To be frank, however, I was disappointed. It was a tour by 4 progressive bands and as such DT performed only a handful of numbers unlike the 4 hour extravaganzas that I was used to seeing on my computer. For the record these were,
- A Nightmare to Remember (Black Clouds and Silver Linings)
- Prophets of War (Systematic Chaos)
- Keyboard Solo
- Sacrificed Sons (Octavarium)
- A Rite of Passage (BC&SL)
- The Dance of Eternity (Scenes From A Memory :Metropolis Part II)
- One Last Time (SFAM)
- Solitary Shell (Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence)
- Take The Time (Images and Words)
- Count of Tuscany (BC&SL)
With three songs from the new album, and one song from the god forsaken "systematic chaos" album, it wasn't exactly what I had dreamed of(given that I have memorized and dissected every bar of music of a ton of other songs )
Nevertheless, the offset was balanced by Jordan Rudess's antics and the sheer intensity of watching them play from about 5 meteres away.
Some highlights of the show were:
- Rudess plays a solo on the Haaken Fingerboard
- Portnoy gets up atleast 6 times to thrash on the poor cymbal for the rare few seconds in their songs when he isnt playing like he is wrestling with an octopus while trying to play soccer and swim the olympics.
- Petrucci's extended solo in Solitary Shell on the electric (no acoustic lead though)
- Rudess plays the solo of Take the Time on the keytar
- Rudess and Petrucci jam together (absolute synchro of course) on their respetive -tars facing each other in the front of the stage
- Rudess plays two solos on the Iphone's app Bebot
- LaBrie does not stick his tongue out and sing like he's falling off a cliff. In fact, he nails every song.
The strangest thing that I realised through the show however, was that, no matter how good they are and no matter how much I had looked forward to this for no matter how many years, there were still times during the show when I phased off. At such times, I wanted to hit myself. I felt guilty and helpless that I was not capturing enough feel and intensity in these few hours as I would have liked to or as I had imagined I would.
By the middle of the show, I wanted to go and sit somewhere in the back and listen to the music a little more calmly. The craze, the ranting, the madness was all self built and self induced. (Apart from the Iphone gimmick of course.... that kind of a thing just increases the blood flow in the body like magic)
Maybe all of art is in the eye of the beholder.
