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Dream Theater => Dream Theater => Topic started by: rumborak on February 06, 2017, 04:56:34 PM
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Back in the olden days, DT used to have opening acts, and I always enjoyed that. Sure, sometimes they sucked (Tiles, I'm looking at you), but I also got exposed to Spock's Beard through that.
Who did you see DT with? And, what would you say about DT bringing back the opening act?
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Let's see...
-King's X and Joe Satriani. King's X was awesome. Satch bored me to tears.
-Fates Warning and Queensryche. Great show all around.
-Trivium. Awesome.
-Krimson Projekt. Bored.
All other shows I have seen have been evening with.
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I think Trivium or Periphery is a good shoutout for opening acts if DT choose to roll with that option again.
I always love the format of the no opening acts, go three hour shows (and that applies to any band with a big catalog), but DT isn't getting any younger and I'm sure them playing these long sets (with the exception of the small Europe tour in 2015) are taking quite a toll on them.
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2 of the 4 shows I've seen were 'Evening With', so no opening act. One of the other times Periphery were supporting, but I wasn't really interested in seeing them, so skipped their set. The first time I saw DT was Prog Nation '09, with Unexpect, Bigelf and Opeth. I missed the start of Unexpect, but they were quite interesting in their own way. Bigelf were pretty enjoyable too, though I've very rarely listened to either band since. I love Opeth though (and have seen them a couple more times since), so that was great.
Generally, I would prefer to see an evening with show. However, when I see the band in a couple of months, I'll finally get to see my favourite 2 songs - plus it'll be my 5th time seeing the band in 7.5 years - so I'd be a bit more laid back about having an opening act in the future. Obviously if it was a band I already liked, that would be ideal. Sometimes you get lucky like that (eg. Myrath supporting Symphony X, Anathema supporting Opeth), but a lot of the time it's a band that doesn't really interest you and you wish the main band played longer.
Of course, with DT getting on in years, support bands may start becoming the norm.
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Let's see...
I think I caught the tail end of Galactic Cowboys set when I saw DT for the first time, but I wasn't familiar with any of their music, so I couldn't make a judgement call either way. I missed almost all of I Mother Earth's set in 94, but what little I heard didn't do anything for me. Saw Big Wreck twice and neither time impressed me; it would be interesting to go back and listen to their music now to see if I'd appreciate it or not. I vaguely remember Full On the Mouth opening for DT in May of 1998 - I was more into them than Big Wreck, but still they didn't do much for me.
I managed to see Spock's Beard open for them several times in 2000, and they were the first band I really enjoyed despite not knowing much of their material. Actually, seeing them live moved me to pick up their (then) new album V. Also saw the Dixie Dregs open for them in LA both nights, and the music was enjoyable but not enough for me to want to check them out further.
In 2002, I saw DT with King's X and Satch twice and they were great to see, altho I already was very familiar with both bands. Same thing for the 2003 tour with Queensryche and Fates Warning - probably the best bill DT was on with other bands, altho I'd always taken Evening With shows over shows with an opener at any time.
I saw them open for Yes - does that count? :biggrin: Caught 2 shows on Gigantour, altho none of the other bands besides Megadeth and Symphony X did anything for me. And even with Symphony X, I was disappointed the way they "phoned in" the backing vocals by using pre-recorded tapes instead of doing them live...just like DT's been doing of late *sigh*
The openers in 2007 were a mixed bag. Into Eternity was interesting to watch, and their lead vocalist was definitely talented altho I hated his cookie monster vocals. Those vocals were enough to turn me off to giving them a chance. Redemption's music was pretty good, but I remember them being pretty boring to watch live.
For ProgNation 2008, I made sure to catch 3's set, having seen them before opening for Porcupine Tree, and they continued to deliver. However, since I can't stand cookie monster vocals, I skipped both BtBaM and Opeth's sets.
I missed out seeing Scale the Summit for the one ProgNation 2009 show I saw, but Bigelf and ZPZ were both impressive. Bigelf was definitely more accessible to my ears, so I got more into their set than I did ZPZ. Don't get me wrong, ZPZ are extremely talented to play Frank's music; it's just that I'm not a FZ fan at all, so while the band was entertaining enough, the music itself did little for me, even tho I knew it took great skill to perform it well.
Didn't bother watching Trivium's set either time they opened for the same reason as several others - the harsh vocals were a complete turn off. But I did catch Andy McKee opening for them and he was very entertaining, both with his music and performance, and the inbetween song banter. The last opener I saw was Crimson Projeckt. Like ZPZ, I know the music was challenging to play and the guys were entertaining enough, but I'm not into KC's music, so their set fell flat for me.
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I will forever be grateful to DT for exposing me to Andy McKee.
