Panic at the Disco Tour Diary: part 5

I have friends in holy spaces: Nottingham Rock City, March 15th

Nottingham is going to be a tricky gig for me. Not only is it the last night (which I only realise that morning when I wonder what I will do without a show tomorrow), not only am I tired, bruised, hungover and shaking slightly after 6 days of shoddy meals and sleep deprivation, but I’m also now wondering how the hell it’s ever going to top the messy splendour of last night. On top of that I cannot take the last train home as it’s at about 10pm and I don’t have anyone’s house to crash at – instead I have to walk across town to a friend’s goth night, stay there ‘til it closes then head on down to the after party with the Nottingham Goths, who I haven’t really hung out with for about 2-3 years where I can either crash on a sofa or stay up until the trains start running at 7. Sounds fun huh? Normally I can mission an overnight but after a week of shows my body is aching even at the thought of it.

I do have a Plan for Nottingham though and a new friend to meet so I get dressed in something practical; backless butterfly t, skinny jeans, pink and grey eye sparkle, gird my loins and take the train. I’m getting really heartily sick of the cross country train out of Leeds – I can’t count the number of times I’ve been through Sheffield this week without ever even going there and the serious train hours are reminding me uncomfortably of the weeks on Tour with work that I just left behind. I’m organised about printing directions and stuff and I have a street map, but I get off the train at Nottingham I take one look at the drizzle and take a cab.
I find Caroline relatively easily and we stand about chatting. I have no street teaming today and a Notion to put into place that can’t happen until I see Zack so we stand and freeze and freeze and stand. At around 4pm, Zack comes out, I take deep breath say hi, am relieved when he remembers me from Leeds and when I ask very politely if it would be possible, since I’ve been to every gig, street teamed at two, if there were any gaps in the Meet and Greet today if I could take one. I’m prepared for him to say 'no' and for me to say 'it’s ok, I understand' and ask him to tell the boys I had an awesome time (and I have – and I really wasn’t going to let not meeting them spoil my week), but my knees pretty much give out when he thinks for a second and says “sure if there’s a space you can come in”. I manage not to hug him though, say thanks a lot and skuttle back to my place in the queue where I squee at Caroline at length. I try to keep in my head the thought that it isn’t definite, that Zack only said ‘if there’s a space’, but it’s enough to keep me going for now. At 5.15 I walk down to the front of the queue to wait with the other Meet and Greet girls and strike up a conversation with one in particular, Hannah. I find out that she’s at the Meet and Greet today because she was at the Leeds and Manchester shows and waited to Meet the guys after and didn’t get a chance because they had to leave.

Hannah’s kind of awesome and we clock each other as Ljers pretty quickly, she also pffts at my Goth Club crashing idea and invites me back to hers. The whole time we’re chatting I’m also really aware that I’m not definitely in the Meet and Greet yet, I’m still telling myself not to get my hopes up as Zack lines us up against the wall, turfs out a couple of hangers on and tells us we’re going inside where it’s quiet and we can talk easier. It’s not until we walk through the door that it hits me that I’m going to meet the band that I’ve followed all across the country, that I’ve street teamed for, for whom I’ve frozen, half starved and gone without sleep and, to borrow a phrase I go a bit jelloid.

Zack walks us into the downstairs bar of Rock City, stands us in a row and reads us the Panic At The Disco Riot Act. It’s the most awesome part of the whole week and I wish I’d got it on camera. He explains that the band will come in in a moment and sit down at the signing table that’s set up. He explains that we will walk round twice, the first time getting something signed, the second time the boys will come out and we will each get a photo with them. He explains that we have to keep the flow going and he gives us ground rules:
Yes we can talk to the boys, yes we can tell them they’re out favourite band, yes we can ask them questions that require short answers (“what’s your favourite song on the new album”, “are you doing any festivals this summer”) but nothing that requires a massive answer as we need to keep the flow of the signing going. He says that they will sign anything as long as it’s not physically on our bodies (“bras are fine, just take them off first ladies”) but he also says they will only sign things with the black Sharpies that he has given them, not with our own pens (I slip my pink Sharpie back in my bag :-)) so we may want to rethink things if we were planning on getting our black t shirt signed.

