Entry tags:
Concert Post! in New York City
Ok, so. Panic! At the Disco. Were in New York last night. As was I. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oliviacirce wanted an introvert night, so I got a ticket off of a dude on Craigslist and went out to Terminal 5 by myself to see the show. In line I was the only person in my general area who *wasn't* a teenager, so I entertained myself by knitting and looking like an old person. And being the only pair of wingtips in a sea of chucks.
I'd only gotten there an hour before the doors opened, and while I could have been mid-floor-crowd, I decided instead to go up to the balcony and watch from there, where I got a really good standing position. Advantages turned out to be: (a) I was standing somewhere where I had a wall on my front and my right so I could store my bag safely instead of using coat check, and it had a flat surface, which meant that even though I had no cell service within the building I was able to whip out my notebook and TAKE NOTES (b) when Brendon suddenly appeared on the balcony for "Always" (on which, more later), that was 10 feet away from me \o/. Anyway, I have NOTES #geek
Because I was alone, I was idly playing spot-the-fangirl, which was rather easy up on the balcony. And when I realized that the woman on my left was rather aggressively engaging with twitter, I screwed up my courage and said "Excuse me, are you from the internet? I too am from the internet!" And lo! I had a concert buddy for the evening. Unfortunately, while we exchanged (user)names, I did not write hers down, but it was something like vanelle, or zanelle, or something along those lines? And she was from Boston? If anybody happens to know her, it would be excellent, because I promised her I'd sent her the photo I took of the "Production! At the Disco" wireless network as it appeared in her wireless settings, because her phone camera couldn't focus on my wireless settings... It also appears from twitter photo angle evidence that the group of fangirls standing in front of me were actually friends of Olivia's, but we were Ships Passing In the Night. Stage Buddy had been to the Boston show two days' earlier, and provided periodic color on how the two shows were had varied.
Anyway, the show!
Foxy Shazam were... wow. They were something. I think I have processed it sufficiently into "the most incredible calisthenics routine I have ever seen live, done by people simultaneously playing music I did not really like." It was one of the weirdest musical performances I have ever seen, and guys, I have attended a full evening of Hobocore.
If I wind up getting barrier in SF, I honestly don't know if I want Stage Ian for adorable guitar shenanigans, or Stage Dallon for POSSIBLE DEATH BY KEYBOARD. And the watching of leg-lifts while playing keyboard. And the jumping up and down on the keyboard, and the sitting on the keyboard, and the dragging the nearly-dropped-off-stage keyboard back up and playing it like a keytar....
Mostly I found myself channellingsassbandit and praying that it was the lead singer's own microphone that he kept drop-kicking. But the trumpet player was awesome! He had like 4 trumpets he kept switching between, and I almost never feared that he was going to destroy any of them!
Would I buy their album? Probably not. Would I go to see them play live again? A WORLD OF YES.
Fun. were awesome. I love them and their punctuation and their everything, really. I mean, they weren't the most engaging act I saw last night, performance-wise, but that's because they were surrounded by bands who were basically all perfomativity, and they were just there to play some awesome music, and maybe attempt to tell some stories about the history of their friendship with Panic and get the punchline wrong. (Brendon later corrected the punchline, and it still wasn't funny, so I give Fun. dude full points for swapping "jesters" to "serfs" and losing the bad pun in the process.)
Album: pretty much acquiring it as we speak. And I'd totally not say no to seeing them live again.
Via Concert Buddy's cellphone service, we found out about TAI between Fun. and Panic!. :((((((((( I mean, in hindsight they have both been touring with completely different musical acts? But :(((( I have been reading "In Our Bedroom, After the War" over the course of the day to express my :((((((((((((( on the topic.
And then there was this one band? Who like played and stuff? OH EM EFF GEE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH GUYS I DON'T EVEN. I love Brendon and his hip shimmies and inexplicable fake gay mannerisms and obsession with screaming into the microphone. And I love Ian and his incredible guitar skills and badassery. And I love Dallon and his dorky musical theatre references. And I love SPENCER MOTHERFUCKING SMITH, just being quiet and DRUMMING like a DRUMMING THING. [And I love Zack, who was just standing at the front and side of the stage the whole time and running out to debug and being a general badass. I kind of spent more time than I should have just watching Zack kick ass. And I have notes! So, here's setlist with notes and periodic quoted stage banter.
