Panic at the Disco Tour Diary: part 4

The Best Show in Town was the Crowd: Leeds Refectory, March 14th

Thursday was the Glasgow show. Since it was in a different country, is the only city in the country I do not have a sofa to crash on and occurred between Manchester (an hour from my home) and Leeds (home), it made no sense for me to go so I didn’t. Zack I think knows this, Ryan and Brendon don’t because there wasn’t time to explain “I’ve been to every show but one” at the Meet and Greet, so they think I’m mildly more dedicated than I am. Sorry boys. I’m sure the Glasgow show was wonderful and I hope everyone had deep-fried battered Mars bars afterwards, because you really shouldn’t visit Glasgow and not try one.

Friday! Hometown show for me. Major street team day for me. I Have A Motherfucking Pass day for me. I managed to get a balcony pass for this show through someone I’d met a couple of weeks previously street teaming for another show. It’s balcony, not backstage, but the refectory being what it is, the balcony almost is backstage, so I’m holding out hope that someone will be up there, but even if not I’m really looking forward to the amazing view I’ll get. I woke up pretty early to get everything ready – street team stuff is heavy and cumbersome and this is the first show that I know I won’t be in a crowd for so can wear something a bit more pretty and a bit less practical. I also spork around on LJ, making last minute plans with Sarah and Rachel and posting flashing marquee, bubblegum pink I HAVE A PASS posts. My brother and his friends are coming to this show too, so I need to make plans to meet him after school and provide written “I am not responsible for these kids in that moshpit” declarations for various parents.

In the end I bus over to the university at about 2, feeling very overdressed for the time of day in a wrecked denim skirt, customised skull print tank and many many pink and green accessories with evening makeup on. I hook up with Sarah and Rachel easily enough and we stake out a place in the queue whilst we wait for enough people to arrive to make it worthwhile street teaming (Rachel is S-Ting for Metro Station). For once the weather is actually really nice and we kill time until about 4pm talking about Beckett meetings and the awesomeness of the Cobra (and how handy it is that the universal ‘identifying people off of LJ in Real Life’ sign is throwing Fangs Up). Around 4pm Zack starts queue-walking which is enough of a visual clue to us that the queue is big enough to start working on.

Street Teaming Leeds is an absolute joy compared to London; everyone’s in a good mood, everyone wants to chat, everyone wants to sign up to the mailing list and have their photos taken and consequently it takes ages, which is exactly how I like it. At a couple of points, my path crosses Zack’s and we pick up yesterday’s Metro Station argument, getting closer to agreeing since he gives me reasons and I’m starting to reach the same conclusions he’s already at. I do manage to accidentally snap at a girl in the queue about calling headlining acts “proper bands” as opposed to headliners, since it implies that opening acts aren’t ‘proper’. Since I’m caffeinated to high hell and on a bit of a “talking to strangers” high, I end up startling her and leaving Zack with the idea that I don’t think Panic are a proper band, which requires some quick explanation and him saying “so you’re street team huh? I should have guessed” which from the way he said it sounded like he should have guessed from the way I’m so bolshy and able to strike up conversations with complete strangers. Oh dear. I do spend the rest of the queue time resisting the urge to run up to him and tell him I’m quite chilled and shy usually but settle for apologising to the girl instead.

At one point, owing to improper dress and crappy circulation my hands completely freeze so I head inside with Sarah to find a radiator. The foyer is supposed to be closed at that time because Panic are sound checking but since A, who got me my pass, is on the door and we’re clearly not going any further than the radiator by the doors, he’s content to let us stand there and listen and we catch almost the whole of She’s a Handsome Woman, which in the quiet of the afternoon without screaming fans sounds incredible and we both have a wide-eyed moment of Omg-itude.

The rest of the queue time passes relatively quickly, I finish street teaming only because I run out of mailing list space, Zack pulls a girl out of the queue right behind us for the Meet and Greet because he has a space and she’s cute as hell and there with her mum, my brother and his posse turn up when the queue is round the block and I have to send him to the back because the people down by us would rightfully spit nails if I let them all in, Sarah, Rachel and I draw on ourselves in Sharpie (Tell Me What To Do!) and eventually we pile in. I wait for Little Bro and Co to get it to read them the riot act (no trying to get served, no getting people to buy you beer, no going down the front and getting squished, no going down the front and squishing people) then bounce smugly upstairs, pass on wrist to watch Black Gold, up close without being crushed.

Which is awesome. There’s not much I can say about the songs that I haven’t already said – they’re growing on me night by night, (especially now I’ve had a day at home listening to them on Myspace) but god it’s great to really be able to watch them play. All four of them are incredible musicians in their own right but as a group they’re so much greater – they’re completely locked in to each other, able to communicate with half a glance but not at all inward facing for it. They perform out to the audience, give them exactly what they need and get a heck of a lot back which makes a refreshing change from earlier in the week when I got the impression that people weren’t that bothered. I don’t know whether it’s because word has been filtering back through the week and this crowd has had a few extra days to check them out or what, but whatever it is, I’m glad.

