20 hours standing on wet pavements will apparently make you sick, drinking cough syrup from the bottle will apparently make you dizzy. On saturday night I was drinking with musicians, arguing about song writing, making friends and smiling lots, by Monday morning I was using the same pen that's been writing my first novel to fill out Heath and Safety quizzes at work. I felt this was unsuitable so I bit it in half and threw it away.
funny how the day before I get home from a tour or festival all I can think about is how much I want a routine and my own bed, then the day I get home I'm planning my next big mission. Am I always going to be on the wrong side of that door? I suppose the only way to answer that is to finish these songs and find out what happens.
writing all this up is epic and depressing - in about 10,000 words you can have my week fangirling Panic in all it's superlative, poorly punctuated glory. until then, here's a basket full of puppies.
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Saturday, 15 March 2008
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.
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.
Friday, 14 March 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Panic at the Disco Tour Diary: part 3
Northern Downpour: Manchester Academy, March 12th
Brendon Urie totally owns my soul. This is all being updated from the far side of the Manchester gig and I couldn’t feel more different about this band, their fans and the wisdom of doing the whole tour. I was supposed to be in Manchester for 2-3ish but it's far enough away from me to take a while to get there and I’ve been there frequently enough that I’m pretty complacent about that. I really didn’t feel like a dress up mission today so it was back to skinny jeans, battered Chuck Ts and a loungefly shirt (suitably enough with little emo rainclouds on it). In my infinite wisdom today, I decided against a coat and went for layered Ts and a hoodie which I will regret the second I get off the train at Oxford road and get hit by an icy sidewind. I’d made some vague arrangements on Livejournal to hook up with some other fans at the Manchester queue which happens surprisingly easily – we arrive at the back of the short queue at exactly the same time and the buzznet link I sent Julia the night before means she recognises me. Also happily we click straight away and spend the next few hours tag teaming coffee runs, swapping Tour stories and filling each other in on Panic and FBR rumours (she’s heard tell of an arena tour later in the year from Panic’s bus driver – we’re not sure the arena part isn’t bullshit (and if it isn’t guys it’s a HORRIBLE idea) but the second tour, post HCT and album tour makes sense).
The four hours pass pretty quickly, we shot shit with Zack who is earnestly telling the boy in front of us that Metro Station suck (I disagree quite loudly and there’s a mini “they do!” “They Don’t!” argument on the pavement, which isn’t really what I first wanted to say to Zack ever (that would have been “can I wear your coat for a minute? I’m freezing!”) but hey ho. We arrived at 3pm and were about 30th in the queue. At 6.45pm for 7.30 doors about 100 Manchester scene kids pour onto the pavement in front of us. None of us think they’re audacious enough to just push in en masse. All of us are wrong. Over the course of the week, this will be the second most infuriating thing that anyone has done and a day later I’m still pissed off. The only thing I want to say about this is to the boy in the brown Panic hoodie who held the place for all 100 of them – “what kind of a sucker are you!? Does being their whipping boy and Designated Dave mean you get invited to their Cool Kid Cast Of Skins parties? Cheers for that you pussy.”
That being said and done though, we still made it into the venue to get the spot we wanted. There was no way I was going near the front again and Julia wasn’t so inclined either so we made a beeline straight for the sound desk where the lovely sound guys let us sit on the barrier. As Manchester Academy is a flat venue, not a theatre we pretty much had the best seats in the house. Depressingly enough again I didn’t get carded at the bar despite ordering a double Jack and Coke just as the bar manager was orating on the subject of “everyone being underage so ID them ALL. ALL OF THEM”. I'm feeling older by the gig.
The bands then. I’m actively looking forward to Black Gold tonight and they really don’t disappoint, by this point I recognise each song and can sing along to half so I get really into it. Also from my vantage point on the sound desk I can watch them properly and appreciate how difficult it is to lead a band when you're seated behind a keyboard instead of standing centre stage, Eric manages though. In fact, I think it’s testament to the fact that Black Gold is made up completely of gigging musicians, making them not only outstandingly competent musicians but also incredibly used to playing into other peoples bands that they all lock so effectively on stage. I have a bit of a competence ‘thing’ especially for musicians and it’s great to see four people doing what they do so very well. One question though – Than, you ended the set with a tech holding your mic stand in place, for like the last two songs. I’m not going to think much about it now, but with the benefit of re-writes I can tell you that I’m also going to notice this happen in Leeds and Nottingham. What’s up with that? Loose stands can happen at one gig, but three in a row? What are you doing to it!? And isn’t there a less man-power intensive solution? Duct tape? It holds the fabric of the universe together you know. Or switch your stands up and give the loose one to someone who isn’t going to smack it with sticks :-) I don’t know. It’s the most random thing in the world to notice, but I notice it tonight and will for the rest of the week.
Julia has a sidekick, the first I’ve actually seen in the UK and manages to get an LJ window open between sets for a real-time update. This will be more useful than we can imagine a bit later but for now I’m just hanging over her shoulder and giggling as she posts annoyed posts about irritating teen queue jumpers and our new maxim that thinking of Jon Walker will always warm you up on a cold day (hooray for Band Boys with liquor-interchangeable names).
Metro Station then and I’m starting to run out of things to say about them. They bounce, they sing, they get the crowd going, about 2 songs in Julia points out to me that Trace can’t play and sing at the same time and that they seem to have written their songs to accommodate this and I crease up and will notice little else for the rest of the tour. I’m beginning to notice that Zack is right and that they’re a My First Scene Band, but it’s still cute and enjoyable and I’m still buying it for now.
