Never really giving too much emphasis and thought to the group Dream Theater when spending my days at the record store (where most of my music introductions happened). Seeing customers dropping "Live At Budokan" albums on the counter and continually telling me how great of a band they were, they always seemed to fly under the radar for me. Finally, come around the 2005 mark, my good friend Jake gave me his copy of their latest release "Octavarium" and told me I should really give it a listen. I was very glad I was exposed to this opportunity. This is what my first impression was:
As I was a big fan of both the clarity of the instruments and the structure of the song (intricate, but simple grooved throughout the song to make it easy for non-prog fans to follow along) made it quite an enjoyable introduction to the band. At this point, Mike Portnoy was still an active member of the group and contributing to the writing process (as he did throughout his entire career with the band). What made it even more enjoyable as a listener was taking the same album and putting it through a much larger sound system, such as my friends newly designed system in his truck. For a quick history bit, my personal enjoyment was cruising around town with friends listening to great music while not trying to rattle off the mirrors of the vehicle.
Being that I was pretty hooked on the band now and their immense amount of talent, I wanted to see just how goo the guys really were in a live setting. This brought me to my first time seeing them in 2009 (August 14th) on the Progressive Nation Tour (also joined by Zappa Plays Zappa, Bigelf, and Scale the Summit). They (of course) did not disappoint and managed to fill a good 75% of the Molson Ampitheatre for their performance. Unfortunately, Mike left the group shortly afterwards in 2010 and the search continued for a new drummer.
Not even correlating the two together, I was also watching an episode of my pastime entertainment "Time Warp" which special cameras were used to slow down fast action activities to mere frames. World record drummer Mike Mangini was featured on one of these episodes:
Not even putting 2 and 2 together to realize the potential he could elevate a group to, Mike (and Dream Theater) announced that he would now continue as the full time drummer and would start right away with their upcoming album + tour, "A Dramatic Turn of Events". With uber excitement of the announcements, I knew it was only a matter of time before they decided to grace Toronto and show off their newest member. Once again, my good friend Jake and I were in attendance on October 6th, 2012 for their performance at the prestigious Massey Hall. The icing on the cake had to be the odd choice of Trivium gearing up as the opening act. Not saying that Trivium did not deserve to be there. They did an amazing job and sounded great. It was just (in my mind) and odd choice to clash between metalcore and progressive rock. However you want to view it, the show went off unhinged and a great performance from both bands.
So here we are back in the same spot once more. Two years later and a new album, Dream Theater has made their return to Toronto and once again back at the prestigious Massey Hall. I am very glad the guys have decided to perform at such an amazing venue. Being that three members of DT are Berklee College of Music alumni and one coming from Juilliard School of Music it makes sense that ALL these guys take both their music and performances very seriously. I am looking forward to the massive visual and sound display they will have in store for us tonight. I got excited about picking up my tickets from the box office this morning and snapped some shots of what the front of Massey Hall looks like. Hope to see some of you there!
and just in case you ask how the show went...
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