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I saw Pain of Salvation as an opener on the 6doit first leg, besides that i remember them being there, it didn't make an impression. I did check them out 5yrs later of so, and really liked some of their stuff. I wouldn't have known them if portnoy didn't bring them up a few times.
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Trivium, which wasn't my thing.
Presto Ballet, whom I had never heard of prior to (or since), but was totally impressed with. I would've paid the price of admission to see them alone.
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Cynic, Periphery and Kadavar. None of them blew me away.
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Vanden Plas (Toulouse 1998), which I liked a lot.
B.Lee
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I saw them on Progressive Nation in 2009, which had Opeth, Bigelf and Unexpect as opening acts. I was already a fan of Opeth so I enjoyed them the most. Bigelf was alright, but Unexpect didn't do much for me.
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Tiles in 1999
Pain of Salvation in 2002
Symphony X in 2007
Periphery in 2012
Out of these, I prefer Symphony X by far. Was intrigued by Pain of Salvation at the time, I still remember after all this time that the third song played by Tiles was nice, and Periphery left me unimpressed.
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I've seen them with a few openers.... but Redemption really stands out. I saw three of the Chaos in Motion tour shows and Redemption blew me away. I now own all of their albums and they are a top 10 band for me.
I've also seen DT serve as the opener for Maiden in 2010... one of Portnoy's last legs with the band.
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Redemption and Bigelf were awesome. Haven't stayed current with Bigelf, but I still listen to Redemption.
At the CT prognation show in 09, I met the lead singer of Bigelf out in the lobby shortly after their set. Dude was wasted out of his mind. When I went to shake his hand, he extended his and started puking. Luckily there was a trashcan 3 feet away :lol
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Redemption and Bigelf were awesome. Haven't stayed current with Bigelf, but I still listen to Redemption.
At the CT prognation show in 09, I met the lead singer of Bigelf out in the lobby shortly after their set. Dude was wasted out of his mind. When I went to shake his hand, he extended his and started puking. Luckily there was a trashcan 3 feet away :lol
That's insane. Dude definitely looks crazy under normal circumstances.
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Back in the olden days, DT used to have opening acts, and I always enjoyed that. Sure, sometimes they sucked (Tiles, I'm looking at you), but I also got exposed to Spock's Beard through that.
Who did you see DT with? And, what would you say about DT bringing back the opening act?
I've seen them with a couple different openers on the Prog Nation tour, I saw Trivium open for them (which was a good set), beatallica (which was great as well), I saw DT open for some band called Iron Maiden (bunch of nobodies), probably some others I am forgetting.
I wanted to address the bolded section of the OP though, doesn't seem like many others are. I love evening with sets from DT. In fact, I remember lurking here before MP left, and even after I started posting when MM was first in the band, everyone seemed to be complaining that they weren't doing evening with shows. So is the feeling different because they have done, what like 2 and 1/2 tours in a row that were evening with sets? For me, that's still my favorite bill for a DT show.
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Off the top of my head as follows:
Rudess Morgenstein Project
Pain of Salvation
Porcupine Tree
Spock's Beard
Symphony X
Opeth/Big Elf/ (Prog Nation)
Not a bad little line up compared to most bands opening acts which are usually woeful. I'm guessing we have a certain Mr Portnoy to thank for most, if not all, of these.
Got to say though that I much prefer to see the longer sets with no support.
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I managed to see Spock's Beard open for them several times in 2000, and they were the first band I really enjoyed despite not knowing much of their material. Actually, seeing them live moved me to pick up their (then) new album V.
Exact same thing happened with me. Had never heard of SB, but was totally floored by the performance. Picked up V right after. Those were the days still when DT was more of a prog band than a metal band, so having SB open made sense.
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Redemption and Bigelf were awesome. Haven't stayed current with Bigelf, but I still listen to Redemption.
Redemption were awesome, but I remember Bigelf being like kind of meh to me. I mean, they're a cool rock band but there are literally hundreds of thousands of 'cool' rock bands out there and they didn't really stand out to me in that way.
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I enjoyed Fates Warning well enough, but didn't know any of their music. Crimson Projekt was awesome. They're the reason I drove to Austin to see the show, rather than DT, and actually blew DT away. The next show back in Dallas DT redeemed themselves with an inspired performance. For the most part I'm usually out in the parking lot during opening acts. I'm not 18 anymore and see no reason to subject myself to loud music I won't care for.
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I've seen them twice.
1st time on the Progressive Nation '09 tour in DC. I only saw the last few minutes of Scale the Summit's set. Checked out some of there stuff online later on and it's not really my thing. Bigelf was ok, and Zappa Plays Zappa was cool but I'm not a big fan of jam bands. Queensryche was also there for that show only, and the older stuff they played was great but the songs from their most recent album at the time(American Soldier) were really dull.