By now I’m just im-fucking-patient for Panic and when they eventually do come on I’m not only not disappointed, I’m relieved, uplifted and a whole host of other positive, passive verbs.
In one sentence, they play the shit out of Manchester.
This isn’t just the best I’ve seen them play, it’s getting on for one of the best live shows I’ve seen in a couple of years. Yes there’s no drumline, no makeup and costumes, no dancers, but there’s four (five) happy boys on that stage who are clearly absolutely delighted to be there. I don’t think a single one of them stops smiling the entire show. I’m biased I know, but Manchester and Leeds have always had the best crowds and we’re up there tonight. Everyone knows the words, everyone sings along. Brendon would barely have needed to chip in on Nine in the Afternoon, but he really really does. The Fever tracks are met with the kind of reception you’d give a long-lost friend and no one slows up for anything, even the new tracks (as per my London write-up, you can tell the Manchester crowd has been on youtube, myspace, wherever because even though we’ve only had the lyrics for a few days everyone knows them. All of them). But playing each song completely, joyously is not really what makes this gig for me. It’s what happens between the songs that does it. Compared to Brendon’s “perfect, passionate kiss’ speech from the Nothing Rhymes With Circus tour, the “this is for all the single people in the audience” speech he ‘s been introducing Lying with this tour, doesn’t feel particularly scripted, (unless you’ve seen him do it every night on the youtube clips) but I’ve noticed them saying specific things the same on every show this tour, Ryan doing a city-specific “hi and thanks” thing before That Green Gentleman, Jon introducing the band after the break etc. this show, however, whilst sticking roughly to the script really feels like they’re winging it and winging it with a bit of a smile. My publicist’s brain fills in an anxious pr manager clutching her face and muttering “oh shit”. I tried to scribble them down roughly and this is what I got:
At one point, Brendon swigged half a bottle of water, then threw the rest of the water over the crowd, paused then threw the empty bottle as well. Jon gently chastised him for bottling the fans and Brendon quipped with a slightly bitter laugh
‘yeah I know exactly what that feels like” there was a moment of nervous laughter and an off-mic exchange between Brendon and Jon and just before the mood turned sour Brendon was back with an “aaaanyway we’re going to play another song now.”
Poor boy, come back to Leeds fest! You (probably) won’t get bottled again…
We all know what happened before Lying at this gig, posts have already been made, youtube clips have been posted, heck fanfic has already been written, but I’m telling you again because it’s in my gig book underlined with a little star (the below paraphrased, I could get it verbatim from the clip, but in the interest of journalistic verisimilitude I’m going with what I wrote down not what I know was said from watching it back)
Ryan: so this is the point in the show where we ask which of you guys is single
Crowd: screams
Ryan: Because Brendon’s been single for a while now…
Female crowdmembers: scream, flail, self-lubricate etc
Brendon: yeah, so I’ll be looking for all of You after the show
Girls: further screaming, general agreement that This Would Be OK
Brendon: dudes are ok too though
Entire Crowd: screams. Loud enough to raise the roof.
Jon: says something off–mic to Brendon
Brendon: oh? Too far? Huh
Panic: plays Lying
Fans: die
Fortunately for us, them and the world, remember I mentioned we had a sidekick and an livejournal window open? Yeah. i think it was posted before the song ended :-) Whilst I would love to scream and flail about this like the slightly mad fangirl I try to pretend I’m not, the sensible part of my brain knows that, straight, gay or bi that wasn’t Brendon’s Big Coming Out, it wasn’t a slip up, that was a performer who knows exactly what the crowd’s expectations are of him and upped his act accordingly; it was superbly played and I love him for it.
in other banter news,
The band troop back on after Time To Dance, pick up their instruments, Jon turns to Eric and gives him a manly, double-handed high-five. Since Brendon is busy switching guitars, Ryan looks directly across the stage for about 5 seconds before saying
“Hey Jon, where’s my high-five?”
Jon: considers for a moment, lopes across the stage, gives Ryan the cutest high-five ever, moseys back to stage left.
Brendon: returns with a bass
Band: plays Mad as Rabbits
In other “Brendon Urie: has hormones” news, just before Time To Dance (which I love in it’s new, acoustic sing-along-a-synth-part incarnation) loped on:
Brendon: you know, I haven’t said this in a while, but I Love You
crowd: let Brendon know that this was entirely mutual
Brendon: and if you were all of age I would do nasty, nasty things to you”
most of the crowd: scream
About 5% of the crowd: raise their hands to politely inform Brendon that they were Of Age and potentially not disagreeable to having said ‘nasty, nasty things’ done to them
I was so relieved tonight that they were so awesome – the entire show was one of those perfect events – great crowd, band on top form and obviously having loads of fun, we spent the whole gig screaming along and dancing. I had a last train to catch so didn’t stick around afterwards instead moseying across Manchester in the dark with Julia talking about stuff. Things. Stuff and things and bands we love. I think one of the most enjoyable things about this week has been finding so many other people who love music as much as I do, I feel so much less friendless up North now.
