Philadelphia, got two words inked into my wrist: “we know.” “Don’t you mean ‘I know?'” the tattoo artist asked. “No. We know.” “Who’s we? And what do ‘we’ know?” I chuckled: “They’re here in Philly tonight. The World/Inferno Friendship Society.” “The who what Friendship whatty? Is that a band? What the hell kind of music do they play?” “They’re, uh, they’re kind of a punk orchestra. They’re also kind of like a circus, and kind of like a cult.” He finished the rest of the tattoo in silence.
Nearly six years ago, my raggedy witch-love and I were wedded at Coney Island on Mischief Night. The night afterward was our honeymoon, and we danced to this song at Hallowmas. I was a hobo cabaret clown, she was the absinthe faerie; white greasepaint from my face stuck to her hair, green body paint from her arms left marks on my tattered tailcoat. The following morning, I boarded a train to Pennsylvania. I have not seen her since.
Nowadays, whenever I’m having a crisis about my identity, which happens more often than you’d think for someone as old as I am, I think of this song. I think: Supposed to be? I never gave it any thought. Never gave a damn about what I’m supposed to be. But if you’re asking what I am? I’m a fucking walking question mark. I am a walking fucking time bomb.
Your Younger Man
Once upon a goddamn time, in a place as far away as the other side of the world and as close as the corner store, I met a fella. I met him because of my interest in World/Inferno, and the night we met was the onset of a tumultuous relationship that would haunt both of us on-and-off for two years, through our waking hours and on the astral plane. Oh, I knew from the moment I met him that any sort of romance we might have would be doomed to fail, but I couldn’t help myself, because I’m addicted to… I couldn’t help myself, because I have poor impulse control, and because, say whatever else you want about this fella, he is a charming bastard. And because: I remember being dumb and drunk and happy.
It has only been nine years since I met him (it happened during the summer of ’04, of course it did), but nine years is close enough to ten, and anyway, this song is an awful lot like how things were between us. He was older, he was vicious, I was younger, but guess what? I’m older, now, than he was, then. Break out the confetti.
Addicted to Bad Ideas
We’ve taken a turn toward the melancholy, here, and I’m sorry, my friends, but it can’t be helped. A fella I met because of our mutual interest in World/Inferno (not the same one as mentioned above, no) once told me he could never be sad when listening to WIFS and I said, “Oh god, really? Listening to them can make me so sad, because all the songs remind me of so much. But it’s a good kind of sad, the kind that lets me know I’ve lived life in all its shit and heartbreak and glory.” He didn’t get it.
I was down, down, down for a good chunk of the autumn of 2007. I’d returned from that big West Coast odyssey, and was wondering what was gonna do with my life. Then I met one of the great loves of my life, and then he headed south for the winter. And I was trying to get out East to marry my witch-girl, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do it because I had no money to speak of, and was on the verge of eviction. I began to regret my life of poverty and freedom, because it seemed that all that came with it was, well, poverty and loneliness. And I felt so old, too; though I wasn’t yet 26, I felt tired and old. I listened to “Addicted to Bad Ideas” on repeat, and it helped, a bit:
Though I have grown older and graver, the great heart of the world remains ever young. I wasn’t always a monster, I was a saint. Now, so broken, so –
This song is both a ballad and an anthem, and I think that’s what all the best songs are: either ballads or anthems or both.
So Long to the Circus
The Inferno are a band of New York City miscreants, but, for me, they’re inextricably linked to my time in Chicago – that’s where I lived when I first heard them, that’s where I lived with the friend who made me love them, that’s where I first saw them live, and that’s where I return to see them to this day. When I moved away from Chicago, it felt a lot like I was running away from the circus. But I had to leave, because: I’ve always had a good sense of when it’s time to get gone. Right before I moved away, I went to a WIFS show. They played this song and I cried ’til my mascara bled.
This song still makes me cry, sometimes, but I’ve also learned something since then – no matter how many times you run away from the circus, there’s always another one to join.
My Ancestral Homeland, New Jersey
I’ve never lived in New Jersey, but part of the legend of my life is that I was conceived there. Which would explain why I am so awesome, because many awesome beings come from New Jersey – The Jersey Devil, Bruce Springsteen, and Jack Terricloth, to name a few. Still, though, I have never lived there, and have not spent all that much time there since my conception. So, then, this song describes how I feel about my home state of Wisconsin. I wasn’t born here, I haven’t always lived here, and hell, most of my ancestors are from Michigan. But I have spent more years of my life in Wisconsin than in any other state, and I keep coming back here despite myself, so, yeah, Wisconsin is my ancestral homeland.
Sometimes I hate it here, but then I always ask myself: Do the kids still sing and dance, drink and fuck, smash it up in the homeland?
And the answer is always a most emphatic “hell yeah, they do.”
The Politics of Passing Out
This is another one of those ballad/anthems, and it is not only the story of my life, it is the story of all our lives. All of us punks, that is, us punks and weirdos and travelers, prophets and poormen, devils, lovers, and ghosts.
During the spring of 2011, I was working on an issue of my zine and I decided to subtitle it with a line from this song: burn joyfully and give off light. The day after I made that decision, I found out that Ratticus had stick&poked those same words on an old friend/lover of mine, which proved that, though he and I aren’t close anymore, we are still somewhat on the same wavelength. So, I’d like to dedicate this one to him.
But it’s also dedicated to another old friend of mine, Aaron Cynic. Hey, Aaron – I know shit’s fucked up and bullshit but: we must burn, but burn joyfully, and give off light. Unalloyed joy, at least for tonight.
Heart Attack ’64
“I want you to turn to the person next to you, bow to them or curtsy to them, and ask them to dance. Dance this as if it is your last waltz – because this is the heart attack waltz.”
That’s one of the ways Jack used to introduce this song, back when they closed every show with it. It kills me that they don’t seem to play it anymore, because I miss waltzing with strangers, because I hate it when good things end, because that sad and beautiful clarinet line of Peter Hess’ was enough to nearly give me a heart attack.
I guess I just miss everything and everyone, all the time, and I guess that’s life.
But the dope and the wine and the stage, they gave back to me what I saved. What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful world.
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Interested in learning more about the World/Inferno Friendship Society beyond my personal take on them?
