This interview originally ran in May, 2009, as a precursor to a residency by World/Inferno Friendship Society frontman Jack Terricloth at Joe's Pub in Manhattan. Sadly, the photos that accompanied this story have disappeared. I knew the man as Pete Ventantonio, whom I had met more than a decade earlier when he played in New Brunswick's Sticks & Stones. When I booked shows at the Charleston Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the early 2000's, Pete (who was an early Brooklyn transplant) would stop by to say hello, and every so often, when he had a new album or tour to plug, we'd chat and do an interview.
Pete Ventantonio - known to the world as Jack Terricloth - passed away on May 13, 2021. He will be missed.
Do you want to listen to rock music or do you want a revolution? - Jack Terricloth
by Jim Testa
The dapper gentleman known as Jack Terricloth - frontman of the almost indescribably eclectic, political, and flamboyant punk/cabaret band known as World/Inferno Friendship Society - didn't always face audiences in a natty suit and tie. A long time ago, you were more likely to find him in combat boots and a leather jacket, as one of the progenitors of the hardcore scene that sprung up in and around New Brunswick at the end of the 1980's. But you'll have to dig through your old copies of Jersey Beat to read about that. The topic at hand is Jack Terricloth's one-man show, which happens at Joe's Pub in Manhattan on May 15, and 22. Jack's calling these shows The Midnight Formals:
Q: What are you planning for your solo shows? Will anyone be performing with you? What can fans expect? How will these shows by different from a World/Inferno show?
Jack: The Joe’s Pub residency really grew out of the book touring for the novella collection I put out last year. It started out as just straight up reading, but that seemed to be a little unfair to people who primarily know me through music - particularly in non English speaking countries. So I asked Ms. Sandra Malak, also of The Inferno, to accompany the stories kind of beatnik-stylie, then we started throwing some songs in, and soon it had turned into an entire boozy Dick Cavett nightclub act. It really is a lot of fun.
Q: Joe's Pub is going to attract a very different demographic than an all-ages show at the Court Tavern. It's really a dinner theater and it's not a cheap date. Are you expecting to skew to an older demographic and will that affect your set selection and approach?
Jack: You've probably noticed that none of the kids are as young as they used to be there Jim. Oddly though, being that Joe's Pub is a restaurant, the shows are all ages but to your point: The Midnight Formal shows are a much more relaxed affair and yes... perfect for a date!
Q: World/Inferno is such an odd concept - a punk rock cabaret orchestra - how difficult was it to convince people to join the band and support the project (i.e. find a label) when you first got it going? And did you ever expect it to last this long and to attract so many diehard fans?
Jack: Inferno came together so organically and so with friends who I pretty much saw each every day anyway- from Scott and I playing together in Sticks and Stones, to Charles Maggio from Gern Blandsten running the co-op record store I was volunteering, to guitarist Lucky Strano who was bartending at our favorite hangout - that it never seemed odd at all. It kind of took on a life of its own very quickly. That's why when people refer to World/Inferno as "Jack Terricloth's band," it really doesn't scan: Inferno is Inferno's band. Did I expect it to last this long? I don't know - the years really have just flown by - being in high school seemed a lot longer.
Q: You're one of my few friends in music who can remember the pre-gentrified New Brunswick. Kids today think they're being "punk" by going to a basement show (and they are, in the general scheme of things.) But can you talk a little about the New Brunswick you encountered as a teenager, and how the city has changed?
Jack: I grew up on the banks of the mighty Raritan, as the song goes. I remember New Brunswick before Johnson & Johnson started razing it block by block. It was an almost Dickensian maze of nook and cranny shops, gutters, and a drug trade that had people from the city commuting in down Route 1/9. But you kill a couple of Rutgers students and the police pressure-point the whole thing. They really knocked down whole city blocks, and then just left them there surrounded by wire fences we would hang onto trying to stumble back across the Albany Street Bridge to Highland Park, where most of the punks lived anyway. Not me, I was living in the other direction, down Easton Avenue in Franklin where basketball players killed schoolteachers who were about to bring their grade-point average down below eligibility to play. I remember it being a very tight knit scene of absolute freaks, college students, IRA extremists (they blew up a BP gas station!), crash pads of kids with absentee parents, the physically disabled, and even hippies- following each other from show to show, Trenton to Philly. Whenever I tell people I'm from Brunfis they always say "oh you must have hung out at the Court Tavern;" but I never did, and that's why Inferno almost never does 21+ shows and also why all those bands of the moment 20 years ago - Children In Adult Jails, Genocide, Destroy All Bands - seemed so distant to the kids; they never let us see them play.