2nd time was in Richmond, VA on the Dramatic Tour of Events with Crimson ProjeKct opening. They mainly played stuff from the 80's era of King Crimson, which I love, so that was pretty awesome. I loved the drum duel during Indiscipline.
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Trying to decide between Damn the Machine and Big Wreck as my favorite DT opening band.
I really love Damn the Machine's self-titled (only??) album.
I also saw them with The James Young Band.
At this point, I could do without an opening band.
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Missed a bunch in the earlier shows just because I wasn't in venue yet or just not paying attention, but:
Big Wreck = :tdwn
Dixie Dregs = :tup
Joe Satriani = :tup :tup
Kings X = :tup
Fates Warning = :tup :tup (the show I saw in Tampa, QR actually closed show)
Symphony X = :tup :tup
Into Eternity = :tdwn :tdwn
Redemption = :tup :tup :tup
3 = :tup
BTB&M = :tdwn
Opeth = :tdwn
Scale The Summit = :tup
Bigelf = :tup :tup :tup
Zappa Plays Zappa = :tdwn
Periphery = :tdwn
Trivium = :tdwn
Crimson Projekt = :tdwn
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The vast majority of my shows were Evening With shows, 9 I think. Of the few shows with opening acts the only one that really stood out to me was Zappa Plays Zappa. That one mostly because Steve Vai jammed with them :hat
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I always thought I Mother Earth on the Awake tour was a pretty strange choice.
For two of the three Boston I&W shows, a band called Moodcrush opened. They were fantastic. 20 years later I tracked down their CD, which sucks, but they were so impressive live.
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I'm not crazy about opening acts. For the whole amount of shows I have seen, not even a handful of bands have caught my attention. But Dweezel Zappa was a discovery to me. A great guitar player and fun music, I really enjoyed it.
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I've only seen Dream Theater twice and both were evening with shows. I have discovered quite a few bands through them opening for the headliner I was going to see (Machine Head, In This Moment, and Dorothy chief among them) and I usually enjoy when bands have an opening act, but for Dream Theater I definitely think an opener would take away from the show since it leaves less time for Dream Theater to play and with the long runtime of a lot of their best songs, it makes more sense for them to play three hours by themselves.
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Basically, all the bands mentioned in Scotty's post (minus Galactic Cowboys because I did not go to any '93 shows), plus:
Josh Finn Band (1994 Berklee)
Einstein and Beth Hard Band (Providence Fix for 96)
Our Lady Peace and Mighty Joe Plum (WHJY Birthday Show 1998)
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They had Anathema in 2015 for the European 30th anniversary tour - At least in Finland. Anathema's luggage had gotten lost when they flew in so they did an acoustic set in their pajamas! It was different but they sure made the best of the situation, sounded great
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I've seen them twice.
1st time on the Progressive Nation '09 tour in DC. I only saw the last few minutes of Scale the Summit's set. Checked out some of there stuff online later on and it's not really my thing. Bigelf was ok, and Zappa Plays Zappa was cool but I'm not a big fan of jam bands. Queensryche was also there for that show only, and the older stuff they played was great but the songs from their most recent album at the time(American Soldier) were really dull.
2nd time was in Richmond, VA on the Dramatic Tour of Events with Crimson ProjeKct opening. They mainly played stuff from the 80's era of King Crimson, which I love, so that was pretty awesome. I loved the drum duel during Indiscipline.
I was also at that show in Columbia. Seeing Queensryche perform Screaming in Digital was definitely a highlight for me.
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I had forgotten about Redemption. Honestly, they did nothing for me when I saw them, and if that was all I had to go off of, I never would have become a fan. The performance felt phoned in all around, but Ray was especially flat, and the sound was so muddy you couldn't make anything out. That was my first exposure to them, and it really left me cold. It wasn't until I would later hear Snowfall that I became a big Redemption guy.
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I always thought I Mother Earth on the Awake tour was a pretty strange choice.
I must have seen DT with I Mother Earth, but I have no recollection of doing so. I saw a few shows on that tour.
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I mean I'll take Evening With's any day.
I haven't seen them with Trivium but I'd like to hear more of that bands (or similar bands) any day.
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They had Anathema in 2015 for the European 30th anniversary tour - At least in Finland. Anathema's luggage had gotten lost when they flew in so they did an acoustic set in their pajamas! It was different but they sure made the best of the situation, sounded great
Yeah, that was a great performance! I'd been an Anathema fan for 4 years already and seen them once before as a headliner, but that acoustic support show felt a lot more special because of the circumstances and the atmosphere.
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Prog Nation tour 2008 in Seattle had a really good line-up.
