more than you ever wanted to read about the difference between Panic!’s two 2006 national headlining tours:
so I’ve been seeing posts & videos that seem to combine the summer 2006 tour with the Nothing Rhymes With Circus arena tour at the end of the year as though they’re the same thing. they were for the same album but had totally different costumes, makeup, stage design (and size), dancers, support bands, scripts, and… well they were just completely different productions. you get it.
these two tours were both iconic works of freaking art & deserve some major individual appreciation so let me just break them down and we can get nostalgic about something we’ll never ever see….
JUNE & JULY 2006:
Their first national headlining tour (not an arena tour) was in June & July 2006 when Spencer was 18, Ryan & Brendon were 19, and Jon was 20.
The stage had the giant moon and Moulin-Rouge-type windmill since they were hugely inspired by that movie & soundtrack. The band filmed their show in Denver and then turned it into the Live in Denver dvd for the AFYCSO box set that had the same “1920s Moulin Rouge” theme as this tour. (x)
Panic! did a costume change halfway through each show so the main outfits for this summer were:
Jon also had a random blue shirt for the first half of some shows, but for the most part this summer followed a red/white/black theme with some GORGEOUS floral detail going on in some pieces. Brendon also had that amazing black coat with gold buttons to go with the shirt on the left:
Right after this tour the band went back to a simplified all-black or black & white look with the occasional blazers, so these costumes were mostly for that summer (except the rose vest showed up on their fall European tour). The ryhawk disappeared by the end of August, though.
Panic! had used the Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque (their name at the time) for the I Write Sins Not Tragedies video and then brought them along for this summer tour:
And then the opening bands for most of this tour were The Hush Sound & The Dresden Dolls but Ok Go and some other bands were there for a bit too.
NOVEMBER & DECEMBER 2006:
During their 2006 fall European tour Ryan said that their next national tour at the end of the year was “going to be our biggest tour we’ve ever done. We’re planning a lot of production on that tour. We have a drum riser that’s gonna be like 8 feet tall and look like a carousel… and then we got like 6 performers coming out… It’s just gonna be a big show and something we haven’t seen a band do.” (x)
The Nothing Rhymes With Circus tour was a Very Big Deal™ and is the one that Rolling Stone shadowed the guys during for their 2007 cover article. This was Panic!’s first headlining arena tour and went for most of November & early December. Brendon and Spencer were 19, Ryan was 20, and Jon was 21.
So this theatrical tour is where we get several versions of the puppet makeup & incredible costumes styled by Anthony Franco:
The band brought in a few elements from other tours (like their light-up name, white piano, and Brendon’s choreography in There’s A Good Reason), but most stuff was completely different. The much bigger stage was like a massive circus tent with Spencer, Eric, and Bartram up on risers:
“A Cirque du Soleil fanatic, Ross has seen three of their shows and says the costumes and sets on his band’s Nothing Rhymes with Circus Tour – a three-ring rock spectacle featuring contortionists and stilt-walkers – were inspired by the new Cirque Beatles production, Love.
… ‘I was always more impressed by Vegas shows than by any rock band I saw,’ Ross says. ‘Just the super over-the-top-ness of it all. I wanted to incorporate that into our concerts – to make it more than T-shirts-and-jeans.’”
– Ryan to Blender in early 2007 after the tour ended
This just made me very nostalgic, aww 2006-2008 what a time.