Then he gets serious; we cannot hug the boys (“people think hugs are for love – no! hugs hurt people!”), we cannot touch them (though high fives are ok, and in fact are encouraged), lean over the table, get in their personal space. We cannot get ‘creepy’ – tell them we love them, ask them to marry us, ask them personal questions. He goes on “If you break any of these rules, this is where it ends for you: not only will you leave this Meet and Greet, but I will take your ticket off you and you won’t be going to the gig and not only that but I will do my best to get a photo of you and you will never go to another Panic show as long as I work for them.”
I love Zack. And never more than right now when it’s plainly obvious that he is fucking awesome at what he does. I don’t feel like he’s having a go at me or anyone else there, but he’s scary and you know that he cares about the safety of the boys before anything else, but still manages to be sensitive to the fact that it’s hugely exciting for us and we’re likely to get a bit stupid without a firm hand.

This all being organised he goes off to collect the guys who file in and there’s that moment you get whenever you see someone in the flesh for the first time of adjusting your perception of them to what height, size etc they actually are. They all sit down at their seats with their carefully lined up Black Sharpies perpendicular to the table, except for Brendon who has a minor twitch and sends his Sharpie flying across the room seemingly with the power of his ADHD little mind. He looks sheepish and Zack looks indulgent as he returns it and I wonder if that’s even the first time today something like that’s happened.

Ok, say what you want about Panic as real people and the ladies at FBR_trash say quite a lot, but it’s all bollocks. The boys are sweet as hell, attentive and friendly and it definitely isn’t put on. Case in point, as I walk up to Spencer I ask him to sign my postcard to “Laura” which he does, as does Jon. I say hi and they look at me while signing. However, when I get to Brendon, I tell him I’ve been to every show and he’s been awesome all week. He looks up. Ryan looks up, Jon and Spencer look up and all say variations on “really? Wow, thanks/cool” Brendon unleashes this ear splitting smile on me and lifts his hand for a high five and I can’t do anything else except smile back and high five him. at this point I’m mainly thinking something that looks a little like this: “£@5q*£Q$*Qomgomgomgogmsqueeee” because occasionally I am 15 in my brain. But I do register that Spencer and Jon were still listening to me whilst talking to the people behind me and that they really are properly meeting everyone, not just signing what’s put in front of them and reacting to whatever’s said to them. This is confirmed a second later when I walk away from the table and realise I forgot to ask Brendon and Ryan to sign things to me, then glance down and notice that they had anyway and that they’re therefore been listening to me before I reached them. Plus they all spelt my name right, which rarely happens with Americans who have eleventy variations on Laura/ Lora etc. second time round we got our photos done. Mine is so cute! And it’s kind of interesting to have a proper visual reference for how tiny they all are since they’re basically standing full on to the camera (Ryan Ross may actually be skinnier than me, I hate him a bit). After this, those of us who were shameless liggers were turfed back into the queue where the JOY kept the rain off of us and where everyone around us was generally jealous. We got in, got pints and got an awesome spot at the sound desk (Rock City is awesome for gigs because it’s on so many different levels).

Black Gold. So awesome tonight. I have space to dance and a keen knowledge that this is the last time I’ll be seeing them for a while so I bounce and scream quite happily to their entire set. I’m really going to miss them actually, and I’m particularly aware of this when they play Shine – lord knows how that song has managed to infiltrate more even than Panic’s new material has (I’m deliberately trying not to take that in to keep it fresh for the album) but god I love it. I love how it feels like something from a 60s new wave picture show, or like something that would be played at the end of a night at a smoky after-hours bar. Hannah mentions that she’d made vague promises to take Black Gold out after the show so at least I have that to look forward to.