Brendon Urie totally owns my soul. This is all being updated from the far side of the Manchester gig and I couldn’t feel more different about this band, their fans and the wisdom of doing the whole tour. I was supposed to be in Manchester for 2-3ish but it's far enough away from me to take a while to get there and I’ve been there frequently enough that I’m pretty complacent about that. I really didn’t feel like a dress up mission today so it was back to skinny jeans, battered Chuck Ts and a loungefly shirt (suitably enough with little emo rainclouds on it). In my infinite wisdom today, I decided against a coat and went for layered Ts and a hoodie which I will regret the second I get off the train at Oxford road and get hit by an icy sidewind. I’d made some vague arrangements on Livejournal to hook up with some other fans at the Manchester queue which happens surprisingly easily – we arrive at the back of the short queue at exactly the same time and the buzznet link I sent Julia the night before means she recognises me. Also happily we click straight away and spend the next few hours tag teaming coffee runs, swapping Tour stories and filling each other in on Panic and FBR rumours (she’s heard tell of an arena tour later in the year from Panic’s bus driver – we’re not sure the arena part isn’t bullshit (and if it isn’t guys it’s a HORRIBLE idea) but the second tour, post HCT and album tour makes sense).
The four hours pass pretty quickly, we shot shit with Zack who is earnestly telling the boy in front of us that Metro Station suck (I disagree quite loudly and there’s a mini “they do!” “They Don’t!” argument on the pavement, which isn’t really what I first wanted to say to Zack ever (that would have been “can I wear your coat for a minute? I’m freezing!”) but hey ho. We arrived at 3pm and were about 30th in the queue. At 6.45pm for 7.30 doors about 100 Manchester scene kids pour onto the pavement in front of us. None of us think they’re audacious enough to just push in en masse. All of us are wrong. Over the course of the week, this will be the second most infuriating thing that anyone has done and a day later I’m still pissed off. The only thing I want to say about this is to the boy in the brown Panic hoodie who held the place for all 100 of them – “what kind of a sucker are you!? Does being their whipping boy and Designated Dave mean you get invited to their Cool Kid Cast Of Skins parties? Cheers for that you pussy.”
That being said and done though, we still made it into the venue to get the spot we wanted. There was no way I was going near the front again and Julia wasn’t so inclined either so we made a beeline straight for the sound desk where the lovely sound guys let us sit on the barrier. As Manchester Academy is a flat venue, not a theatre we pretty much had the best seats in the house. Depressingly enough again I didn’t get carded at the bar despite ordering a double Jack and Coke just as the bar manager was orating on the subject of “everyone being underage so ID them ALL. ALL OF THEM”. I'm feeling older by the gig.
The bands then. I’m actively looking forward to Black Gold tonight and they really don’t disappoint, by this point I recognise each song and can sing along to half so I get really into it. Also from my vantage point on the sound desk I can watch them properly and appreciate how difficult it is to lead a band when you're seated behind a keyboard instead of standing centre stage, Eric manages though. In fact, I think it’s testament to the fact that Black Gold is made up completely of gigging musicians, making them not only outstandingly competent musicians but also incredibly used to playing into other peoples bands that they all lock so effectively on stage. I have a bit of a competence ‘thing’ especially for musicians and it’s great to see four people doing what they do so very well. One question though – Than, you ended the set with a tech holding your mic stand in place, for like the last two songs. I’m not going to think much about it now, but with the benefit of re-writes I can tell you that I’m also going to notice this happen in Leeds and Nottingham. What’s up with that? Loose stands can happen at one gig, but three in a row? What are you doing to it!? And isn’t there a less man-power intensive solution? Duct tape? It holds the fabric of the universe together you know. Or switch your stands up and give the loose one to someone who isn’t going to smack it with sticks :-) I don’t know. It’s the most random thing in the world to notice, but I notice it tonight and will for the rest of the week.
Julia has a sidekick, the first I’ve actually seen in the UK and manages to get an LJ window open between sets for a real-time update. This will be more useful than we can imagine a bit later but for now I’m just hanging over her shoulder and giggling as she posts annoyed posts about irritating teen queue jumpers and our new maxim that thinking of Jon Walker will always warm you up on a cold day (hooray for Band Boys with liquor-interchangeable names).
Metro Station then and I’m starting to run out of things to say about them. They bounce, they sing, they get the crowd going, about 2 songs in Julia points out to me that Trace can’t play and sing at the same time and that they seem to have written their songs to accommodate this and I crease up and will notice little else for the rest of the tour. I’m beginning to notice that Zack is right and that they’re a My First Scene Band, but it’s still cute and enjoyable and I’m still buying it for now.
By now I’m just im-fucking-patient for Panic and when they eventually do come on I’m not only not disappointed, I’m relieved, uplifted and a whole host of other positive, passive verbs.
In one sentence, they play the shit out of Manchester.