The main stage settings were covered in black drapes for all of the earlier acts, and then they pulled them down and it was incredible. It's vaguely steampunk/retro SF maybe? Definitely more Shelley than Verne/Welles. The stagedressing in general felt very retro mad scientist lair, with fake pipe organs and flickering green lights and bare dangling lightbulbs, and the speaker stacks made up to look like retro speakers. Spencer(!) was on a tall, platform, and Brendon had a tall platform with a keyboard behind an area done up to make it look more like it was a pipe organ. (Dallon also had a baby keyboard). This is my favorite drum look in the history of Spencer Smith. Also Brendon's mic stand was designed to look like a 1950s mic stand, because that is how he rolls.
They opened with "Ready to Go" and there was a sea of cell phones taking video, so presumably the whole viddy thing is going well. Then they did "It's Better if You Do" and "Mona Lisa" (with creepy green lighting and a lot of horror movie type effects).
Um, and then? Brendon let us know that he'd broken his toe, and totally had forgotten until just now because he was having so much fun. [roll eyes from Stage Buddy, who'd heard the whole thing a couple nights before. Bden's stilted memorized stage banter is SO HILARIOUSLY stilted and memorized] And then:
"Speaking of things that are broken... where are all you nasty motherfuckers out there tonight? Raise your hands, I know you're out there, usually you're the majority. This song is for you." Ladies and Gentlemen, the new intro speech to "Lying." :DDDDDDDDDDDDD
Someone tossed a bra onto the stage, a large size, tan and padded. Brendon made a little quip about the lady ("or gentleman! I don't want to make any assumptions!") who was kind enough to gift it to him, but the whole thing was a bit facepalmy.
Then they did "Trade Mistakes", which I adore to pieces, then "Camisado", then "Hurricane", during which they made us do ALL THE CLAPPING. At this point, someone threw a TIARA onto the stage, and Brendon put it on, did an elaborate curtsey, and then threw it into the audience.
And then they did "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage," or, as Brendon *actually* called it, "I forgot the title of this song because it's so fucking long. It's an old one, though. The only thing I remember from the title is that it has something to do with 'The Difference'."
And then they did "Kill Tonight." Which, ok, the bit at the end where Brendon and Spencer are both playing the drums is kind of my favorite thing? Basically running away to my room periodically and watching the youtube video of the Bowery Ballroom performance of that to charge myself is how I had the energy to make it through FOGcon. And the way they're doing it now, Brendon climbs up onto Spencer's platform and is playing right next to them and then they all keep accelerating through the whole section until they're playing it at breakneck speed and it is just... I didn't know I could love that drum section more and now I love it so.much.more. Nnnnnngggggghhhh that drum section.
And then there was a bunch of flashing lights and electric zappy sound effects and then suddenly Brendon was in the sound booth, just in front of the balcony, with a microphone and an acoustic guitar, and he did "Always" from there, where I had a view of the back of his head from 10 feet away. And then he and Zack RAN RAN RAN back downstairs while the band vamped.
They played "Nine In the Afternoon." And then Dallon said "Hey, do you know who has a microphone? Spencer Smith has a microphone!" And then the audience hushed in epic anticipation of the things Spencer might say with his microphone. But he didn't. Eventually Brendon (I think? It could have been Dallon, Dallon is a lot more capable of spontaneous stage-speech) said "Dude, are you just going to breath creepily into the microphone? That's... kinda creepy." And then Spencer breathed loudly into the microphone for a bit. And then we all moved on, tragically lacking in Spencer-words. And Brendon cracked a joke about how he'd never been this wet and was only getting wetter /o\
Brendon started playing the guitar during Green Gentlemen, and after the song he talked about how awesome Ian is at the guitar (a truer fact has never been stated) and then Ian launched into a guitar solo cover that I am embarrassed not to remember the name of--it's one of those Dire Straights or Eric Clapton or something songs you hear all the time and I just cannot for the life of me tie it back to its name. Anyway, it started as a joke, and then they made him play the rest of it, and he did so with his guitar held behind his head while doing a shimmying little dance, because he is badass that way. I have serious hearteyes for Ian and his shredding and the way he makes Brendon look almost like average height or something.
