I’m afraid if I write a straight review of the Panic! at the Disco concert I attended last weekend, the night before seeing Wolfmother, Panic! will suffer terribly by comparison. Instead I thought I would write this from the perspective of a mom taking her eleven year old daughter to a show she had been dreaming about for months. From that perspective, it was unbelievable.
A. has been listening to Panic’s album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out nonstop since the end of July. Every morning when I walk into her room to wake her for school, a Panic song is quietly coming from her CD player that’s set on infinite loop. Every day when I drive her to her bus stop and I let her take control of the music until her bus arrives, it’s always the same three or four Panic songs. A couple of months ago after going to the mall with K and looking over all the Panic merchandise at Hot Topic one Saturday afternoon, she woke up the next day begging me to take her to the mall. She had decided which shirt she wanted to buy. She loves them.
The day of the show A. was all aflutter. Her cousin D was going with us as was K. When were we going to leave? Did I know how to get to the arena? A. is also as anxious of a kid as I was, worrying about things neither of us have any business worrying about. We got into the arena and headed for the merch table so A. could spend her report card money on some fingerless Panic gloves and a poster. Gone is her Harry Potter poster now off of her wall, hello Brendan Urie! When part of the arena was blocked off, forcing us to walk out of our way to find our seats, A. worried that our tickets were not valid.
A. could have cared less for the opening bands Plain White T’s and Jack’s Mannequin. I agreed with her on the latter. As for Plain White T’s, a number of their songs sounded exactly the same, so the high points were the variety in their set which came in the form of Hey There Delilah and Hate. When Panic hit the stage, A. began to scream and was basically fixated on the stage until the bitter end. The show had a circus/Moulin Rouge feel to it. The band members wore costumes that were a mixture of circus ringmaster and Oliver Twist and there were also contortionists/performers dotting the stage during every song. I found it all very distracting from the music, but A. ate it up. She is still talking about how awesome the show was. They played most of their album as well as covers of Killer Queen and Eleanor Rigby, which were both perfect, and the set even included a drumline performance. These boys are classic overachievers. It all left me a little cold, but happy that A. had had the best night of her eleven year old life.
After the show, with memories of meeting Brendan Urie back in July fresh in her mind, A. wanted to go back by the buses and re-live that experience. We headed back there and there were probably two hundred kids waiting. It was cold and when I looked back at D and K who were hanging back, all I could think about was, how can I talk her out of wanting to wait? Here’s when A. becomes more of an eleven year old with a bedtime than a hardcore fan. I say to her, A. there are too many kids out here. I doubt they will sign anything with this crowd honey, let’s go. She responds and says I don’t want to go; I don’t want to go to bed, knowing it’s past her bedtime. I explain to her that she doesn’t have to go straight to bed. Her face brightens up and she’s outta there. Brendan who? Everyone is happy! --J
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