This isn’t just the best I’ve seen them play, it’s getting on for one of the best live shows I’ve seen in a couple of years. Yes there’s no drumline, no makeup and costumes, no dancers, but there’s four (five) happy boys on that stage who are clearly absolutely delighted to be there. I don’t think a single one of them stops smiling the entire show. I’m biased I know, but Manchester and Leeds have always had the best crowds and we’re up there tonight. Everyone knows the words, everyone sings along. Brendon would barely have needed to chip in on Nine in the Afternoon, but he really really does. The Fever tracks are met with the kind of reception you’d give a long-lost friend and no one slows up for anything, even the new tracks (as per my London write-up, you can tell the Manchester crowd has been on youtube, myspace, wherever because even though we’ve only had the lyrics for a few days everyone knows them. All of them). But playing each song completely, joyously is not really what makes this gig for me. It’s what happens between the songs that does it. Compared to Brendon’s “perfect, passionate kiss’ speech from the Nothing Rhymes With Circus tour, the “this is for all the single people in the audience” speech he ‘s been introducing Lying with this tour, doesn’t feel particularly scripted, (unless you’ve seen him do it every night on the youtube clips) but I’ve noticed them saying specific things the same on every show this tour, Ryan doing a city-specific “hi and thanks” thing before That Green Gentleman, Jon introducing the band after the break etc. this show, however, whilst sticking roughly to the script really feels like they’re winging it and winging it with a bit of a smile. My publicist’s brain fills in an anxious pr manager clutching her face and muttering “oh shit”. I tried to scribble them down roughly and this is what I got:
At one point, Brendon swigged half a bottle of water, then threw the rest of the water over the crowd, paused then threw the empty bottle as well. Jon gently chastised him for bottling the fans and Brendon quipped with a slightly bitter laugh
‘yeah I know exactly what that feels like” there was a moment of nervous laughter and an off-mic exchange between Brendon and Jon and just before the mood turned sour Brendon was back with an “aaaanyway we’re going to play another song now.”
Poor boy, come back to Leeds fest! You (probably) won’t get bottled again…
We all know what happened before Lying at this gig, posts have already been made, youtube clips have been posted, heck fanfic has already been written, but I’m telling you again because it’s in my gig book underlined with a little star (the below paraphrased, I could get it verbatim from the clip, but in the interest of journalistic verisimilitude I’m going with what I wrote down not what I know was said from watching it back)
Ryan: so this is the point in the show where we ask which of you guys is single
Crowd: screams
Ryan: Because Brendon’s been single for a while now…
Female crowdmembers: scream, flail, self-lubricate etc
Brendon: yeah, so I’ll be looking for all of You after the show
Girls: further screaming, general agreement that This Would Be OK
Brendon: dudes are ok too though
Entire Crowd: screams. Loud enough to raise the roof.
Jon: says something off–mic to Brendon
Brendon: oh? Too far? Huh
Panic: plays Lying
Fans: die
Fortunately for us, them and the world, remember I mentioned we had a sidekick and an livejournal window open? Yeah. i think it was posted before the song ended :-) Whilst I would love to scream and flail about this like the slightly mad fangirl I try to pretend I’m not, the sensible part of my brain knows that, straight, gay or bi that wasn’t Brendon’s Big Coming Out, it wasn’t a slip up, that was a performer who knows exactly what the crowd’s expectations are of him and upped his act accordingly; it was superbly played and I love him for it.
in other banter news,
The band troop back on after Time To Dance, pick up their instruments, Jon turns to Eric and gives him a manly, double-handed high-five. Since Brendon is busy switching guitars, Ryan looks directly across the stage for about 5 seconds before saying
“Hey Jon, where’s my high-five?”
Jon: considers for a moment, lopes across the stage, gives Ryan the cutest high-five ever, moseys back to stage left.
Brendon: returns with a bass
Band: plays Mad as Rabbits
In other “Brendon Urie: has hormones” news, just before Time To Dance (which I love in it’s new, acoustic sing-along-a-synth-part incarnation) loped on:
Brendon: you know, I haven’t said this in a while, but I Love You
crowd: let Brendon know that this was entirely mutual
Brendon: and if you were all of age I would do nasty, nasty things to you”
most of the crowd: scream
About 5% of the crowd: raise their hands to politely inform Brendon that they were Of Age and potentially not disagreeable to having said ‘nasty, nasty things’ done to them
I was so relieved tonight that they were so awesome – the entire show was one of those perfect events – great crowd, band on top form and obviously having loads of fun, we spent the whole gig screaming along and dancing. I had a last train to catch so didn’t stick around afterwards instead moseying across Manchester in the dark with Julia talking about stuff. Things. Stuff and things and bands we love. I think one of the most enjoyable things about this week has been finding so many other people who love music as much as I do, I feel so much less friendless up North now.
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
Panic at the Disco Tour Diary: part 2
Everybody gets there and everybody gets their way: London Roundhouse March 10th and 11th
Monday morning was a tense and grumpy run to the train station then 2 hours cuddled up in a hoodie with some coffee, some Cobra Starship and trying to update this with a sore arm and really bruised fingers. London was the first day of street team as well so imagine my delight when it started throwing it down just outside King’s Cross. It felt weird being back in London so soon after I’d left – I’m still on autopilot and got halfway to my old flat before rerouting to Alex’s. I arrived drenched, grumpy and cross but fortunately Alex is a wonderful hostess and plied me with tea and hot showers and gossip set to a soundtrack of Nick Cave albums (Murder Ballads is giving me ideas about all the musical cautionary tales I want to write). London was always going to be the big Dress Up Day, which was kind of depressing; there’s nothing like straightening your hair whilst watching sheets of rain outside the window to fill you with a sense of futility.
Street Teaming at the Roundhouse was…difficult. London crowds are always a bit snottier than the rest of the country, partly because a large part of them are tourists so are there in ones and twos and often don’t speak English and the other half… well growing up in London is bound to be quite different from growing up anywhere else. Those kids have been at the centre of the commercial scene forever and they know it. But I digress… Panic fans have always been known for being a bit on the cliquey side as well so the London Panic date was a double whammy of “and why should we sign up for your mailing list? Why would we need to find out our news in so plebian a way? Do you know the band? No? oh well….” (all direct quotes except use of the word plebian).
