A five-hour concert? Good LORD! A good title for this thread might have been "Come up With a Creative Way to Kill the Band." or "What is the Last Show You Would Want DT to Play Before They Drop Dead?"
Now I realize that we have lost several of our best and/or favorite (mostly musical) artists in the last couple of months, and I am not making light of those tragic circumstances, but I hope you can see the humor in what I said.
However...
In an alternate reality where the band and the audience have the stamina to get together for a five-hour concert, I have come up with what I think is a pretty good idea.
I know everybody has "Astonishing Fever" right now, and with all due respect, I'm already tired of hearing about it, which is part of the reason The Astonishing has been left entirely OUT of my version of the Dream Theater Spectacular. But also because I don't have my own physical copy of it yet, so I haven't been able to sit down and listen to it, follow along in the booklet, and sift through the entire thing to decide which songs would sound good as part of a future show in which they would be expected to stand on their own instead of being part of the overall presentation of the story. Maybe afterwards I'll come with an idea that incorporates some songs from that album. Besides, I would thing that the band and at least SOME people in the audience would want to get a BREAK from The Astonishing, after it being the whole show on this current 2016 tour.
So instead I came up with a show with three 90-minute sets and a 30-minute encore that has at least one song from each album. I know a lot of people prefer "album shows" but I tried to pick some stronger materiel from each phase of their career, because for me, just having them play 3-5 of their albums from beginning to end would be kind of BORING. Also, in my opinion, if they're playing for anything over three hours, there's no excuse NOT to touch on their entire history.
I'm also thinking that maybe there should be longer breaks between the sets, like maybe 30-60 minutes, with other forms of entertainment during those periods of time. They could show YouTube Videos, cartoons, have a stand-up comic like Jim Breuer perform, maybe even another BAND in between the first and second or second and third act.
Anyway, here's my show-
Act I: (Mostly songs from the last few albums, with some others thrown in to break up the monotony)
1) The Looking Glass
2) Outcry
3) The Ones Who Help to Set the Sun
4) A Rite of Passage
6) Surrender to reason
7) Overture 1928/
8) Strange Deja Vu
9) Lost Not Forgotten
10) A Nightmare to Remember
11) This is the Life
12) The Enemy Inside
~~~~1st Intermission~~~~
Act II: (12-Step with a couple of extras)
1) Beyond This Life
2) The Count of Tuscany
3) The Glass Prison
4) This Dying Soul
5) The Root of All Evil
6) Repentance
7) The Shattered Fortress
~~~~2nd Intermission~~~~
Act III: (No real theme, but should have a little something for everybody...)
1) Light Fuse and Get Away
2) Stream of Consciousness
3) Lines in the Sand
4) Forsaken
(The next four songs are played full-band acoustically)
5) The Answer Lies Within
6) Another Day
7) Hollow Years
8) Along for the Ride
9) The Spirit Carries On (The first half is acoustic, but then builds to a spectacular ending, including extended solos by Rudess and Petrucci)
10) A Change of Seasons
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Encore:
1) About to Crash
2) Pull Me Under
3) 6:00
4) About to Crash (Reprise)
5) Losing Time / Grand Finale
I know I left out a few songs that are favorites for a lot of people, but I tried to mostly avoid songs that have been done to death, such as Metropolis, which was played both at Luna Park and on the 2015 tour, and Trial of Tears which was on the AftR tour, but a lot of people (including me) want ACoS, and most of the "casual fans" would PROBABLY want to hear PMU.
Topic: Make a 5-hour setlist (Read 2149 times)
