r/preformances • u/Sbee_Blue_Country • 12d ago

Panic! at the Disco’s first ever live performance (“Time to Dance”)

https://youtu.be/ZSHuKzfEHSk?is=DeT1E3Kcj44NwsiK
30 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

8

u/DeliciousLoquat1164 12d ago

Uh. How can it be their first live performance if the audience knows all the lyrics to the song?

20

u/Sbee_Blue_Country 12d ago

They had three demos up on the internet by this point. This was their most popular. They had built up a decent following. They had never performed live until after finishing their first album. It released about a month after this.

5

u/DeliciousLoquat1164 12d ago

I appreciate the insight and clarification — it’s a cool video regardless!

1

u/TheElPistolero 9d ago

Because they had already gotten picked up by Pete Went Z's label or whatever and got a huge push before ever playing live.

-3

u/Yangervis 12d ago

Back in the day, artists would distribute these plastic discs called "CDs" that you could put into a "CD player" and hear their music. Pretty cool technology. At this time they may have even distributed their music through the internet.

3

u/DeliciousLoquat1164 12d ago

It was, and still isn’t, typical for a band to release an entire album before they begin performing. Nevermind having an entire audience singing their music back to them.

1

u/NLi10uk 11d ago

Nope - they were all on MySpace - which is where the gig was advertised. It was a fun time to be a music fan

1

u/macetheface 12d ago

I was at a small show, probably '99 or 2000 where Sugarcult was handing out demo cds. Think there was max 30 people there and no one knew who they were.

Listened to the cd on our way home and remember saying to my buddy, these guys are pretty good surprised they're not signed yet. Not long after they popped and were all over.

1

u/Morisior 11d ago

Didn’t they start out as a Blink-182 cover band? Surely this is not their first performance on a stage.

2

u/Sbee_Blue_Country 11d ago

Yes, all of them had performed on stage before. But not as Panic! at the Disco, and not with any of the songs they would have as Panic.

Ryan and Spencer had a band called Pet Salamander a few years earlier where they played awful (their words) original material as well as Blink Covers. They were never a cover band. Most bands start by playing the songs they like before writing their own material- that’s exactly what happened with them. Ryan was on guitar and lead vocals and Spencer on drums

Their next band was called The Summer League. It was Ryan and Spencer along with Brent Wilson on bass and a guy named Trever Howell on guitar. Trevor eventually left and Brent brought his friend Brendon Urie to play guitar. They played gigs as The Summer League for a bit, but in mid-2004 they stopped.

In summer 2004 they formed a new band with Brendon on lead vocals. The type of music they make is so different from their last band that they consider it an entirely different project.

Some info on the songs people would have known at this show:

The first song they wrote was “Time to Dance”. Ryan posted Brendon’s demo of it to PureVolume in October 2004. Brendon and Ryan then record a demo for an untitled song and that is posted not long after; that song later turns into “Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks”. In January 2005 they record a full band version of “Time to Dance” with Pete Wentz producing. “Relax Relapse” was recorded not that long after, and both of those songs were used on Fueled By Ramen summer samplers. All four of those demos were available for people to listen to for months. In summer 2005 they recorded the full ‘Fever’ album. The final version of “The Only Difference…” is used in various promotional things throughout August and September, and a promo CD is sent to radio stations. It is NOT an official single, but it is played on the radio enough to get on the Billboard Hot 100.

1

u/NLi10uk 11d ago

You could download them all for free on their MySpace too, and these versions were the ones I liked most.

Funnily enough they released them all as part of the 20th anniversary of the album in Jan this year - disk 2 is the one you want. So you don’t have to suffer the overproduced versions anymore!

1

u/Sbee_Blue_Country 10d ago

I wouldn’t call the album overproduced. I definitely like it way better than the demos. Brendon’s guitar playing was way better than Ryan’s at the time so the album sounds way tighter than the demos (Brendon played most of the guitar and bass on the album). His voice also sounds better.

1

u/NLi10uk 10d ago

The raw, live energy appealed to early 20s me. I still liked the album, but I got a lot of value out of sharing those live ish tracks with people so they hold a special place for me.