Obscurity to ubiquity: Panic! rides fast track
By Chris Nixon
For The Union-Tribune
December 7, 2006
Gothic bearded babes dancing between church pews, dancing men on stilts and a vaudeville master of ceremonies directing the festivities as a jaded groom discovers his newlywed bride is cheating on him.
That's a lot of visual eye candy for a three-minute music video, courtesy of the Los Angeles freak show troupe Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque. And it's the winning formula that propelled Panic! at the Disco's “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” to the top of the charts and won Video of the Year at this year's MTV Video Music Awards.
“We wanted to do something different because it was going to be our first video,” said Panic! at the Disco guitarist Ryan Ross about the breakout video. “We didn't want to do the click back and forth between a band playing in a warehouse to some storyline that doesn't even make any sense because there are only three minutes in a song. For every video we've done, we wanted to make sure it did something for the song, and visually it wasn't something you're seeing on TV right now.”
Raised under the faux sparkle of neon lights in Las Vegas, the four guys in Panic! at the Disco decided they wanted to make music their career. While still in high school, singer Brendon Urie, bassist Jon Walker, drummer Spencer Smith and Ross began to earn a name for themselves through MySpace and the Internet out of necessity more than anything else.
“We had to use the Internet because there really wasn't much going on in Vegas,” said Ross of his hometown music scene. “I guess there are a handful of bands, but it doesn't really feel like much of a community. We'd practice and write songs. Instead of playing a show, we'd record those songs and put them on the Internet.”
Through high-speed Internet connections and word of mouth, Panic! at the Disco's brand of accessible emo-pop began to spread worldwide: “We only had two songs, and we had them on our MySpace page. We were just this little band from Vegas that nobody knew about in Vegas. People all around the world were telling their friends.”
Urie's deft singing and Ross' clever lyrics led Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz to sign the band to his imprint label Decaydance. After only a few years as a Vegas garage band, Panic! at the Disco seemed primed for a breakout with its debut album.
Between attending high school and holding down jobs, Ross and company wrote the songs that would become the backbone of “A Fever You Can't Sweat Out” over a four-month period before journeying to the East Coast to record.
“We recorded in Maryland: five weeks straight, no days off, 12-hour days,” Ross said. “We slept in a one-bedroom apartment on bunk beds and did the whole Top Ramen dinner for a month and a half. It was a lot of work and stress and arguing and no sleep. It was tough, but afterward we were happy that we put the extra time into it, and all the little things that we enjoy about it were worth it to us.”
With the album's platinum sales, Ross joked, “We might get a two-bedroom apartment when we record this album.”
Ross' songwriting skills set Panic! at the Disco apart from the glut of young bands singing emotive pop-rock. Ross and the other members are heavily influenced by writer Chuck Palahniuk (“Fight Club”). Tunes like “Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” and “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage” give the album substance and emotional weight. And it's the band's songwriting that will give the group a name in the rock business down the road.
Said Ross, on modern songwriting: “I don't really like a lot of bands' lyrics these days. Adam Duritz is one of my favorite songwriters because of the way he tells stories. Tom Waits, same thing. I like people who paint a picture for you. They include a lot of small details that allow you to really see something.”
Chris Nixon is a San Diego music writer.
