Dream Theater at the Manchester Apollo

[fleetfootmike]

Went to see the US band Dream Theater on the first night of their world tour last night, in the company of rfbooth, james_screaton, neilomac, ian_myatt and other non-LJing friends.

What was it like?

Awesome. In the old, original sense of the word.

For the majority of my readers, who won't have heard of them: Dream Theater are four very very scary musicians: John Petrucci on guitar, John Myung on bass, Jordan Rudess on keyboards, and Mike Portnoy on drums, along with James La Brie on vocals, who is no slouch himself.

They play... music. :) It just about defies categorisation, but fundamentally, imagine a cross between Yes, Rush and Genesis, with an approach verging towards Metallica at their heaviest and the occasional excursion into the most exquisite balladry. Very few, if any, songs have anything remotely approximating to a classic structure, with key, tempo and time shifts running rife.

Portnoy was playing a triple-bass drum kit: basically a Siamese hybrid of a double-bass drum kit set up for the rockier sounds, and a single-bass drum kit for the quieter stuff. Rudess had a single keyboard (plus tablet PC for autocue!) connected to a rack of stuff, on a single-pillar rotating stand with a camera mounted on one end of the keyboard which was one of the feeds to the venue video screens. Petrucci just had the pedalboard from the Planet Tharg: apparently he has a habit of playing with a foot on the monitors, and since they were using in-ear monitoring, they'd rigged him a pair of small boxes either side of his pedalboard PURELY for him to put a foot on. Myung is the archetypal quiet bassist: he just stands there, wanders about a bit, while both hands are moving incessantly and rapidly on a six-string bass. La Brie has a fine, fine voice, if a little off-the-mainstream of rock, with a pretty awesome range.

The gig was basically 2 hour and a quarter sets - the first one was the new album in its entirety (a habit DT have, I'm told). The second was some of the better-known stuff (OK, not to me, since I only have two of their albums and this was the first time I've seen them live), and clearly they'd relaxed into it more. Petrucci and Rudess did seem to spend the entire first set trying to outdo each other for sheer speed of solo.

It's really hard to describe Dream Theater if you haven't seen them: listening to the albums gives you a flavour, but the sheer intensity, and apparently effortless musicianship, are frankly terrifying. There are points where Jordan and both Johns are playing the same, intricate, *fast* melody line in some bizarre time signature, with Portnoy nailing strange syncopated accents behind them, and then it'll all suddenly switch into a wall of heavy riffing in a different time signature and key, propelled along with a double-bass drum riff, that just fails to degenerate into a wall of noise: and then it'll drop into an utterly exquisite slow section, with Le Brie's voice floating over the top.

For me, the high spots were Portnoy's drumming (he makes it look remarkably effortless, while being a showman), and Rudess's keyboard versatility. It'd be very easy to dismiss Petrucci's guitar work as all technique and no feel, but his exquisitely played solo in one slow piece in the second set gave the lie to that and was one of the closest things to musical and tonal perfection ever.

They're an acquired taste: if anyone wants to borrow my copies of "Images and Words" and "Scenes From A Memory", that's probably not a bad introduction. The latter, particularly, is not an album to put on as background music. It's a concept album, telling a complex story, and merits close attention. I had it on in the car on the way to the gig: the range of musical emotions is incredible: some of Rudess' piano work on the quieter sections nearly makes me weep.

I was left with one thought afterwards. This was 2 1/2 hours plus of phenomenally complex, fast music: more notes per second than the presto section of one of the tougher symphonies (and I don't mean per person, either). And they have a habit of changing the set COMPLETELY from night to night. How in God's name do they remember the arrangements?

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Please, borrow! Your description of them as "a cross between Yes, Rush and Genesis" (with Metallica thrown in) sounds wonderful from the start, and the rest makes them sound even better (I /like/ concept albums that "tell a story", like Yes's "Tales from Topographic Oceans").

[rickbooth.livejournal.com]

What you may not have realised is that pretty much all of all the solos are exactly as played on the record... one of the reasons Ian and I aren't so keen on the new one is that, as you say, the soloing seems to be Petrucci and Rudess going for the notes-per-second crown. It's a shame, they're both remarkably expressive players when they want to be.

Still not a bad gig at all :).