Ian's spontaneous(?) guitar solo turned into the whole introducing the band schpeill, and then, when Dallon and "Mr. Spencer Smith, yes, Mister. Spencer. Smith." had been introduced, Dallon introduced, and I kid you not "Master of the house, quick to catch your eye--Mr. Brendon Urie!" My sympathy level for his sadness at having his one free night in NYC being on Monday, when Broadway is closed, increased a notch or two, even while I do ALL THE FACEPALMS at the implications of the Les Mis reference.
Then they did "Memories" (during which Zack took a photo, and while I was too far away to discern the model, it was a Nikon camera strap, for those of you who are interested). Then they covered "Panic" by the Smiths.
And then they did the whole little "let's say nice things about the bands before us thing" and Brendon once again proved endearing his lack of skill with stage banter. "You guys are fun. No, you aren't fun. You know who is fun? Fun. is fun. It's kind of annoying that they're called that, because it's the first thing I come up with to describe them, and it's their name! But I would call them that anyway..." except he JUST KEPT TALKING. And then he corrected the sitting in front of Kings of Leon and blocking their view and calling them the Jesters of Leon for unfortunate punny reasons story. And then he shouted out to "Foxy Shazam... how about Foxy Shazam? Those guys can move. They can certainly move."
And then he told us he was singing the next song "From the bottom of my heart... where it bleeds, which is disgusting, I know. But that's what it's doing. Metaphorically." and launched into "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." During Sins, Brendon crawled onto the barrier and sang from there a bit. His mic box came loose while he was out there, and he wound up sitting on the edge of the stage and singing, ass out, while Zack helped him fix it. So naturally he gave it a little shake to make Zack's life easier. Because that's how he rolls.
Lights went out. Encore! Spencer cleared his throat a bit, and then Brendon said "Oh, yeah, Spencer wants to take a photo of the audience!" I'm so glad they gave Spencer a mic, he's clearly getting a lot of use out of it.
Brendon put on silly sunglasses and launched into a silly speech about video games, during which it looked like they were about to do the performance of the Mario theme that they used to do (they did the first few bars). But then Brendon used it to transition to the fact that Guitar Hero 3 is also a video game, and that "Carry On My Wayward Son" is on it, and then they did that instead, which was fantastic. During that, he gave Ian a very classy mock blowjob. Like you do.
Continuing his classy streak, Brendon's final monologue before Nearly Witches was "This is the point where I creep everybody out and say I'm going to fuck you all after the show. But that's creepy. So I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to say 'I'm going to fuck you all after the show.' [pause] But I'M GOING TO FUCK YOU AFTER THE SHOW."
They transitioned the very end of "Nearly Witches" into a nice little "Good Night" song, during which time Ian pretended to sleep and Brendon rocked him gently against his chest. And then it was over.
Soo.... that was all kinds of fun. It wasn't nearly as visceral an experience as either MCR or Patrick was, I think in part because the act of taking notes kept me very much in my head and kept me from losing myself completely in the music--I'm looking forward to trying out the completely visceral version when I see them again in June. So I came out with a concert high, but not the full-on concert high I've gotten from the last few shows I've been to. (I think it's notable that I wrote posts about neither the MCR nor the Patrick shows, because I was just pure emotion about both. If it's either write up a decent concert post or have a breathtaking rock show headspace high, I know what I'm going to pick going forward.)
As I see more and more shows by big-name bandom people I'm very fascinated by the differences in style between the various frontmen. Gerard Way is a fucking mind-controller, and you get the sense that he is getting off more on holding the entire audience in his hand and controlling their every action and emotion than he is on singing the music. Patrick Stump seems to forget that there's an audience there, he is just having the best time he has ever had playing a lot of music on a stage and there is pure joy in being there with him while he gets to do it.
