Jazz hands at the dee-eye-ess-see-oh

Last night I truly stepped into the unknown and did something I've never done before: I went to a gig - on my own. 

Yes: On. My. Own.

As you know, I'm quite happy to toddle off to the cinema on my own, but a gig is something a bit different, and I've never really considered going to one without a sidekick in tow. But seeing as my usual trusty sidekick Yaz and been kidnapped by a certain other lovely person to go see Bunch of Hippies Band of Horses at the Shepherds Bush Empire, I decided to fly solo.

And who was special enough to warrant breaking the habit of a lifetime to go see? Why, Panic at the Disco of course!

Now, let's be honest straight off the bat: they were amaaaaaaazing. But that's not to say that there weren't some bumps along the way.

Things started to go just a little bit unnecessarily pear-shaped during a brief stop at HMV on Oxford Street. After becoming absolutely obsessed with Flight of the Conchords, I've been wanting to get my grubby little paws on a copy of their first EP release, The Distant Future, but was unprepared to pay the unexpectedly exorbitant price that Amazon were charging for it. Problem solved in HMV, however, where it was priced up at the princely sum of just eight of your English pounds (I don't know what it is in Quatloos, the exchange rate has been fluctuating a bit recently). Well, three of the four copies were priced up at eight quid; guess which one doofus here picked up? Yes, the only copy that had been priced up as costing a tenner. 

Cue startled look at till, and furious pointing at the three eight-pound versions.

Having eventually managed to purchase the CD at the lower price point, I wandered up to the Astoria where the gig was being held. I've never been to the Astoria before, but have wanted to see what it's like as a venue before they bulldoze it to make way for more pointless flats and characterless chain stores. Arriving there, however, I realised that the queue stretched from the front of the venue, down a side road, and halfway around Soho Square, which for those unfamiliar with this part of London, is a rather annoyingly long distance. After a five minute walk I managed to jump on the end of the queue, behind three teenage emo-girls and their mums.  To be honest, when the queue did start moving it actually moved quite quickly, which was a bit of a blessing because the emo girls decided that they wanted to take lots of close-up photographs of each other while holding the camera above their heads at a 30 degree angle. On the plus side, it was refreshing to see that the queue wasn't entirely comprised of teenage emos wearing stripy socks on their hands and displaying overly-sullen expressions. Seems like Panic's new musical direction really has opened them up to a slightly broader audience; there was even some dude their in a suit.

As the queue continued to wind its way around Soho Square the emo girls decided to write PATD on their faces, which they found absolutely hilarious, unlike everyone else in the vicinity. I decided to hold my tongue by not telling them they'd probably regret it in about 20 years, or at the point when they discovered they'd used a permanent Sharpie, because their mothers were there and really it's a parent's job to tell their kids these sort of things. And anyway, I was busy glaring at the Hare Krishna dude who was banging his tiny thumb-cymbols, handing out some kind of karmic propaganda and trying to impart his wisdom on the people queuing, knowing full well that they were a captive audience. Fortunately he decided to leave me well alone, based, I think on the aforementioned glaring and the fact that I had my headphones on. Anyway, I would only have drawn attention to the smudge of paint on his brow and made reference to the fact that it looked like a bird had shat on his face.

A few minutes later and I was in the lobby of the Astoria being patted down by some security guy, despite the fact that I'd made a bee-line for the attractive young security girl. After an unnecessarily thorough rub-down (awkward note to self: this is actually where they host G-A-Y on a Saturday night…), the security guard asked me what the hard thing in my pocket was. I was very tempted to say [insert your own joke here], but decided that honesty was the best policy and told him it was my car key. Apparently my word was good enough, because he just sighed and waved me through without making me prove it. 

All the queuing meant that I missed about half of the first support act, which was some dude called Cosmo Jarvis who I thought was actually rather good, especially his song about Jessica Alba. He did say there was some dude walking round with a clipboard where you could sign up to a mailing list and get a free download, but amid the crowd of thousands I was buggered if I could find him, so no free download for me.

Next up was a band called The Golden Silvers; note the 'The' in their name - while trying to check them out on Myspace earlier in the day I made the schoolboy error of missing it off and ended up wasting 10 minutes listening to some bizarre and rather shite Japanese band. On the other hand, though, I actually wasn't terribly interested in them anyway, although they did get a song played on 6Music this morning, so maybe I'm missing something.

Anyway, what you need to know here is that, seeing as I was on my own and the Astoria is a pretty small venue, I decided to secret myself toward the back by the bar, figuring that I wouldn't get caught up in a heaving mosh pit of teenage angst and massively unkempt haircuts in desperate need of gallons of Frizz Ease, and would be ideally positioned to make a quick getaway when the lights came up at the end. Unfortunately, it seems I wasn't the only one who thought that, and about 20 minutes before Panic came on a teenage couple and their third wheel decided to stand, well, rather close to me. As it was there was plenty of space for the two guys, but the girl had nowhere really to go. So she decided to stand RIGHT. IN. FRONT. OF. ME. 

She was actually rather short and I could see clearly over her head, but for some reason she decided that she really wanted to be standing where I was standing, so she began subtly moving back to the point that I was basically beschnuffling the back of her head. The thing is, if her boyfriend had moved along a bit she could've easily squeezed in; and to be honest, if she'd actually said something along the lines of "do you mind moving along a bit" I probably would've. Because I'm polite. But she was rude, and by the time she began ramming her handbag into my gut I decided that I was going to have none of it.

So I sniffed really loudly like I was hawking back a massive loogie.

And then I did it again.

And again.

*it rubs the lotion on its skin…*

I was just about to kick off with a massive fake-coughing fit when she clearly decided she'd had enough and dragged her boyfriend off to the bar where they glared at me every now and then. Moments before Panic came on they walked past me again and the boyfriend actually stopped in front of me, but I quickly dispatched him with my best crazed Grant Mitchell-style stare. Wuss.

All that aside, Panic at the Disco came on stage at about 21:30, and played for the best part of an hour and a half - and they were absolutely stunning. The lead singer, Brendan, has a really unique and beguiling voice that can hit some truly astounding notes. The new songs from their latest album Pretty. Odd sounded fantastic, and it seems like they were trying to retro-fit their older tracks from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out into their newer, more guitar-led sound, which worked surprisingly well. There were even a couple of acoustic tracks, and lots of interaction with the audience which led to a mass jazz-hands session. Which sadly I did not capture in the picture below.

Perhaps the only real failing of the evening was an attempt by Yaz and I to share our respective gig experiences with one another by leaving a voicemail message featuring certain songs from each gig. I left her 'Nine in the Afternoon,' while she left me 'No One's Gonna Love You'. Sadly, she could barely hear my message over the adulation of the Panic crowd, while having just listened to hers I can only assume that the song was played on an old-fashioned gramophone in an entirely different room…

Still, good times were had by all!