World/Inferno Friendship Society (“Friendship Society” is such a nice counter-point to the ominous-sounding “World/Inferno”), playing at a place on the Lower East Side (Attorney Street—one of the half-dozen little streets between Pitt and Orchard that was not an extension of Avenues A, B, or C and so held no use or fascination to me when I was growing up and hence, although I knew their names, I never bothered to memorize the order they came in) called Sin-è (sīn? shĭn-ā? shīnē?).

Loved the band; the venue, not so much.

About the club itself (I decided to get the negative stuff out of the way first so we could leave this blog entry on a happy note): I’m only just inside the door, pretending to show my ID, when I see the first sign of trouble—and it was literally a sign. It said, “Earplugs: $1.” Earplugs? At a rock-and-roll show? What kind of weenies are these young kids today?

So we get inside and it’s a dark warehouse-y looking interior (duh). The bathrooms (yes, plural, there were several, two were even marked “Men” and “Women”) were clean and unskanky and the Women’s room, at least had 2 rolls of spare toilet paper perched neatly above the sink. The 46-year-old surely appreciated the hygiene, but back in my day, we hiked up are pant legs waded through toilet overflow to perch above a seat pee as quickly as possible so we could escape the fetid odor. I perked up a little later on when a teenager barrel through the crowd and, before he could close the door behind himself, puke on a toilet seat; but, cynic that I am, I kept an eye on the door and I noticed that when he finally emerged he had cleaned up his mess. I’m sure his mother is proud of him.

Now: we especially didn’t much care for the Mohawk-ed lesbian bartender who had a pointlessly sour attitude, as if she was in her gut still angrily railing against the misunderstanding and bias and belligerent homophobia she left her tiny town in Bumfuck Amerika to escape. Child, you are on Attorney Street, the man on stage is wearing eyeliner and you were conceived in the skanky bathroom of a bar just like this one in 1978 while your parents’ friends were upstairs slam-dancing to a Sex Pistols cover band. You are home. And if you don’t feel at home here, you might as well kill yourself. But bring me a bottle of water first, I’m parched.

Now the happy news. I’d heard a lot about WIFS from Dana and Bart, who rambled on about Oompah music and the Weimar Republic. Maybe that’s what’s written in the CD’s liner notes, composed in some pseudo-creative fit of PR BS. How do you describe the music of a band that has a singer who combines Joe Jackson with Pee-Wee Herman (before the arrest and, in fact, before Pee-Wee’s Playhouse went on Saturday mornings, when he was surprisingly subversive) with Jim Morrison had he not taken himself so fucking seriously and instead become a stand-up comic; a lead guitarist who wants to be Slash; a 3-piece horn section; two drummers; and an accordion player? My answer is that you don’t, because you’re just going to get it wrong. WIFS seemed to me to be first and foremost a Party Band, much in the same way that Funkadelic was a Party Band, and Dee-Light was a Party Band, and Macy Gray is backed up by a Party Band: far too many people on stage having way too much fun. Weimar? Whatever, I really don’t know my German history well enough to comment. It was a party on stage, a party in the mosh pit, and a party at the far end of the bar where we were sitting.