Eventually the mailing lists were too wet to write on and my hands were too frozen to even hold the clipboard so I went and hid in the café and watched Zack and the venue staff get the Meet and Greet kids in. This is the first time I’ve said this but it’s not going to be the last, I have no idea how Zack does what he does; he’s patient, funny and really compassionate to these often quite hysterical fans, he never comes off as being the kind of person who’s a barrier between Panic and their fans but at the same time, do anything that compromises their safety and he’ll have you in a second. Zack is totally my favourite.
By about 6.30 I had three full lists, a completely numb hand and a band-mate incoming, so Tom and I ditched the queue for the relative safety, warmth and scotch-giving properties of The Enterprise. Depressingly, they didn’t ID me – I guess I really do look older than your average scene kid now. Eventually the scotch and the real coal fire did their work and the queue vanished so we sprinted across the road and into the venue.
You can always tell that the London gigs are meant to be the big ones – there’s a massive (like Massive, Zack tried to give me the measurements and I couldn’t even figure it out then) Pretty. Odd. Banner in the foyer, the staff have Pretty Odd sashes, there are balloons, there are people in suits with animal masks, it all seems to be boding so much better than Birmingham.
We watch Black Gold from the back and they seem much better tonight – I think that’s more me than them though: compared to Metro Station who are the very definition of bouncy and accessible and Panic whose songs I know inside out, Black Gold are a little less obvious and have actual well written songs which need more than one listen. By the third track I was smiling, and I was starting to actually recognise tracks towards the end of the set. It’s kind of hilarious, now that I know it’s going to happen, to listen to the split second delay (is that…? Oh my god it is!), then hysterical scream when Brendon walks on and it’s kind of cool to see him and Eric perform together with a slightly different dynamic than when they do it with Panic. But Shine is definitely the thing that sticks out of Black Gold’s set for me; it has that gorgeous ascending melody that builds and builds and makes me want to buy it, learn it and perform it myself.
There’s not much I can say about Metro station that I didn’t say last night – I really like them and I know not everyone does. But there’s lots of different ways to enjoy music and not all of them involve listening critically to well structured music. Metro Station are accessible, they’re obvious as hell and they’re two very pretty boys coiling an audience up in the palms of their hands and making us dance, clap and sing. There’s nothing challenging about them, they’re barely playing live but they have a knack of telling us what to do so that we do it and convincing us we have a good fucking time, and part of me sometimes needs that. They do, however, trot out a very entertaining spiel towards the end of their set, telling us that they’ll be in the bar, where they will be drinking LEGALLY. They seem happy about the relative differences in legal drinking ages between the US and UK. Bless. God that sounds patronising, but just….bless!
At some point in the evening, Tom realised he hadn’t bothered to put eyeliner on. Instead of us both skidaddling towards the nearest toilet with a mirror, he instead insisted on kneeling at my feet so I could administer instant emo there and then. Part of me hates that he’s tall enough that he has to kneel to put me at hand/eye height, part of me thinks it’s ridiculously funny that we had a band night out that involved both whisky and girls putting eyeliner on boys in the middle of a Panic at the Disco gig. Wearesoscene. Except the part where we’re not at all.
Immediately after Metro Station, we started to make our way to the front. Tom and I have both been to lots of Roundhouse gigs before and the relatively open plan of the venue usually means it’s a piece of piss to circle round to the front and slot in on the second row somewhere. Nope. This is where it all started to go wrong. There’s always a bit of pushing at the front of big gigs, but it’s usually reasonably good natured and reasonably organised – you always get a sense that the crowd as a whole is pushing. Forwards. You also get the feeling of the crowd as a single entity, and that if one person is moving against the grain everyone else will push back against them (mixed metaphors much? Hi!)
But this…. This was different and patently unsafe. I guess because of the age of the crowd and the number of people who were there in small groups. People were pushing backwards. And Forwards . all over the fucking place really and instead of doing the sensible thing and trying to absorb and stop the movement, everyone (ok, mostly little girls) were leaning into it then screaming in terror (actually literally in terror which made me feel so awful for them) when the entire crowd nearly landed on top of them. And part of me wanted to be really impatient and pick them all up by their directional fringes or Clan hoodies and pop them down at the back of the room with an instruction to not come back to the front until they were old enough to handle it, but the rest of me remembered a little, pint-sized 13 year old who got hauled out of the front of Greenday at Reading ‘95 because she was desperate to see Billie Joe up close and wouldn’t let 25,000 adults deter her. I guess Tom and I decided for the sake of our gig, and because the terrified screams of young teens was kind of emotive, that we’d be pit parents which is probably very stuck up of us, but I really hope that at the very least a couple of people had a slightly less bad time than they would have done, especially the two really tiny little girls who we held up right through the gig and who stuck it out like troupers.
When Panic eventually came on (I say eventually like they were late, but there are actually the smoothest, tightest timed gigs I’ve ever been to) everything went mental. Literally mental. Which was pretty fucking amazing actually. We’re So Starving might be a bit of a lollipop when it’s the first new material you’ve heard from them in 18 months (thanks very much for THAT News Years surprise boys) but it makes a great set opener: two long slow sing-along phrases of building anticipation with the lights off (did I make this up, anyone else who was there?) then that tiny pause before 1500 pairs of feet simultaneously left the ground and 1504 voices screamed YOU and the whole thing slammed into an unholy, fun mess of dancing singing and shouting. Nine in the Afternoon was definitely the highlight of the set that night, early enough on that no one was tired and battered yet, known enough that everyone knew the words, but new enough that everyone was excited to know the words, happy, bouncy and a really great moment of every single person in the room being happy to be right there, right then doing that.