Q: One of the things I like to do with Jersey Beat is keep NJ history alive. The kids who come to your shows today have never heard of Sam Shiffman or Paul Decolator. Could you share some memories of them and some of the other characters who helped shaped your teenage years and the NJ punk scene of the late Eighties/early Nineties?
Jack: Schmul and Dec, and let's not forget that Sam is still with us, were something you don't really see in punk these days: Real personalities who aggregated a scene around them. Not just by holding a guitar and snarling, but by putting on shows, parties, fanzines and yes, even advice. They weren't just hanging out; they somehow made hanging out seem important, like every drunken antic could make the world a more interesting - and therefore better - place. I first met Paul when his band Pleased Youth had broken up and they already had a tour booked so he was looking for musicians to fill in for them. I don't mean just a few members - he wanted to recruit a completely new group of people to learn the songs and hit the road - he wasn't going either, none of them! I hadn't really developed a sense of humor back then so demurred. "C'mon," he gesticulated "In the middle of the country who the hell is going to know the difference?" I often think of that story pulling up to one godforsaken town or another nowadays.
Sam I had known a bit longer 'cause he was a friend of the drummer in my first band Neurotic Impulse's older brother, or maybe they were even in a band together... Warm Love, I think they were called. Sam was openly hostile to me because Straight Edge was fashionable at the time and I was open to the influence of not being under the influence. It wasn't until I had the opportunity to pull an unconscious Mr. Shiffman from a burning Knights of Columbus Hall during, I think, Edison's biggest punk rock riot to date that he and I became friends. I even played in his band P.E.D for a brief period of time. As what happens with so many bands, a vague brush with success put P.E.D in the ground. We are all so anxious to believe it when some stranger says, "You're going to be huge kid! The next Iggy Pop!" and then so ready to be a bitter victim of bad luck justified in packing it in when it doesn't happen. Songs last, disappointment dissipates, you age gracefully or not.
Q: One thing I really hate about modern punk (especially the commercial stuff that gets on the radio) is that the music has really lost touch with its roots. Punk used to be the bastard child of a dozen different rock n roll genres, from bubblegum to rockabilly to reggae to ska to country. A lot of bands today - especially in emo - seem to have next to no concept of rock n roll history and draw very little influence from bands that don't already sound like themselves. Do you agree? And how much of a role has World/Inferno played in exposing your fans to other cultures, sub-genres, and influences?
Jack: I have always maintained that "punk" is not a style of music, it's an attitude - of feeling dispossessed, disenfranchised, ignored, and demanding more out of life. The music was just a reason to get together any given night of the week, and sweat and kiss and kick, so whenever I hear four teenage boys yelling on the radio to over- produced guitars, it doesn't offend me; it's like living in a city where you don't speak the language. You notice details but you're just passing through. One of the things I am most proud of about World/Inferno is that, yes, we force audiences to redefine what they are in this for - do you want to listen to rock music or do you want a revolution? If you just want to rock out, there are thousands of cover bands or bands that don't want to admit they are cover bands that you can go spend your 12 bucks on; but if you really are a freak, if you really need more out of life than you are offered, if you've always hoped there was an underground fighting for you, then we, right now, are probably the most visible example that the improbable is viable and that the confused are attractive.
Q: Three guys in a van often have a hard time breaking even on tour. How much more difficult is it touring with an ensemble like W/IFS, in terms of transportation, accommodations, and making sure everyone gets paid fairly?
Jack: Well, nothing is ever fair, but for our own part, we share everything. We all get paid the same amount, we split songwriting royalties eleven ways or how many is in the band at the moment, including lyrics (which is traditionally 50 percent to the lyricist and for which several other singers have yelled at me about for causing insurrections within their groups;) but if you want to keep a gang together, everyone should know how much they are valued. Plus don't most solo artists seem like jerks?
Q: You've been around long enough to remember the days when young bands traded cassette demos and getting your first 7-inch released was actually regarded as a major milestone in a band's career. Compare that with today's Internet age when any band with a Mac can have an album streaming on MySpace and available to millions of people a week after writing their first song. Do you think the accessibility and instant gratification of the Internet has been a good or a bad thing for music?
Jack: That is a wonderful question and I am not sure how to answer it. My first reaction was to recite "DIY doesn't mean everyone should" but you know I believe in a world of endless possibility, so the more expression, the more chances for beauty in an ugly world. So let's be optimistic; it was hard back then, it's easier now. Kids probably don't get beat up for having mohawks anymore and I'm glad they don't. Does having an easier life make your art worse? Might just make it more lightweight, and there's your answer.
Q: If there's anything you want to add or plug, feel free to throw it in there.
Jack: Oh, just that World/Inferno is your full-time working, freedom-fighting, and syncopating friends to the friendless.
My name is Jack, this is what I do.
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