Panic at the Disco Tour Diary: part 1

like Josie and the Pussycats at a Gaybar: Birmingham Academy, March 9th

It’s ten to eight on a Sunday morning and I’ve just been earwormed by the paperboy. The little tyke was doing that darling teenage thing of listening to music on his phone very loud. Loud enough that I heard him walking up the drive and had a brief moment of wondering if the music was inside or outside my brain and eventually traced it to my doorstep. I swept the door open to discover a startled teenager, paper in hand, clearly not expecting to encounter another human that early in the morning, especially not one wearing unicorn pyjamas, a Clandestine hoodie and a crossface. He looked at me. I looked at him. And Electric Six of all things issued tinnily from his pocket. Eventually, mutely, I held my hand out for the paper and retreated back to the kitchen and my coffee muttering “gay bar, gay bar, gay bar” . I’m on the train two hours later now and still singing it, which considering I’m on my way to see Panic at the Disco isn’t great. Knowing me I’ll probably end up meeting them, then have a fit of brain tourettes and invite Ryan Ross to a gay bar (gay bar, gay bar) which is really not ideal, especially since, due to a surprising new haircut for me and a new fashion direction from him we now look rather alike and no one will ever believe that I wasn’t rocking hobbit scarves first.

Of course I’m jittery in that “haven’t had enough sleep” sort of way, riding the adrenaline buzz of being woken up in the middle of an REM cycle. I’d stayed up late to ‘pack’ and ended up talking to anyone who was still awake on MSN in BLOCK CAPITALS about the Panic gigs. When eventually I fell asleep, it was to a fevered dream in which I was a member of Panic (the rest of the band being made up of Pete Wentz and my ex flatmate Tom). We were in an underground bar trying to record our demo, except it transpired that actually all the riffs had been stolen from MCR. So Freud me.

In other news, Network Rail managed (again) to screw up my ticket (again!) meaning I had to spend an extra £40 on my ticket and giving them (or me) a 100% fuck up record for the last 18 months. Sometimes I think I only want a record contract so that I can travel to gigs in a tour bus. Having to play rather than watch those gigs would be a fair price to pay for that near immeasurable luxury I think.

The only sensible thing to do when you have too many hours to kill before a show is to get ready far too early and spend too much time on makeup that will be sweated off anyway. It’s 2pm when I get settled in Birmingham and I curl up in front of Josie and the Pussycats and spread out pots of dazzle dust. An hour later I have blue and pink eyes, sparkly and OTT, they look perfect with the messed up and dripping blue butterfly on my t shirt. I’m too bouncy to eat, so eventually James, my host gives up on trying to “keep my energy levels up” (he’s a first aider for the venue and doesn’t want to add me to the scores of teenage fainters he will have to deal with later) and recognises that my energy levels are up and are likely to stay up for the foreseeable, so he switches K!tv on for me and lets me inhale coke zero and sing along to Fall Out Boy and explain to him the epic bromance of Pete and Patrick and from there fanfiction and slashfiction and how most of it is disturbing freaky mad shit but some of it is actually totally legit as a literary genre (true story but one for another day).
Finally, finally, it’s time for me to leave and meet the other LJ people. This is a blessed relief because it means I can finally be as much of a band geek as I want to be with people who will just geek back. After a lot of gigglings, jokes about Gerard Way, swapping war stories from previous tours of Bandom Duty we finally made it into the venue just in time to catch Black Gold (or Hot Eric’s band as they seem universally to have been rechristened). They’re good. Not amazing, but good, though I feel sorry for them when the biggest cheer they raise all night is when Brendon comes out to sing a track with them.

On to Metro Station who are adorable, about as bouncy as a basket full of puppies and almost twice as cute and feature Trace Cyrus, immediately rechristened Baby Ray Cyrus who is Hot Like Burning. They’re amazing to watch in that enthusiastic “we can’t quite believe we’re a real band on a real stage with a real audience” kinda way and have the entire audience dancing along and clapping, waving, eating out of the palms of their hands in about 2 songs flat. I really really need their CD now.

Jess and I hightailed it to the front after Metro Station – cue much elbowing, pushing and dirty looks from those around us. The crowd, quite frankly were appalling – self-interested, vicious and with absolutely no sense of community or brotherhood with those around them. They were also very young and part of me wonders if this utter lack of gigpit savoir faire was a result of it being everyone’s first gig or the natural and unfortunate conclusion of people getting into new music through Myspace rather than going to gigs like we had to.
But enough of irritating little shits, onto the band, who were awesome but low-key. Ryan looked poorly (someone said he’d been ill in Europe) but still managed to play a storm, Brendon was a tiny little ball of charm who didn’t stop smiling the whole gig it was great to see Jon actually playing forward, talking to the audience and batting Brendon’s banter back at him and Spencer….well it’s just enough to see Spencer instead of him being way back behind a set on a riser (has he burnt every top but that black shirt though?). I don’t remember much of the set beyond trying to stay upright and struggling not to get annoyed with the awful crowd, I certainly don’t really remember what anyone said or did but I do remember that it felt like a warm up set for a warm up tour; sweet, lovely but not much energy and some carefully packaged charm. They’d probably have given more if the crowd had actually supported them more but they were all about the taketaketake (are we spotting a theme about Panic fans and me thinking they’re selfish yet?).
We didn’t stick around after the show to meet them, quite frankly after dealing with the crowd for 4 hours I couldn’t wait to get far, far away and was mopey and demoralised the whole way home and frankly a little bit anxious about another 4 nights of a flat band and a bratty crowd.
Sunday night was a lengthy argument with a music fan, or rather James having had enough of my twittering sat me down with his flat mate with a “you two both like music…go!” K!tv provided the subject matter and two hours later we were still debating whether Muse were supercool or the freakiest band ever and trying to recreate some of the more physically challenging Wentz/Trohman guitar moves (which almost put me face first through a French window). I must have been tireder than I thought though because about 1am I dropped like my strings had been cut.