3
Between the Buried and Me
Opeth
Personally, I thought 3 was the most refeshing and charming out of those bands. They were very melodic and had a very tight rhythem section with good vocals and guitar solos. The lead singer also whales on the acoustic! I ended up buying their album later (The End is Begun), it has a really catchy song called "All That Remains"..
Of course DT were incredible that night!
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Let's see...
Labyrinth (Italian metal band) - meh
Angra - funny
Symphony X - great
Unexpected - awful
Bigefl - interesting surprise
Opeth - oh god no please
Gamma Ray - went out of the gig for dinner
Anathema - thanks god and DT for making me be aware of this incredible band
Periphery - cool
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I managed to see Spock's Beard open for them several times in 2000, and they were the first band I really enjoyed despite not knowing much of their material. Actually, seeing them live moved me to pick up their (then) new album V.
Exact same thing happened with me. Had never heard of SB, but was totally floored by the performance. Picked up V right after. Those were the days still when DT was more of a prog band than a metal band, so having SB open made sense.
Can I chime in to say it was for me that way also?
Didn't know Spock's Beard before but they blew me away, went the next day to purchase V and am a big fan ever since.
Others I saw:
Pain Of Salvation: didn't leave a good impression, were too chaotic, but I checked out their records nonetheless. They are great but they either had a bad night or it wasn't the right time for me to appreciate them.
Vanden Plas: Left me cold and I was kinda bored during their set, never did check them out later
Symphony X: Good, but had some sound issues, always meaning to go deeper but never had the time.
According to the tourography on mp.com I also saw Fates Warning, Enchant and Tiles but I have absolutely no memory of them, so either they didn't leave any kind of impression or the info in the tourography is wrong. I definitely wasn't late to the shows and at least Fates Warning was a band that I did know (if only casually) at the time so I would/should have enjoyed them.
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First off, I will say that I NEVER want to see Dream Theater with an opening band again. Ever! The last good opening bands I've seen with DT (imo) was in 2002 (Satch and King's X).
As for who I've seen open for them...
- Echolyn - pretty cool
- Morgenstein-Rudess Project - very cool
- Einstein - enjoyable
- Big Wreck - no thanks
- Dixie Dregs - enjoyable
- Joe Satriani - always good
- King's X - always good
- Into Eternity - don't remember
- Redemption - don't remember
- Zappa Plays Zappa - cool
- Scale The Summit - don't remember
- Bigelf - don't remember
- Trivium - no thanks
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Wow. If you couldn't enjoy Trivium, you really missed out. They are a fantastic live band.
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As for who I've seen open for them...
- Echolyn - pretty cool
Ahh Echolyn. I don't remember them, but I remember my old singer buying their album, so I guess I must have seen them open for DT
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As for who I've seen open for them...
- Echolyn - pretty cool
Ahh Echolyn. I don't remember them, but I remember my old singer buying their album, so I guess I must have seen them open for DT
I saw them open for DT back in '95.
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Wow. If you couldn't enjoy Trivium, you really missed out. They are a fantastic live band.
That may be the case. I'm just not into them as a band. I was sitting 3rd row in Morristown NJ and couldn't wait to see DT live for the first time with Mangini.
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The only thing I remember about Trivium is their insane headbanging. Musically they're not my cup of tea.
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I've been seeing Big Wreck's name being thrown around since they did open for DT a long time ago. I think that's a great shout-out as an opening band if DT goes with an opening band route. Their last three albums have been good-great to me. I think the crowds would dig them. I'd dig them live if it means they come to Southern California along with a DT set.
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I love to see Plini and/or Aaron Marshel (Intervals) open for DT.
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Hah, I've seen DT 9 times and only 3 gigs had opening acts.
Symphony X - remains the only time I've seen them - thoroughly enjoyed
Periphery - decent, but were a bit lost on the London crowd and the sound was bad. I've seen them elsewhere since and they were much better.
Virtual Symmetry - can't remember much of them, but what I did hear was impressive.
Evergrey - quite good
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Best support act I've seen for DT, was the brilliant Vanden Plas. Up next are Symphony X and Threshold. Spocks Beard were good too.
Worst were Periphery and Opeth.
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My first DT show was at the Monsters of Rock in São Paulo in 1998. Other acts were Glenn Hughes, Manowar, Saxon, Savatage, Slayer and Megadeth. Then in 2006 there were no opening acts. After that, I saw Bigelf (in Rio) and Pain of Salvation (in Perth) opening for them.
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I think I've only seen them touring with Pain of Salvation. That night I thought PoS were horrible. Their music isn't exactly easy listening for a first-timer, and I remember they struggled with the sound.
People around me seemed relieved when PoS 'finally' left the stage...
I ended up buying a few of their records anyway though, The Perfect Element and Remedy Lane are both excellent!