Photo: Getty Images
"Will the owner of a lime green fairy-painted flowery time machine Honda Civic please report to the parking lot?"
That was +44/Blink-182's Mark Hoppus playing punk rock talk show host/MC at last night's launch party for the Honda Civic Tour, which this year will be headlined by my boyfriends in Panic at the Disco (now with one fewer exclamation point! which I plan to make up for by gratuitously punctuating this post!).
Every year the tour's top band designs their own version of the car, which is trotted around the country and eventually given away. Apparently Panic's take is an advance interpretation on the art for their new album, Pretty. Odd. (thanks for not abandoning over-punctuation altogether, boys!!), which might as well describe the fanciful happy hippie playground feel of this Civic.
One burly camera guy in front of me said, very seriously, "I would get my ass kicked if I drove that car." But that's why I love this band. Whether singer Brendon Urie is spontaneously busting into a rendition of the Super Mario Brothers theme song or guitarist Ryan Ross has decided to trade Victorian dandy duds for peacenik earth tones (see above), the boys are just flamboyantly, casually proud of their unique style.
Here they are doing their best imitation of folk singers and singing "We're So Starving," the intro track off Pretty. Odd., as well as their first single, "Nine in the Afternoon."
Please feel free to laugh at my amateur video skills. Meanwhile, I'm now even more looking forward to hearing the full rock version -- including strings and horns they're recording right now at Abbey Road. The album comes out March 25, the tour starts April 10 at San Francisco's Warfield Theater (one of my top five venues in the U.S., hands down) and more information will be available soon!
There are also some additional photos of the car in all its fairy-painted glory after the jump, and on Monday I'll have an exclusive interview with Jon Walker, the band's bassist, and Spencer Smith, the drummer. They answered every single one of my gayest questions and eventually just started throwing out anything they could think of that might have contributed to the idea that the band is, well, Pretty. Gay.(!)
Photos by Getty Images, courtesy Honda
Previously > Is Panic! gay music? > Killer queens at Street Scene
I'm smelling a road trip to San Francisco in April...ahhhh April, the gayest month.
Posted by: jessica b | January 11, 2008 at 06:42 PM