From that point on though, the sheen kind of went off the whole thing, partly because there was a small part of the crowd who were actually just fucking around and causing trouble (starting a really vicious circle pit in Martydom and using it as a cover to steal people’s phones from their pockets? No I’m not kidding, yes boys if I find you I will wring your stupid, Scene little necks). I think it was around this point that I saw a 12/13 year old girl take an elbow to the face that probably broke her nose which really put my mood out for the rest of the gig. The band though – high on energy, light on banter (I think this was the only night they didn’t introduce Lying with the whole “who here is single ?”spiel). The Roundhouse is an incredible venue and I’ve yet to see a band there that hasn’t been absolutely thrilled to be in such an amazing building and upped their act accordingly. Everything felt very breakneck though – the old material was met with such frightening enthusiasm from the crowd that they flew through it and the only real respite was during the three ‘new’ tracks: That Green Gentleman, She’s a Handsome Woman and Mad as Rabbits ( as a side note, this was the only night of the tour where this seemed to happen – at all the northern gigs a reasonable proportion of the crowd knew the songs, which makes me wonder if the London crowd was made up of fewer Fans and more fans, or fewer people who hadn’t been sitting up on patdonline and youtube watching the videos and leaks from the European shows to learn the new material ahead of our shows). The whole show was kind of exhilarating in this respect, and coupled with that adrenaline rush of actually trying to stay safe in an unsafe crowd that you get. It felt odd though – pits like that are fun at say and Antiflag or MSI gig (first two bands who came to mind) but it felt horribly jarring at a Panic show, especially at the point where Tom and I had to break up an actual fist fight between two skinny Scene kids (the whole thing was visually ridiculous – one was wearing a Fall Out Boy is for lovers t-shirt, the other a Break Dance Not Hearts one and they stood glowering, trying to throw punches between us) so by the end of the set I was bruised, panicky with a bad case of Red Mist.
At the end of the set, what can only be described as an Unholy Clusterfuck erupted – raise your hand if you were at the Roundhouse and didn’t lose a phone, jumper or shoe? Half the gig piled out to the Merch table to meet Black Gold and Metro Station – the other headed to the front to look for their missing stuff and wrestle for set lists and drumsticks. We spent a futile 10 minutes looking for Tom’s phone before admitting that it really had been stolen right out his pocket by someone before trying to head out to the cloakroom. I get swept up in a crush of people and end up pressed right against Trace Cyrus and have to spend a few minutes trying tactfully to extricate myself and tell him I thought his band was great before doing the same thing to Eric about 10 seconds and 5 feet later. By now I’m tired, bruised, Tom’s understandably pissed off and we both want to go home so when we get downstairs to find a monster of a cloakroom queue doubling back on itself 5 times something inside me just, gives up and decides that This. just. Won’t. do. I crack a joke to Tom, mentioning that my anxiety meds are in my bag and I should fake an attack to get to the head of the queue, he agrees, but the second I let the thought in, my chest clamps and I start to hyperventilate, I hold it together for maybe a minute before my vision starts to go and I manage to whisper that I’m going to pass out now before I collapse into Toms arms. Luckily there was a security guard nearby, Tom is strong and I am light so I’m actually carried like a 19th century heroine to the head of the queue and my bag is fetched. I come to being sat on the counter with a bottle of water being pressed into my hands, swallow my pills and die quietly of embarrassment until a friendly first aider comes downstairs to check on me. I reassure him that I’m fine, and it’s really just hometime, Tom whispers in my ear that I deserve an Oscar and I haven’t got the heart to tell him it wasn’t an act. after that many jokes are made about me having a Panic! attack (they haven't got tired yet so if you want to join in in the comments go for it).
Outside the venue, I democratically distribute the street team posters I wasn’t allowed to use inside to a few cold looking girls who are sniffling a bit and trying to decide if they have enough money to buy a poster from one of the hawk-like touts outside which seems to make their night, which kind of makes mine and then it’s back to Alex’s for a large glass of wine and a long shower. Odd gig. Not all bad, but not something I’m keen to repeat.
Tuesday 11th
Tuesday is an off day for the boys and therefore also for me. I take advantage of being in London to stock up on beer and wend my way Eastwards to catch up with my boys in Clapton. We get slowly toasted and play Guitar Hero (at which they totally school me) and Sing Star (at which I totally school them) before I have to climb on a train back to Leeds for a whole 10 hours in my own bed.
Monday morning was a tense and grumpy run to the train station then 2 hours cuddled up in a hoodie with some coffee, some Cobra Starship and trying to update this with a sore arm and really bruised fingers. London was the first day of street team as well so imagine my delight when it started throwing it down just outside King’s Cross. It felt weird being back in London so soon after I’d left – I’m still on autopilot and got halfway to my old flat before rerouting to Alex’s. I arrived drenched, grumpy and cross but fortunately Alex is a wonderful hostess and plied me with tea and hot showers and gossip set to a soundtrack of Nick Cave albums (Murder Ballads is giving me ideas about all the musical cautionary tales I want to write). London was always going to be the big Dress Up Day, which was kind of depressing; there’s nothing like straightening your hair whilst watching sheets of rain outside the window to fill you with a sense of futility.