Metro Station. Oh boys. So pretty, so shiny, so nothing below the surface, but I kind of love having pretty boys telling me what to do and the songs are easy to sing along to and the lights are shiny and I’ve had a couple of beers and it’s all completely awesome. Since Metro Station were rumoured to be in their van with a couple of teenagers in Manchester and I singularly failed to say anything useful to them in Leeds I decide that I really do need to track them down later and let them know how much fun they’ve been. But in the meantime I skuttle between sets down to the merch stand to buy a t shirt ( I usually hate band shirts, especially when I love the band but Metro Station’s are pretty and I can make it into a funky halter top thing).

And Panic. There’s not much I can say about the banter or the individual tracks any more. They were great and I had space to see, space to dance and space to stop thinking about what I what going to write, whether I’d end up meeting them, my camera batteries were dead so I didn’t have to take photos, or do street team. So I did what I wanted to do all week and sang the fuck along, I screamed and jumped and probably looked stupid but I had an awesome time, but the entire set I kept on remembering the last think Ryan had said to me “what are you going to do next week?” . since I have literally no idea I figure I should have as much fun as possible while I still can.

After the gig, we decide to wait around to meet them which I haven’t bothered to do until now but since Hannah says they’ll be ages we head to a nearby pub to get a pint in the dry. We pass Eric and Than on the way out and end up enthusiastically telling them we’re going to take them out on a pub crawl and when they helpfully say “yeah totally, let us sign this stuff and we’re there” we end up giving them someone’s number (mine? Possibly) and getting shuffled out in the human traffic.

We have a swift pint round the corner and brace ourselves to head back out into the Northern Downpour (that song will always be special for the Northern fangirls who queued for these dates). When we get to the back of the bus, most fans have left, which is good, but there’s no band either which is bad. We stand about for a bit freezing our asses off and I zone out a bit until Hannah tugs my elbow and tells me she’s found out that Panic are still inside Rock City at the club night which has now started. We say nothing out loud, but turn and sprint back to the entrance via a cash point, at this point we don’t even know if it’s true or not, but we’re slightly drunk and it’s pretty cold and it’s only a fiver in anyway.

Once we get into we shed soggy coats etc and walk (calmly, except not) around the dancefloor, through the bar until we’re at the foot of the stairs and as the three of us look up we can see the pretty unmistakable outline of Jon Walker and Zack.

Well fuck me.

We walk upstairs slowly not knowing if Zack’s really going to be cool with us being there but we get to the top and there’s literally just Panic, Black Gold, Zack and about 4 other people up there and once we catch Zack’s eye and he doesn’t do anything we figure we’re good to stay. So we’re hanging out on a balcony with Panic at the Disco, aware that this is actual human time spent with them and that not only should we not be being Fans, but that it’s really unfair on them and their after party to be so, so what do you do? Head to the bar for starters. Bags stowed and Red Stripe in hand we head into the party.

I’ve had lots of emails and lj messages already digging for gossip about this, I haven’t given anyone any so far and I’m not going to now, because there wasn’t any. And even if there was, we were lucky to be there and to get to spend that kind of time with them and to repay them by spreading shit around on sites like FBR-T would be completely below the belt. So no gossip. I’m still not saying everything here, partly because I want to keep some of it for myself, because it was awesome. But as an outline, everyone was really friendly, everyone was really chatty, they were seeking us out to chat to us rather than the other way round ( I suppose this makes sense since they live on a bus together and can talk to each other whenever they want). Eric and Than were holding court in one corner with about 5 people and a lot of beer and everyone else was pretty much milling around. But the coolest thing about the whole night (and I know this makes me a nerd) was that every single person there was passionate about music. It seeped into every conversation I had – when Spencer asked what I was drinking and I explained why Red Stripe is the only thing you can drink at gigs and when I tried to explain why Leeds was so awesome and why I thought the Leeds show rocked (I can’t remember if I’ve already typed this, but Brendon and Spencer both said they’d enjoy the Manchester show the most), when I perched monkey style on the bench against the wall with Brendon and had a proper singer-to-singer conversation about stage performing, and when I found myself being quizzed by Than about how I write songs (this went on for a while because apparently it’s the opposite way to the way he does).