But wait, what’s that? From where I’m standing I can see across the stage and down the stairs leading to the dressing rooms and there’s a bouncy bouncy little shadow coming, followed by a much larger, steadier one. It hadn’t occurred to me up until that point, that Zack actually escorts Brendon up to the stage each evening for his verse with Black Gold, but I suppose it makes sense, since Zack has been in the venue all afternoon and knows the layout and no one wants to lose a singer backstage 40 minutes before the set. Brendon twitters in the wings (ok, hardly wings at the refectory, but ya’know…) for a minute before sauntering on and singing his part. And the transformation is amazing to watch: seconds earlier he quite easily conformed to every ADHD kiddie stereotype that’s written about him, Zack almost having to physically hold him still and the second he stepped onto the stage he was calm, collected, focussed. I spent a while just now trying to figure out if he gained or lost something between back and front of stage i.e. hid he lose the twitchy kid thing and expose the performer underneath or is the jittery Brendon the base layer that he shrugs a stage presence on top of? But I can’t work it out and it doesn’t really matter either way. It was pretty cool to watch and I ended up giggling to myself like a loser when the safe thing happened in reverse as he left the stage and bounced back to the dressing room.
The rest of Black Gold’s set in short: Than’s mic stad is loose again, I wonder why again. And I sing along to Shine almost in tears (knee jerk reaction left over from my opera days when performing was catharsis, it’s not that much of a tear-jerker of a song) and realise it’s going to end up being a bit of an anthem for me for the next few months and possibly the title track to this tour).

I pop downstairs to grab a pint and see my brother who is grumpy that I won’t buy him one and who tells me that Black Gold are pretty good for an indie band. I’m not sure at what point in the last 10 years indie became a dirty word, but I shrug off the fact that this is the point at which our musical tastes divulge and rib him about the pint and pass I have that he doesn’t :-).

Metro Station are not really much fun to watch from upstairs where it becomes even more obvious that they are playing along to a backing track and that Trace really cannot play and sing at the same time so I tune out and use the time to take some pretty cool photos. It’s interesting to watch the crowd from up here though – it ebbs and flows kind of like one of those nifty schooling fish balls from the Blue Planet. It occurs to me that I’m supposed to be keeping half an eye out for Trace and/or Mason since it’s Rachel's birthday and I want to try and do something cool for her. So I fish out my Sharpies (because you never know when you might need to have 8 different colours of permanent marker, I always carry them on me) and make a sparkly Happy Birthday Rachel sign. I track down Trace after his set at the bar (drinking! Legally! My brain fills in) and explain that Rachel has been street teaming for him and he needs therefore to let me take a photo with the sign. He’s pretty excited by the idea of having a street team and lets me take a couple of photos. I remember to tell him that I’ve really enjoyed his shows and am already walking away when I get reeled in for a rib-crushing hug, which caught me slightly off guard because I’d thought I was about 4 feet away from him and just how long are his arms!? Later in the evening I will receive further reports of Trace’s drive-by hugging habit from many sources, which is kind of sweet. I like a boy who hugs.

Back upstairs for the main act I switch sides on the balcony so that I can try and grab some shots of Jon who I’ve been miles away from all week, though the nicest thing about the balcony is it takes seconds to cross sides when you don’t have to wade through human soup to do so, so I can always go back. I wind up standing next to a boy that looks so much like Brendon Urie that the only reason I know it isn’t is because the real one just walked on stage to a deafening roar from the crowd.

The Manchester show was incredible in terms of the onstage dynamic, the banter, the mood, the contrast to the London show and when I ask Spencer later in the week he will tell me that the band thought Manchester was the best show. But I really can’t agree – The Leeds show blows everything else I see Panic do all week totally out of the water, between songs they’re friendly but nowhere near as chatty as Manchester but when they play they’re all business. They play hard, they play totally and they wind the audience up so hard I’m amazed there isn’t structural damage. I’ve been going to gigs across the country for 13 years now and I’ve always though the Leeds music scene is the best in the UK. London might have the media, the biggest venues, the flagship shows, but Leeds is a city of fans who really love their music and know how to have a good time.

We’re So Starving into Nine in the Afternoon has a momentum all of it’s own – the audience are singing so hard they’re almost pushing the beat and while there’s still a lot of movement down at the front it doesn’t look anywhere near as out of control as the Roundhouse was.

The next few tracks pass (incredibly, but I’ve already talked about that) and when they get to That Green Gentleman it’s really cool to be able to sing all the words back and hearing the crowd do the same and from where I am I get an absolutely perfect, steady video of the whole thing. It looks like so much fun down in the pit that I almost crack and run downstairs for a couple of tracks but I still have Nottingham where I can dance so I decide to stay upstairs – there’s only about 25 people up here, but we all know the words, everyone’s dancing, we’re having our own sort of good time.

