#nrwc1

[prettyoddfever]

idk if anyone wants this, but here's a quick table I just made to help tell Panic's two 2006 national headlining tours apart:

similarities between the two tours:

Bartram and Eric were the touring musicians

white piano & light-up P!ATD name sign

neither one should be called "Live in Denver."

Brendon did a little dance routine with the performers during There's A Good Reason

Ryan, Brendon, and Spencer wore makeup

honestly not that much

[prettyoddfever]

Spencer's NRWC makeup

Spencer continued the look that he started in October 2006. Zack said that Spencer called the look "El Dangeroso." His makeup was basically like a lot of variations on a theme. Here's a general example... I'll do like every other show or something like that to keep this shorter:

November 7th & 9th

November 11th & 14th

November 17th & 19th

November 22nd & 25th

December 1st & 2nd

December 3rd, 5th

December 7th & 9th

[prettyoddfever]

Brendon's NRWC Makeup

I had previously summarized Brendon's 3 NRWC makeup stages as:

So that works. But now I can add way more since tumblr changed their image limits! Btw I made up my own names for these general phases... like do not take it seriously lol.

Phase 1: Meerkat

Brendon began the tour with black shapes on his eyes that some people thought looked like a demonic clown, but I thought looked like an adorable meerkat. Exhibit A from the first night of tour on November 7th:

November 9th:

Basically, he wore the meerkat look from November 7th – 13th. Here are November 8th, 10th, 11th, and 13th (in order):

Phase 2: Demonic Puppet

Then on November 14th (the second night at Madison Square Garden), Brendon added a puppet aspect:

Kerrang was backstage and actually described the moment when Brendon tried it for the first time:

“Urie is putting on his stage make-up in preparation for the evening’s show. He’s decided that he’ll go a bit crazier than usual and sets about drawing big, red circles on his cheeks to match the black patches masking his eyelids. Walker strolls in and stops cold. ‘Oh wow,’ he shouts. ‘That’s awesome!’ Ross and Smith rush in to see what the fuss is about. The four of them crowd in front of the mirror laughing and shrieking...”

Here's Kerrang's picture of Brendon backstage doing that makeup:

So that Demonic Puppet look was kind of like a bridge between his two main looks.

November 16th & 17th were still heavy on the black eyeshadow, so they're included in this in-between phase:

Phase 3: Full Puppet

From November 18th onward he stuck with this puppet look for the rest of the tour. Here are examples from some different shows in the order that they happened:

and then this is related

[prettyoddfever]

Nothing Rhymes With Circus full show (version 2)

I feel like I've figured out how to do this a tiny bit better, so here's another go at it! possibly the last one? some notes:

The video is more fun if you have super low expectations lol. This is not going to be a professional edit... it's more like a combined fan experience since I just pieced together fan footage (full credits are in the description). I avoided the Helio content to try to stick to a certain vibe.

Fans who were in front of Jon said that he was burning incense. His mic stand is not on fire.

Brendon is not lip-syncing. If something doesn't sync up, that's my own shitty editing

I tried to feature more of the dancers this time!

[prettyoddfever]

The NRWC Intermission Vaudeville Footage

This is getting its own post now instead of being buried as a single bullet point. Basically, Panic's NRWC tour edited together a bunch of silent film footage and played that movie on the arena screens during intermission. Here's what it looked like + the actual videos:

I went to film school for a year and we watched a few of these individual shorts and my hipster classmates did not care about my P!ATD comments lol. But I know someone here will care. The Library of Congress is the best current source imo if you're interested in more info:

Fights of Nations

Kruger and Ward

Toto Brothers

Three Acrobats

Beatrice Marshall

Latina, dislocation act

Japanese Acrobats

[prettyoddfever]

One of my favorite parts of following the Fever-era band was watching where they got inspiration, and how they’d build on an idea to make it their own. 

Motley Crue did their Carnival of Sins tour shortly before Panic started touring. And P!ATD didn’t even pretend like that didn’t influence them when it came time to plan their national headlining tours. Some reviews for P!ATD’s summer tour (which was the Moulin-Rouge-inspired one) had said that the band pulled off what Motley Crue had been trying to do... and that was before the Nothing Rhymes With Circus tour even existed. 

It became a well-known fact that the band had tried to borrow Motley Crue’s circus tent, so the Panic guys had to answer quite a few questions about that (here’s a random example from early October once the band already had their NRWC plans).

The pictures at the top of this post are from Panic’s Nothing Rhymes With Circus tour, which felt like the finale of the Fever era. And then the screenshots below are from Motley Crue’s Carnival of Sins tour:

They had acrobats, fire breathers, and other circus-type stuff:

Here’s Tommy Lee’s makeup:

In hindsight, it’s pretty funny to look at all of the things that P!ATD talked about wanting to do (that they weren’t allowed to do)... but Motley Crue had been able to do those things. Brendon and Spencer especially talked about wanting to get fire breathers, trapeze performers, and ANY type of pyrotechnics, get Brendon shot out of a cannon, etc. 

It’s hard to tell in this screenshot, but Tommy Lee is flying across the stage on wires (he’s above the “T” in the name):

he landed on a platform and started playing while a pyrotechnic mess happened:

Spencer & Brendon would have loved to have this amount of fire...

and after grabbing those screenshots, I think I can spot some moments that answer why some people were claiming in late 2006 that their sister/friend/whatever went to P!ATD’s tour and saw the female performers doing some very specific sexual stuff... and the rest of us were like wtf show did they go to because that’s not what everyone else in the arena talked about seeing. So maybe those people legit thought that the two tours were the same thing. I also think that some journalists subconsciously lumped both tours together because they’d write about Panic having trapeze artists, fire-breathers, “dwarves,” and/or other things that were actually from Motley Crue’s tour. 

