kalpurna

"Pete Wentz just kind of trusts us."  Okay, so I said to someone a while back that Pete Wentz has basically made a career out of having faith in people, and nowhere is this more true than with Panic. They went to a CABIN and wrote a WOLF MUSICAL. They - let us face it, you guys, they fucked around uselessly for a long-ass time.

Ryan Ross thinks Pete doesn't really get their band. I don't know if he's right or not, but god, if he IS right, can you even CONTEMPLATE having that much faith in someone? It's one thing if you trust someone because you get what they're doing and you understand their reasoning, but just saying "yeah, I trust you, I have no clue what's going on but go ahead and do it anyway," that takes ridiculous guts. ANYONE who thinks Pete is a moneygrubbing leech needs to take a look at that behavior, because that's the attitude of someone who doesn't give two shits about making money off his friends.

"We didn't have hardly any contact with the label at all, which is lucky, I guess." You GUESS, Spencersmith? I just - I envision the kind of debacle that would have gone down if their label had been a real people label, with like, a boss who gave them deadlines and cared what they did and didn't let them write a concept album that sounded like Paris and then scrap it entirely, and I shudder. Chances are high that they would have released a shitty album or broken up.

But Pete didn't even get antsy! He just let them do their thing and got psyched about whatever they sent him and supported them and believed in them. Because that's what he does. Loyalty is his JOB. Travis, Billiam, the Hushies, Panic, and most of all and forever, Patrick Stump - they're all people that Pete Wentz put his trust and faith and belief into, and they all paid it back a thousandfold.

For someone whose personal life is a wheeling maelstrom of drama, for someone who could be devastated - who HAS been devastated - by anyone with a blog and a credible claim to knowing him, Pete's friendships are surprisingly drama-free. When he puts his faith in someone, virtually all the time, he's not wrong. He has shitty, shitty taste in girlfriends (Ashlee notably excluded), but he has awesome taste in friends, so his whole "...breakup? What is this foreign word? What does it MEAN?" routine doesn't end in tears. Even with the HeyChris debacle, it seems likely that both sides were partly to blame, and it was only about a year later that Pete started pimping HeyChris's work in his blogs and hugging it out when they met in person.

Anyway, as this album approaches, I am more and more in awe of Pete Wentz's ability to be the guy who manufactures the glass tubes. Oh hey, you're fifteen and you want to start a pop punk band, and I'm 23 and a veteran of the hardcore scene? Where do I sign? And you're sixteen and you want to write music, and you think you're a drummer? Here, you write the music and I'll promote it until it's bigger than God, and you should also sing because you have the voice of an angel and no one knows it but me, and maybe I'll tell the whole world how amazing you are until you believe it. Oh, you're addicted to opiates and your band is unsigned but you want to cofound a record label with me? Awesome, I know some guys we should sign after you, and then there's this bar we could maybe buy. Hey, you're a fucked-up high school livejournal whore who's never played a show and who posted demos to purevolume? Let's be best friends, and I'll take care of you, and I'll make it possible for you to do everything you have ever wanted to do in your life, and when you doubt yourself I won't doubt you at all.

I have a favorite character in this fandom, and I think it might show.