It’s around Camisado that I notice the circle pit starting right below me. My initial reaction is “oh for fuck’s sake”, thinking back to the tossers at the Roundhouse, especially when I notice my brother is one of 4 or 5 boys right at the centre, but then I look closer – I notice it widening, I notice girls joining in, I notice the boys holding it together, looking after the girls, I notice everyone smiling and no one getting hurt and everyone gently moving people out that don’t want to be involved. It’s pretty awesome and it’s pretty big and I get some pretty fucking cool videos of it throughout the gig, which kind of confirms in my mind that Leeds has the best crowds since everyone has some fucking gig etiquette and knows how to get an actual circle pit going without hurting anyone but still making it pretty violent – if you were in that, high-fucking-five.

Even through the new tracks the crowd doesn’t let up, though the mood is very different which really for me is the crux of why this show was the highlight of the week for me. I’ve loved Panic for a long time, but until very (shamefully) recently, I haven’t really thought of them as being particularly outstanding technical performers, with the possible exception of Brendon. I’ve always admired the style, aesthetic and lyrics of Fever without feeling that it was a technically standout album – there’s no really shredding guitar solos, no bass breakdown worthy of Flea. I suppose what I’m trying to stay is that I’ve always admired them as song-writers rather than performers. My opinion started to change pretty much bang on the first time I heard the studio version of Nine in the Afternoon – the new, rockier, more organic style of the new tracks really forces them to play, rather than hide behind synth tracks and clever production tricks, the first time I heard that dinky little guitar lick from NitA, I realise with a shock that Ryan played it, that I want to see what he looks like when he plays it, and that he actually plays guitar (yes that really never occurred to me until just now).

But I digress…

Fans and journalists alike have by now reported that Panic have reworked their older tracks to fit into their new classic rock-y style and it’s really great to watch – each track is slightly different, to the other tracks and to it’s Fever counterpart and the band totally inhabit each and every track and the character of it – Ryan veers from his typical hunched over his guitar, biting his lip through difficult riffs style that we saw throughout the ‘Circus tour to loosening his hips and riding out the more 70s style riffs of the new material.
Jon seems so much more relaxed on stage now, possibly because he’s playing material they wrote together who knows, he does this adorable hopping backwards on the balls of his toes thing and in general is a gorgeously loose and relaxed performer who I’m really excited to notice uses his fingers rather than a pick (personal kink as a bassist who has never been able to play with picks and wants to believe it isn’t because she SUCKS)
Spencer…Spencer’s drumming has always been tight, and he’s always had a slightly dangerous, lock-up-your-daughters-and that-way-inclined-sons tilt to his hips, but it isn’t ‘til I watch him play from above that I realise the boy can cock his hips while he plays. Seriously, he actually grinds his stool whilst playing. I felt slightly voyeuristic watching it so lets move on to Brendon.
Brendon, who has ended up earning my respect and awe and owning my soul up until this point and will by the end of the tour end up almost owning the rights to my first-born too. I’ve been singing since I was a small child, say 7 or so. I’ve been on the stage since I was 10 and I’ve been leading groups and performing as a soloist for maybe the last 9,10 years or so so believe that I know what I’m talking about when I say Fuck Me, that kid can perform.
It’s not just about saying that he throws himself into his performances, I’ve seen plenty of performers let themselves get swept up in what they’re doing and lose in technical prowess what they gain in impulsion, it’s that you can see every muscle in his body, every inch of him is engaged in what he’s doing. Singing is probably the most physically demanding of all instruments and being a front man requires you not only to perform using your body but to act, to lead and he manages that effortlessly. Each song sees him as a different person; relaxed and matured for That Green Gentleman, shrugging on a bit of the old ringmaster character from the Circus tour for Camisado and Nails and these days when he sings Lying you can actually tell he’s had sex which, almost feels like an overshare. But looking past his body language, you can see from the set of his face and the focus in his eyes that he’s really got him mind on what he’s doing, and that even when he seems to be relaxing and enjoying the ride he knows exactly where the whole band is, what he’s done, is doing, is about to do. And as a singer it makes me want to sneak backstage lock myself in a room with him and ask him a bajillion questions about how he does X, what he’s thinkng when he Ys etc (it is this compulsion in me that has always made me a rubbish groupie – why fuck a musician when you could find out how they nail that solo riff in verse 2?). It’s probably just as well at this point that I have no idea that I will get a chance to do almost that in 24 hours time or I’d be exploding.

The Leeds show passes at what feels like a really breakneck pace – the band are low on extra banter and high on playing the hell out of their songs and the crowd are just eating it all up and hurling it back in the form of sweat and raw energy and it feels like no time at all before they’re trooping off stage and I’m bouncing downstairs to round up teenagers, have one last chat with Trace, say Hi to a passing Eric and sing my lungs out as my brother piggybacks me to the car.