And Brendon? Brendon... is mostly flirting with the audience. He reads more coquettish than anything else, which is I think where a lot of the camp mannerisms (the limp wrists, the periodic lisp, the swishy swishy hips, none of which he does in interviews) come from--I get the feeling that he desperately wants the audience to love him and still, after years of practice, isn't quite a natural at it the way a Gerard or a Patrick is. It makes me want to give him a lot of hugs, but it's also a very good schtick for making lots of people give him a lot of hugs, I'm guessing.
oliviacirce wanted an introvert night, so I got a ticket off of a dude on Craigslist and went out to Terminal 5 by myself to see the show. In line I was the only person in my general area who *wasn't* a teenager, so I entertained myself by knitting and looking like an old person. And being the only pair of wingtips in a sea of chucks.I'd only gotten there an hour before the doors opened, and while I could have been mid-floor-crowd, I decided instead to go up to the balcony and watch from there, where I got a really good standing position. Advantages turned out to be: (a) I was standing somewhere where I had a wall on my front and my right so I could store my bag safely instead of using coat check, and it had a flat surface, which meant that even though I had no cell service within the building I was able to whip out my notebook and TAKE NOTES (b) when Brendon suddenly appeared on the balcony for "Always" (on which, more later), that was 10 feet away from me \o/. Anyway, I have NOTES #geek
Because I was alone, I was idly playing spot-the-fangirl, which was rather easy up on the balcony. And when I realized that the woman on my left was rather aggressively engaging with twitter, I screwed up my courage and said "Excuse me, are you from the internet? I too am from the internet!" And lo! I had a concert buddy for the evening. Unfortunately, while we exchanged (user)names, I did not write hers down, but it was something like vanelle, or zanelle, or something along those lines? And she was from Boston? If anybody happens to know her, it would be excellent, because I promised her I'd sent her the photo I took of the "Production! At the Disco" wireless network as it appeared in her wireless settings, because her phone camera couldn't focus on my wireless settings... It also appears from twitter photo angle evidence that the group of fangirls standing in front of me were actually friends of Olivia's, but we were Ships Passing In the Night. Stage Buddy had been to the Boston show two days' earlier, and provided periodic color on how the two shows were had varied.
Anyway, the show!
Foxy Shazam were... wow. They were something. I think I have processed it sufficiently into "the most incredible calisthenics routine I have ever seen live, done by people simultaneously playing music I did not really like." It was one of the weirdest musical performances I have ever seen, and guys, I have attended a full evening of Hobocore.
If I wind up getting barrier in SF, I honestly don't know if I want Stage Ian for adorable guitar shenanigans, or Stage Dallon for POSSIBLE DEATH BY KEYBOARD. And the watching of leg-lifts while playing keyboard. And the jumping up and down on the keyboard, and the sitting on the keyboard, and the dragging the nearly-dropped-off-stage keyboard back up and playing it like a keytar....
Mostly I found myself channelling
sassbandit and praying that it was the lead singer's own microphone that he kept drop-kicking. But the trumpet player was awesome! He had like 4 trumpets he kept switching between, and I almost never feared that he was going to destroy any of them!Would I buy their album? Probably not. Would I go to see them play live again? A WORLD OF YES.
Fun. were awesome. I love them and their punctuation and their everything, really. I mean, they weren't the most engaging act I saw last night, performance-wise, but that's because they were surrounded by bands who were basically all perfomativity, and they were just there to play some awesome music, and maybe attempt to tell some stories about the history of their friendship with Panic and get the punchline wrong. (Brendon later corrected the punchline, and it still wasn't funny, so I give Fun. dude full points for swapping "jesters" to "serfs" and losing the bad pun in the process.)
Album: pretty much acquiring it as we speak. And I'd totally not say no to seeing them live again.
Via Concert Buddy's cellphone service, we found out about TAI between Fun. and Panic!. :((((((((( I mean, in hindsight they have both been touring with completely different musical acts? But :(((( I have been reading "In Our Bedroom, After the War" over the course of the day to express my :((((((((((((( on the topic.
And then there was this one band? Who like played and stuff? OH EM EFF GEE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH GUYS I DON'T EVEN. I love Brendon and his hip shimmies and inexplicable fake gay mannerisms and obsession with screaming into the microphone. And I love Ian and his incredible guitar skills and badassery. And I love Dallon and his dorky musical theatre references. And I love SPENCER MOTHERFUCKING SMITH, just being quiet and DRUMMING like a DRUMMING THING. [And I love Zack, who was just standing at the front and side of the stage the whole time and running out to debug and being a general badass. I kind of spent more time than I should have just watching Zack kick ass. And I have notes! So, here's setlist with notes and periodic quoted stage banter.
