PAPERCITY - PRESHOW RITUALS

In this Preshow Rituals segment, the alternative pop/rock, PAPERCITY, reveals what what they before taking the stage. You can check out the rituals below:

Hi, I’m Alex. I’m in the band PAPERCITY, and I’m here to spill the beans on all of our pre-show rituals.

What do these rituals include? Summoning spirits with pentagrams and licking bats? Read on to find out!

After a big day of waking up before it feels legal, checking out of the accommodation, traveling to the next show, and heading to soundcheck, the absolute most important thing to occur next is to curl up in a Star Wars onesie in the corner of the greenroom. Yep, you heard it here first—onesies are essential.

As a band, we always try to put on the most high-energy show physically possible, but there are a few things that help us do that consistently across a lot of shows (although none of us have ever personally licked bats or snorted ants, we’re fairly sure it wouldn’t significantly help).

Before each show, we try to spend a bit of time talking about things we have planned for that specific show—but we also carve out time for something equally as important: quiet time. Quiet time has been the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given from an older touring musician. I once played a festival overseas where another band missed their soundcheck because they couldn’t find their singer. (They found him 8 hours later passed out in a bush—don’t worry, he was fine!) But they are no longer a band, and they did mess around the whole team behind a pretty big festival. Quiet time can be a good thing!

Being a band from New Zealand, we’ve also been fairly isolated from a lot of things the whole way through school. And we’re from a small town in New Zealand too, which definitely exaggerated the feeling of isolation. You really wouldn’t believe our excitement when New Zealand got its first Taco Bell. And for a while, whenever we were in a city with a Taco Bell, it was practically compulsory to swing by before the show, and then again after. It honestly might have been less of a pre-show ritual and more of a superstition that if we didn’t support this massive chain company and their perfect bland tacos, they might take them away. (Which is actually the kind of thing that does happen in New Zealand.)

Once we’ve had our onesie naps, business chats, quiet time, bland food, and a 45-minute in-depth discussion about Gilmore Girls, it’s time for the final stretch—literally. Hand and wrist warm-ups, vocal exercises, and a whole lot of jumping as high as we can around the greenroom. Then we’re ready to hit the ground running on stage.

Our pre-show rituals might sound chill, but they’re currently our key to delivering maximum energy on stage, every single time. (No bats were harmed in the process.)

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