I could ramble for a long time about how the two tours were very different, but I suppose that’s not the point of this post. Basically, the Panic guys were open about being inspired by some aspects of Motley Crue’s stage show. 

The video was released during the season when Panic was planning their first national headlining tour. Here’s an ad from spring 2006:

update: sometimes I switch tracks in the middle of writing a thought and then go back and rearrange stuff because I have learned to roll with my ADHD buuuuut I totally failed in this post. So sorry. I just re-read this and the second paragraph was a hot mess that made it sound like the summer tour was in arenas (I could spot like 3 different approaches I had been trying to start with lol). I fixed it now! 

I’m just going to leave this quote from Gerard Way to Kerrang:

[prettyoddfever]

3 of the rehearsed moments in Panic! at the Disco’s NRWC tour

(continued from this post)

It was super entertaining to watch these 3 parts evolve as the tour progressed... and to hear the crowd scream whenever Brendon & Ryan came within a few feet of each other lol. 

So in late 2006 Ryan was really into the idea of creating one continuous storyline that would run through the whole second album. The NRWC tour did something similar with a small story that started before Lying Is The Most Fun and then continued before I Write Sins. Brendon was the only one with a character in this theatrical tour, but Jon & Ryan supported his acting in a way that reflected the story in the upcoming songs. Here’s a general evolution of the first intro (some clips are missing the beginning lines, but that part still happened each night):

I think a lot of fans were expecting an actual kiss eventually, but the closest thing they got was a kiss on the cheek towards the end of tour (notice how on the final night Brendon quickly got Ryan’s consent first, yet still chose to avoid his mouth). Brendon also backed away instead of doing even the fake kiss on some nights when Ryan looked a little nervous, so every night of the IWSNT intro was slightly different.

The “poise and rationality” moment of IWSNT followed the same general idea most nights (except for a couple times where Brendon skipped it and Ryan looked abandoned):

Several fans on the barrier at many different shows mentioned seeing Jon and/or Ryan suppress a laugh after the crowd screamed during these parts. Some people didn’t get what the fuss was about and pointed out how a lot of guys in other bands did the exact same thing to get a rise out of their audience... and fans would also scream with the same intensity every time Gabe Saporta grabbed himself during the opening act. But I thought the crowd’s reaction was still funny no matter how often it happened (like look at 1:20 in the “poise & rationality” video lol). 

Even the most excited fans online seemed to understand that the band was just having fun playing into what they knew the crowd wanted to see. Obviously each guy was starting from a very different level of enthusiasm for acting & having their expressions magnified on giant arena screens, but I thought they all did really well in their own way.

MORE INFO

This tour was a scripted, rehearsed theatrical show that Out Magazine described in early 2008 as “such a flamboyant and sexual stage show that even Rolling Stone was compelled to ask singer Brendon Urie and guitarist Ryan Ross if they were dating.”  (This show wasn’t scripted as in a full written script btw… so maybe “planned out” is a better phrase). However, some of the stage parts were literally scripted.

Brendon was playing a role from a plan that the entire band created together. If you have no idea what the context of the NRWC moments were, it might look like Ryan was powerless onstage to do anything but shut down while a creepy version of Brendon harassed him. Or it could look like they were so in love that Brendon couldn’t keep his hands off Ryan. That was absolutely not the case with this tour. Brendon’s actions came from him trying to be a certain character. It wasn’t Brendon being a complete creep all out of his own accord while the rest of the band tolerated the moments he was forcing them into.

I think Ryan’s reluctance you see onstage during this tour was a combination of his general personality (Ryan Ross was never going to be an overly charismatic actor ok) and the fact that Ryan was supposed to be noncommittal and passive towards Brendon’s character at that point and then reject him.

The two songs used for the routine near-kiss moments were IWSNT and Lying Is The Most Fun. If you know the stories behind the lyrics of the songs, you’ll see that the way Ryan acts in the theatrical intros makes sense in that context. Both of those songs came from Ryan’s ex-girlfriend cheating on him… they involve rejection. Even though Ryan didn’t have his own character, he was still doing his best to encourage/support Brendon’s acting from within the context of each song. If you misread Ryan’s responses then it kind of diminishes his valiant efforts. A few times Brendon switched and used Jon for the same moments he usually did with Ryan, and in that case Jon did the exact same passive rejection act that Ryan usually did. 

I’m not saying I agree with the idea of selling gay for shock value (nor am I saying they were necessarily doing that). I’ll admit I’m not the right person to analyze any of that. I’m just trying to clarify the context of the gifs people are using. Here’s a really good recap from a fan who went to 7 shows in the NRWC tour! She analyzed the stage gay & the role of women onstage and so many topics. (She also says that one night Pete was there watching and after the “poise and rationality” grinding part, Ryan turned to Pete with a grin and asked if he liked that). Ryan was super close with Pete… and I don’t think Pete or anyone coached him into anything. The P!ATD guys were pretty well known for doing whatever they wanted to do. Ryan was especially vocal about that. With how much Ryan controlled Panic’s image and the direction of the band, I really don’t think he would have let them go full steam ahead with the stage gay if he didn’t want it.

Why they did the stage gay stuff is a whole other topic that I’m not looking at here… but this interview with Brendon around the time they were planning the NRWC tour maybe touches on what they thought they were going for. Here’s a bit more about the band’s costumes & flamboyant influences. And here’s what Spencer & Jon told Out Magazine:

[prettyoddfever]

a general idea of Ryan’s makeup during the NRWC tour

I can’t promise that one of these pictures isn’t in the wrong spot, but I think the dates go: November 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25. December 1, 2, 3, 5, 6. (I skipped over some looks that were similar to others).