The main stage settings were covered in black drapes for all of the earlier acts, and then they pulled them down and it was incredible. It's vaguely steampunk/retro SF maybe? Definitely more Shelley than Verne/Welles. The stagedressing in general felt very retro mad scientist lair, with fake pipe organs and flickering green lights and bare dangling lightbulbs, and the speaker stacks made up to look like retro speakers. Spencer(!) was on a tall, platform, and Brendon had a tall platform with a keyboard behind an area done up to make it look more like it was a pipe organ. (Dallon also had a baby keyboard). This is my favorite drum look in the history of Spencer Smith. Also Brendon's mic stand was designed to look like a 1950s mic stand, because that is how he rolls.
They opened with "Ready to Go" and there was a sea of cell phones taking video, so presumably the whole viddy thing is going well. Then they did "It's Better if You Do" and "Mona Lisa" (with creepy green lighting and a lot of horror movie type effects).
Um, and then? Brendon let us know that he'd broken his toe, and totally had forgotten until just now because he was having so much fun. [roll eyes from Stage Buddy, who'd heard the whole thing a couple nights before. Bden's stilted memorized stage banter is SO HILARIOUSLY stilted and memorized] And then:
"Speaking of things that are broken... where are all you nasty motherfuckers out there tonight? Raise your hands, I know you're out there, usually you're the majority. This song is for you." Ladies and Gentlemen, the new intro speech to "Lying." :DDDDDDDDDDDDD
Someone tossed a bra onto the stage, a large size, tan and padded. Brendon made a little quip about the lady ("or gentleman! I don't want to make any assumptions!") who was kind enough to gift it to him, but the whole thing was a bit facepalmy.
Then they did "Trade Mistakes", which I adore to pieces, then "Camisado", then "Hurricane", during which they made us do ALL THE CLAPPING. At this point, someone threw a TIARA onto the stage, and Brendon put it on, did an elaborate curtsey, and then threw it into the audience.
And then they did "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage," or, as Brendon *actually* called it, "I forgot the title of this song because it's so fucking long. It's an old one, though. The only thing I remember from the title is that it has something to do with 'The Difference'."
And then they did "Kill Tonight." Which, ok, the bit at the end where Brendon and Spencer are both playing the drums is kind of my favorite thing? Basically running away to my room periodically and watching the youtube video of the Bowery Ballroom performance of that to charge myself is how I had the energy to make it through FOGcon. And the way they're doing it now, Brendon climbs up onto Spencer's platform and is playing right next to them and then they all keep accelerating through the whole section until they're playing it at breakneck speed and it is just... I didn't know I could love that drum section more and now I love it so.much.more. Nnnnnngggggghhhh that drum section.
And then there was a bunch of flashing lights and electric zappy sound effects and then suddenly Brendon was in the sound booth, just in front of the balcony, with a microphone and an acoustic guitar, and he did "Always" from there, where I had a view of the back of his head from 10 feet away. And then he and Zack RAN RAN RAN back downstairs while the band vamped.
They played "Nine In the Afternoon." And then Dallon said "Hey, do you know who has a microphone? Spencer Smith has a microphone!" And then the audience hushed in epic anticipation of the things Spencer might say with his microphone. But he didn't. Eventually Brendon (I think? It could have been Dallon, Dallon is a lot more capable of spontaneous stage-speech) said "Dude, are you just going to breath creepily into the microphone? That's... kinda creepy." And then Spencer breathed loudly into the microphone for a bit. And then we all moved on, tragically lacking in Spencer-words. And Brendon cracked a joke about how he'd never been this wet and was only getting wetter /o\
Brendon started playing the guitar during Green Gentlemen, and after the song he talked about how awesome Ian is at the guitar (a truer fact has never been stated) and then Ian launched into a guitar solo cover that I am embarrassed not to remember the name of--it's one of those Dire Straights or Eric Clapton or something songs you hear all the time and I just cannot for the life of me tie it back to its name. Anyway, it started as a joke, and then they made him play the rest of it, and he did so with his guitar held behind his head while doing a shimmying little dance, because he is badass that way. I have serious hearteyes for Ian and his shredding and the way he makes Brendon look almost like average height or something.