Street Teaming at the Roundhouse was…difficult. London crowds are always a bit snottier than the rest of the country, partly because a large part of them are tourists so are there in ones and twos and often don’t speak English and the other half… well growing up in London is bound to be quite different from growing up anywhere else. Those kids have been at the centre of the commercial scene forever and they know it. But I digress… Panic fans have always been known for being a bit on the cliquey side as well so the London Panic date was a double whammy of “and why should we sign up for your mailing list? Why would we need to find out our news in so plebian a way? Do you know the band? No? oh well….” (all direct quotes except use of the word plebian).
Eventually the mailing lists were too wet to write on and my hands were too frozen to even hold the clipboard so I went and hid in the café and watched Zack and the venue staff get the Meet and Greet kids in. This is the first time I’ve said this but it’s not going to be the last, I have no idea how Zack does what he does; he’s patient, funny and really compassionate to these often quite hysterical fans, he never comes off as being the kind of person who’s a barrier between Panic and their fans but at the same time, do anything that compromises their safety and he’ll have you in a second. Zack is totally my favourite.
By about 6.30 I had three full lists, a completely numb hand and a band-mate incoming, so Tom and I ditched the queue for the relative safety, warmth and scotch-giving properties of The Enterprise. Depressingly, they didn’t ID me – I guess I really do look older than your average scene kid now. Eventually the scotch and the real coal fire did their work and the queue vanished so we sprinted across the road and into the venue.
You can always tell that the London gigs are meant to be the big ones – there’s a massive (like Massive, Zack tried to give me the measurements and I couldn’t even figure it out then) Pretty. Odd. Banner in the foyer, the staff have Pretty Odd sashes, there are balloons, there are people in suits with animal masks, it all seems to be boding so much better than Birmingham.
We watch Black Gold from the back and they seem much better tonight – I think that’s more me than them though: compared to Metro Station who are the very definition of bouncy and accessible and Panic whose songs I know inside out, Black Gold are a little less obvious and have actual well written songs which need more than one listen. By the third track I was smiling, and I was starting to actually recognise tracks towards the end of the set. It’s kind of hilarious, now that I know it’s going to happen, to listen to the split second delay (is that…? Oh my god it is!), then hysterical scream when Brendon walks on and it’s kind of cool to see him and Eric perform together with a slightly different dynamic than when they do it with Panic. But Shine is definitely the thing that sticks out of Black Gold’s set for me; it has that gorgeous ascending melody that builds and builds and makes me want to buy it, learn it and perform it myself.
There’s not much I can say about Metro station that I didn’t say last night – I really like them and I know not everyone does. But there’s lots of different ways to enjoy music and not all of them involve listening critically to well structured music. Metro Station are accessible, they’re obvious as hell and they’re two very pretty boys coiling an audience up in the palms of their hands and making us dance, clap and sing. There’s nothing challenging about them, they’re barely playing live but they have a knack of telling us what to do so that we do it and convincing us we have a good fucking time, and part of me sometimes needs that. They do, however, trot out a very entertaining spiel towards the end of their set, telling us that they’ll be in the bar, where they will be drinking LEGALLY. They seem happy about the relative differences in legal drinking ages between the US and UK. Bless. God that sounds patronising, but just….bless!
At some point in the evening, Tom realised he hadn’t bothered to put eyeliner on. Instead of us both skidaddling towards the nearest toilet with a mirror, he instead insisted on kneeling at my feet so I could administer instant emo there and then. Part of me hates that he’s tall enough that he has to kneel to put me at hand/eye height, part of me thinks it’s ridiculously funny that we had a band night out that involved both whisky and girls putting eyeliner on boys in the middle of a Panic at the Disco gig. Wearesoscene. Except the part where we’re not at all.
Immediately after Metro Station, we started to make our way to the front. Tom and I have both been to lots of Roundhouse gigs before and the relatively open plan of the venue usually means it’s a piece of piss to circle round to the front and slot in on the second row somewhere. Nope. This is where it all started to go wrong. There’s always a bit of pushing at the front of big gigs, but it’s usually reasonably good natured and reasonably organised – you always get a sense that the crowd as a whole is pushing. Forwards. You also get the feeling of the crowd as a single entity, and that if one person is moving against the grain everyone else will push back against them (mixed metaphors much? Hi!)
But this…. This was different and patently unsafe. I guess because of the age of the crowd and the number of people who were there in small groups. People were pushing backwards. And Forwards . all over the fucking place really and instead of doing the sensible thing and trying to absorb and stop the movement, everyone (ok, mostly little girls) were leaning into it then screaming in terror (actually literally in terror which made me feel so awful for them) when the entire crowd nearly landed on top of them. And part of me wanted to be really impatient and pick them all up by their directional fringes or Clan hoodies and pop them down at the back of the room with an instruction to not come back to the front until they were old enough to handle it, but the rest of me remembered a little, pint-sized 13 year old who got hauled out of the front of Greenday at Reading ‘95 because she was desperate to see Billie Joe up close and wouldn’t let 25,000 adults deter her. I guess Tom and I decided for the sake of our gig, and because the terrified screams of young teens was kind of emotive, that we’d be pit parents which is probably very stuck up of us, but I really hope that at the very least a couple of people had a slightly less bad time than they would have done, especially the two really tiny little girls who we held up right through the gig and who stuck it out like troupers.