The funny thing about a band like Panic who are individually typecast so often that you almost expect them to be the opposite of their stereotypes, but they actually weren’t. Ryan was sweet but ever so slightly flakey, Jon was chill as fuck, friendly and laid back, Brendon was bouncy and enthusiastic and totally involved in whatever he was doing at the time and Spencer was serious and of the four of them the one who I ended up having a long and involved chat with. Eric and Than were just Trouble :-).

The whole 2 or so hours we were up there was completely surreal, partly because it was dark and the lights from the club didn’t quite reach up there, partly because everyone was almost-but-not-quite drunk, partly because I was in Nottingham hanging out with a band I really like and some people I’d only met that day and was already firm friends with. I think in the end the only person I even slightly fangirled was Zack, who I ended up thanking profusely for being awesome and basically making my night happen. When they all peeled out at 1 ish (2 ish?) it was with friendly goodbyes and the odd promise to keep in touch that everyone knows is hollow but is totally genuine at the time. But we had fun, they seemed to have fun. Good times.

So how do you top that? Caroline went home with the biggest smile on her face and Hannah and I walked back to hers in the pouring rain, got completely soaked, then drank an awful lot of cider and eventually passed out.
I woke up the next morning wearing bed head, a metro station t shirt and a serious hangover. Cider. What was I thinking exactly?

After a bit of a slow start to the morning with lots of nursing cups of tea and playing chicken with livejournal where we're both tempted to squeak about our night but equally determined to wait until we’ve calmed down enough not to do it in a childish and gossipy way, we decide that though neither of us had planned to do so, we’re going to mission it to London for the acoustic show. Plans are scouted out, crash space is secured we just need to swing by our respective homes, shower change and regroup. But once I leave Nottingham, and sit on the train home really fighting the kind of hangover that has teeth and trying to keep down a latte it becomes clear that it may be not such a good idea. For starters, I am technically supposed to be starting a new job the day of the gig which was why I wasn’t going in the first place, for seconds, I’ve just been to London and it makes little sense to go back and also – I’ve just had one of the most awesome nights of my life, which could theoretically be topped by going down to London, seeing the gig, hooking up with everyone again and carrying on the party. Or it could mean 2 more days of no sleep, no proper food, loads of queueing, one more awesome gig and being disappointed that the hanging out was a one time thing.

In short, the potential for it to mess with my memories of the Nottingham show is far greater than the potential for it to surpass it. By the time I get home, sit in the shower, drink a glass of water and tell a fairly steady stream of teen visitors that yes I met them. I’m starting to realise that the Tour Ends Here for me. I have that awful “no one wants to leave the circus” feeling that I always get when I’m back at home after a tour, I feel mopey and tearful and flat and I allow myself to wallow for about 2 hours before I pull myself the fuck together, track Hannah down online and go forth and tell Fueledbynoodles what we’ve been up to. Which provokes the flurry of “omgomg telltelltell” emails and messages we’d been laughingly expecting and everything’s back to normal with only 9 days to go until Pretty. Odd. drops.

This tour has been a lot of things for me – since I left full-time gainful employment a few weeks before and knew that I would for once have the liberty and finances to actually follow a whole tour I was able to commit to a lot of it in a way that one can’t when you have to be in the office the next day. The potential of a music-related writing project of mine happening has meant that I kept this journal far more diligently and in more first person detail than I’d planned. And I managed to fit in an awful lot:
I made about 5 or 6 new friends
I Street Teamed at 2 shows
I watched 2 shows from the pit
I watched 2 from the sound desk
I watched one from the Backstage/balcony
I got Meet and Greet
I hung out with the Panic and Black Gold
I met Mason and Trace
I took 572 photos (of which on about 40 were Not Shit)
I took 25 videos
I drank lots of scotch (for medicinal purposes)
I got more calories from beer than from food
I came home with a really nasty flu, bruises, scratches, RSI (from typing on trains), and a hangover.


It was awesome. Who’s playing next? Wait, no I know this – it’s the split show Give It a Name where we’re trying to do both Cobra shows. After that, there’s possibly the HCT dates and definitely Glastonbury.