Ian's spontaneous(?) guitar solo turned into the whole introducing the band schpeill, and then, when Dallon and "Mr. Spencer Smith, yes, Mister. Spencer. Smith." had been introduced, Dallon introduced, and I kid you not "Master of the house, quick to catch your eye--Mr. Brendon Urie!" My sympathy level for his sadness at having his one free night in NYC being on Monday, when Broadway is closed, increased a notch or two, even while I do ALL THE FACEPALMS at the implications of the Les Mis reference.
Then they did "Memories" (during which Zack took a photo, and while I was too far away to discern the model, it was a Nikon camera strap, for those of you who are interested). Then they covered "Panic" by the Smiths.
And then they did the whole little "let's say nice things about the bands before us thing" and Brendon once again proved endearing his lack of skill with stage banter. "You guys are fun. No, you aren't fun. You know who is fun? Fun. is fun. It's kind of annoying that they're called that, because it's the first thing I come up with to describe them, and it's their name! But I would call them that anyway..." except he JUST KEPT TALKING. And then he corrected the sitting in front of Kings of Leon and blocking their view and calling them the Jesters of Leon for unfortunate punny reasons story. And then he shouted out to "Foxy Shazam... how about Foxy Shazam? Those guys can move. They can certainly move."
And then he told us he was singing the next song "From the bottom of my heart... where it bleeds, which is disgusting, I know. But that's what it's doing. Metaphorically." and launched into "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." During Sins, Brendon crawled onto the barrier and sang from there a bit. His mic box came loose while he was out there, and he wound up sitting on the edge of the stage and singing, ass out, while Zack helped him fix it. So naturally he gave it a little shake to make Zack's life easier. Because that's how he rolls.
Lights went out. Encore! Spencer cleared his throat a bit, and then Brendon said "Oh, yeah, Spencer wants to take a photo of the audience!" I'm so glad they gave Spencer a mic, he's clearly getting a lot of use out of it.
Brendon put on silly sunglasses and launched into a silly speech about video games, during which it looked like they were about to do the performance of the Mario theme that they used to do (they did the first few bars). But then Brendon used it to transition to the fact that Guitar Hero 3 is also a video game, and that "Carry On My Wayward Son" is on it, and then they did that instead, which was fantastic. During that, he gave Ian a very classy mock blowjob. Like you do.
Continuing his classy streak, Brendon's final monologue before Nearly Witches was "This is the point where I creep everybody out and say I'm going to fuck you all after the show. But that's creepy. So I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to say 'I'm going to fuck you all after the show.' [pause] But I'M GOING TO FUCK YOU AFTER THE SHOW."
They transitioned the very end of "Nearly Witches" into a nice little "Good Night" song, during which time Ian pretended to sleep and Brendon rocked him gently against his chest. And then it was over.
Soo.... that was all kinds of fun. It wasn't nearly as visceral an experience as either MCR or Patrick was, I think in part because the act of taking notes kept me very much in my head and kept me from losing myself completely in the music--I'm looking forward to trying out the completely visceral version when I see them again in June. So I came out with a concert high, but not the full-on concert high I've gotten from the last few shows I've been to. (I think it's notable that I wrote posts about neither the MCR nor the Patrick shows, because I was just pure emotion about both. If it's either write up a decent concert post or have a breathtaking rock show headspace high, I know what I'm going to pick going forward.)
As I see more and more shows by big-name bandom people I'm very fascinated by the differences in style between the various frontmen. Gerard Way is a fucking mind-controller, and you get the sense that he is getting off more on holding the entire audience in his hand and controlling their every action and emotion than he is on singing the music. Patrick Stump seems to forget that there's an audience there, he is just having the best time he has ever had playing a lot of music on a stage and there is pure joy in being there with him while he gets to do it.
And Brendon? Brendon... is mostly flirting with the audience. He reads more coquettish than anything else, which is I think where a lot of the camp mannerisms (the limp wrists, the periodic lisp, the swishy swishy hips, none of which he does in interviews) come from--I get the feeling that he desperately wants the audience to love him and still, after years of practice, isn't quite a natural at it the way a Gerard or a Patrick is. It makes me want to give him a lot of hugs, but it's also a very good schtick for making lots of people give him a lot of hugs, I'm guessing.