When Panic eventually came on (I say eventually like they were late, but there are actually the smoothest, tightest timed gigs I’ve ever been to) everything went mental. Literally mental. Which was pretty fucking amazing actually. We’re So Starving might be a bit of a lollipop when it’s the first new material you’ve heard from them in 18 months (thanks very much for THAT News Years surprise boys) but it makes a great set opener: two long slow sing-along phrases of building anticipation with the lights off (did I make this up, anyone else who was there?) then that tiny pause before 1500 pairs of feet simultaneously left the ground and 1504 voices screamed YOU and the whole thing slammed into an unholy, fun mess of dancing singing and shouting. Nine in the Afternoon was definitely the highlight of the set that night, early enough on that no one was tired and battered yet, known enough that everyone knew the words, but new enough that everyone was excited to know the words, happy, bouncy and a really great moment of every single person in the room being happy to be right there, right then doing that.
From that point on though, the sheen kind of went off the whole thing, partly because there was a small part of the crowd who were actually just fucking around and causing trouble (starting a really vicious circle pit in Martydom and using it as a cover to steal people’s phones from their pockets? No I’m not kidding, yes boys if I find you I will wring your stupid, Scene little necks). I think it was around this point that I saw a 12/13 year old girl take an elbow to the face that probably broke her nose which really put my mood out for the rest of the gig. The band though – high on energy, light on banter (I think this was the only night they didn’t introduce Lying with the whole “who here is single ?”spiel). The Roundhouse is an incredible venue and I’ve yet to see a band there that hasn’t been absolutely thrilled to be in such an amazing building and upped their act accordingly. Everything felt very breakneck though – the old material was met with such frightening enthusiasm from the crowd that they flew through it and the only real respite was during the three ‘new’ tracks: That Green Gentleman, She’s a Handsome Woman and Mad as Rabbits ( as a side note, this was the only night of the tour where this seemed to happen – at all the northern gigs a reasonable proportion of the crowd knew the songs, which makes me wonder if the London crowd was made up of fewer Fans and more fans, or fewer people who hadn’t been sitting up on patdonline and youtube watching the videos and leaks from the European shows to learn the new material ahead of our shows). The whole show was kind of exhilarating in this respect, and coupled with that adrenaline rush of actually trying to stay safe in an unsafe crowd that you get. It felt odd though – pits like that are fun at say and Antiflag or MSI gig (first two bands who came to mind) but it felt horribly jarring at a Panic show, especially at the point where Tom and I had to break up an actual fist fight between two skinny Scene kids (the whole thing was visually ridiculous – one was wearing a Fall Out Boy is for lovers t-shirt, the other a Break Dance Not Hearts one and they stood glowering, trying to throw punches between us) so by the end of the set I was bruised, panicky with a bad case of Red Mist.
At the end of the set, what can only be described as an Unholy Clusterfuck erupted – raise your hand if you were at the Roundhouse and didn’t lose a phone, jumper or shoe? Half the gig piled out to the Merch table to meet Black Gold and Metro Station – the other headed to the front to look for their missing stuff and wrestle for set lists and drumsticks. We spent a futile 10 minutes looking for Tom’s phone before admitting that it really had been stolen right out his pocket by someone before trying to head out to the cloakroom. I get swept up in a crush of people and end up pressed right against Trace Cyrus and have to spend a few minutes trying tactfully to extricate myself and tell him I thought his band was great before doing the same thing to Eric about 10 seconds and 5 feet later. By now I’m tired, bruised, Tom’s understandably pissed off and we both want to go home so when we get downstairs to find a monster of a cloakroom queue doubling back on itself 5 times something inside me just, gives up and decides that This. just. Won’t. do. I crack a joke to Tom, mentioning that my anxiety meds are in my bag and I should fake an attack to get to the head of the queue, he agrees, but the second I let the thought in, my chest clamps and I start to hyperventilate, I hold it together for maybe a minute before my vision starts to go and I manage to whisper that I’m going to pass out now before I collapse into Toms arms. Luckily there was a security guard nearby, Tom is strong and I am light so I’m actually carried like a 19th century heroine to the head of the queue and my bag is fetched. I come to being sat on the counter with a bottle of water being pressed into my hands, swallow my pills and die quietly of embarrassment until a friendly first aider comes downstairs to check on me. I reassure him that I’m fine, and it’s really just hometime, Tom whispers in my ear that I deserve an Oscar and I haven’t got the heart to tell him it wasn’t an act. after that many jokes are made about me having a Panic! attack (they haven't got tired yet so if you want to join in in the comments go for it).
Outside the venue, I democratically distribute the street team posters I wasn’t allowed to use inside to a few cold looking girls who are sniffling a bit and trying to decide if they have enough money to buy a poster from one of the hawk-like touts outside which seems to make their night, which kind of makes mine and then it’s back to Alex’s for a large glass of wine and a long shower. Odd gig. Not all bad, but not something I’m keen to repeat.
Tuesday 11th
Tuesday is an off day for the boys and therefore also for me. I take advantage of being in London to stock up on beer and wend my way Eastwards to catch up with my boys in Clapton. We get slowly toasted and play Guitar Hero (at which they totally school me) and Sing Star (at which I totally school them) before I have to climb on a train back to Leeds for a whole 10 hours in my own bed.
Sunday, 9 March 2008
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.
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.
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