The Ottobar has long been a haven for punks, anarchists, and a rainbow of music lovers in between. This Saturday the much-loved venue on Howard St. drew in more than its fair share of the anarchist side of that rainbow for the World/Inferno Friendship Society's show. Mohawks deluged in a fog of sweet-smelling hairspray and facial piercings and tattoos accumulated in small groups, waiting through three opening bands and nearly two and a half hours for the beloved cult band to come on.
The World/Inferno Friendship Society has been described as a cabaret/circus/gypsy punk outfit from Brooklyn, N.Y. They're known across the East Coast for their rabid fan-base, onstage antics, and general disregard for just about everything. Their trademark is an ever-fluctuating array of members (usually averaging around eight or nine on stage at a time, even though the group has had almost 30 members in the past) some of which have been involved in groups like Dexy's Midnight Runners, Kid Casanova and the Hold Steady.
At 12:30 a.m. the band filed on stage, taking their places behind the clutter of instruments. The excitement in the room escalated tenfold. Teenagers from the county (made painfully apparent by the minivan they drove up in) crowded the front of the stage, outfitted in silk ballgowns and tuxedos and sharply cut, sweep-away bangs. Jack Terricloth, the band's lead singer and one of its longest-lasting members, took the stage, bottle of wine in hand, and growled his introduction into the mic: "We are the World ... Inferno ... Friendship ... Society!" Cue a massive rush to the stage as devoted fans offered their outstretched hands, a ritual for seasoned Inferno followers. World/Inferno opened with one of their regular intro songs which resulted in melodic chanting from the enthusiastic crowd. The deafening roar of the crowd was purely orgasmic. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be the band onstage, having hordes of youngsters, and one grizzled hippie throwing themselves at your feet. Empowering? Probably.
Terricloth dove immediately into his regular dialogue of drunken tales about wandering through bars, in and out of conciousness, making new friends and wreaking general havoc. Each story ended with a direct lead into the next song. The band played the favorites and most well known songs like "Zen" and "The Art of Breaking Everything in this Room," "My Ancestral Homeland New Jersey," "Just the Best Party" and "Paul Robeson." By the time they played "Brother of the Mayor of Bridgewater," and "Peter Lorre," two kids had puked from dancing so hard and there'd been more than one flinch-worthy stage dive.
One prankster in the crowd, a skinny, polo-clad county-kid, brought along his own bottle of fake blood. Mid-way through the concert he tossed the bottle back over the crowd, splattering the red fluid over the mosh-pit. What followed was a split-second shudder of confusion, prompting a disgusted spasm from one crowd member, and then ending in a shoulder-shrug and continuation of the dancing. Though this little performance art piece was slightly annoying, it offered an interesting commentary on physical contact. Whoever wasn't initially doused by the first spritz of fake blood were eventually touched by it by the end of the night through physical contact in the pit. It was a cool way of showing how connected everyone was, how we were all seeing, hearing and feeling the same things.
My favorite song of the night was the unrecorded (except for a few mp3 snatches found in different corners of the Internet) song "Addicted to Bad Ideas." It's a really pretty song ending in a resounding chorus of "You know can't stop me, because it makes up for things I have lost/I'm addicted to bad ideas and all the beauty in this world."
That night the crowd supplied more of the antics than the band did. Somewhere near the end of the show, some group in the crowd simultaneously threw up fistfuls of confetti in a heartwarming tribute to the band. I enjoyed it, but it was a little too cutesy for a World/Inferno show. At least it wasn't blood.
At the end of the show, when the wine ran out, the band left stage to a crowd screaming for more. In true anarchist fashion, though, this didn't last long and the crowd soon quieted down, waiting expectantly for the encore. World/Inferno bowed out with three songs including favorite "All the World Is a Stage Dive."
