Panic at the dial tone

All the things I probably should have said, a now-dead dial tone — much more a computer-generated call declared dead by squishy Skype signal — would not permit. Some sense of diplomacy has been lost over Internet telephone space and what was supposed to be a light discussion with Panic at the Disco’s mastermind guitarist Ryan Ross on the band’s new release “Pretty. Odd.” — and their August 14 concert at the Araneta Coliseum — turned out to be, well, not just odd but pretty damn off-putting.

Despite the tentative 8 a.m. interview slot a concert promoter had set the night before, I felt I was ready for a standard game of whack-the-conversational-ball-around with any of the band members by the time I’d received a 7 a.m. text message confirming my ring-a-rendezvous with Ross and frontman Brendon Urie in about an hour. With current radio-active hit That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed) still reverberating in my head from last night’s last-minute stab at research — illegally downloading both 2005’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out and Panic’s newer album, mulling over each track ‘til midnight, apart from gathering requisite Wiki intel and talking points from interviews past — a cup of black coffee and the questions I’d scrawled down in the process were, I deemed, enough to keep me on a casually conversant plane in sync with Ross, and Urie’s late afternoon wind-down in Los Angeles.

At a quarter to 8, I presumed I’d be throwing quips around with Ross and, 15 minutes after, maybe siphoning crazy groupie stories from Urie, who was currently on local airwaves humoring two radio jockeys — uneasy chuckles and all — as they seemed to piss on the obvious (“Is the song Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off taken from the movie Closer?”). However, as soon as I’d gotten Ross on the line, all that was accomplished in the minute that followed was the communicative equivalent of him catapulting spoons of sour cream at me.

He Writes the Sins, I Report the Tragedies

This is Ryan,” he said, indicating a neutral reception after picking up after two rings.

“Hi Ryan, this is Paolo from The Philippine STAR Supreme,” I responded, complying with the promoter’s request to distinguish a major daily in the Philippines from a crap-hurling American tabloid.

“You’re breaking up,” he said after quite a pause, the dead air offset by what sounded like music playing in the background. “You’re Carlo from the...from a newspaper in the Philippines? What do you need at all?”

“Um, yeah,” I said, releasing a slight snigger before repeating my greeting with greater volubility, enunciating each word as clearly as I could. And then, “They said I could call this number now? Is it all right if I ask you a few questions about the new album and your upcoming concert over here?”

“Okay, ask what? Go ahead. Let’s see if this is legit or not — okay, go ahead,” he demanded. His vocal countenance was turning gruff and the loathing of his own existence and that of the person he was talking to, apparent.

“Yeah, I was listening to the new album and it reminded me of catching Love, the Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil production, in Vegas,” I explained, connecting the necessary dots from the album’s Abbey Road recording to the band’s having hailed from Las Vegas. “There’s just this whole Beatles influence to it. Did Love maybe inspire the album in any way?” And after a tension-smothered spell of silence, miscommunication soon resulted in missed communication.

AUDIBLY ANNOYED RYAN: About the Beatles, you’re talking about? (Grunts) What... what is the question? 

NOW-AGGRAVATED INTERVIEWER: The album reminded me of catching Love in Vegas...I was wondering if... (Ryan cuts me off)

NOW-HELL-RAISING RYAN:  No, no — don’t tell me about ‘reminded me’... tell me what, what the question is. 

HANDS-UP HELPLESS INTERVIEWER: I just wanted to know... what influenced... the subject matter and the vibe?

NOW-SEEMINGLY DELUSIONAL RYAN:  There’s no... new, new album for the Beatles! (Degrading chuckle) Thank you. Goodbye.

Still wired from my second cup of coffee, I could imagine a rabidly coked-up pseudo-artist fuming after having just heaved his iPhone at his Filipina housekeeper. What instantly raged in my head were images of bloodshed at the disco: a wrecking mirror ball unceasingly ramming into Ross; or the guitarist hanging by his ever-present scarf from a strobe light fixture; or, in the name of sweet vindication, a legion of obese hipster girls trampling the band, mistaking them for Fall Out Boy (comparisons — even after FOB’s Pete Wentz pulled PATD into his record label via MySpace message — seem to tick Ross off). It didn’t matter if Ryan Ross was “sick” as the promoter would later inform me (along with the fact that Urie couldn’t be contacted after his radio interview), or if the schmuck was in the middle of an S&M orgy with a couple of groupies he’d picked up in Poughkeepsie. Whether he was making great strides to become a grade-A a-hole these days just so he could gun down a tween fan base that paid more attention to the bat of his lashes rather than to his music, or reap some “rock star” upstart cred by dropping media finesse like his band had pretentiously dropped the already-pretentious exclamation in their name, the questions I’d prepared bore no answers — and the unspoken pact between interviewer and personality became almost mythical.

In about two years of writing, give or take, a hundred profiles, I felt I’d done my pen-ance, shrugging off every snag or surprise in my interaction with certain “names,” from Kristine Hermosa’s off-cam crassness to Wilma Doesnt’s crotch-pat upon introduction. From being self-taught in excavating the interest factor from anybody, quirks and qualities became visible, especially under that interviewer-interviewee agreement that stipulated both parties’ needing each other; the latter to command promotion and the former to literally conquer the idea of the personality. But here was Ryan Ross incinerating a huge clause in entertainment publicity, repelling followers who’d want to know everything from what brand of guy-liner he uses to what he meant by “It seems the artists today are not what you think” in the ’05-released single The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage.

At this point, though, I think I have a pretty good idea of what that meant. And that when you’re a 22 year-old whose alcoholic dad passed a year or two ago, it’s much harder to ride an existential crisis out when you’ve got non-stop touring, TRL fame, and no panic button to press. But I didn’t know Ryan, neither did I know if the new album’s chipper, Beach Boys ‘n’ Beatle-esque departure from the cutesy misery of Panic’s debut was a means for Ryan, lyricist-composer and silent captain, to deal; or if the guy just thinks all members of the third-world press are complete morons. Who knew? And who can ever truly know somebody when the world of local print is rife with half-assed features born from record company-monitored phone calls and the 15 fruitless minutes a writer gets to talk to a diva on her makeup chair? Sure, I wanted Ryan to glean a sense of “otherness”, but what emerged from my non-interview was a rare sense of realness, especially when shooting the s*it with celebrities has already become a tedious, bull-coated routine to me.

If an interview brought me, writer, and, sequentially, you, reader, closer to a personality, then Ryan Ross was able to grab us by our throats and exhibit that closeness over the phone and in less than a minute. And as soon as he put that poor iPhone down, I may have actually become a fan in the process.