What order did you get the DT albums?

[a51502112]

I&W
Awake... and so-on in order.

Wth WDADU sandwiched in between FII and SFAM.

[1neeto]

TOT
6DOIT
SFAM
I&W
FFI
Awake
8VM
SC
BC&SL
ADTOE
12

Have yet to buy WDADU and ACOS.

[PwnsomeWin]

From first, to last...
Octavarium
Train Of Thought (MP3)
Black Clouds And Silver Linings
Systematic Chaos
Images And Words
Awake
When Dream And Day Unite
Dream Theater
Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
Train Of Thought (CD)

I believe that's the order I got them in. Missing FII, SFAM, and ADTOE. I'll probably get SFAM, then FII, then ADTOE.

[fibreoptix]

Let me see if I can remember this shit... uuuhhhmmmm...

Images and Words
Awake
Falling Into Infinity
When Dream and Day Unite
Train of Thought
Octavarium
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulance
Scenes From a Memory
Systematic Chaos
Black Clouds and Silver Linings
A Dramatic Turn of Events
Dream Theater.

I know I&W was first and I'm certain about everything from Scenes onwards. The rest could be slightly shuffled, I just can't remember.

[erik16]

SDOIT [...] Around 2000, maybe 2001.

Interesting

SH*T! I knew this would happen in a long post , meant 2002/2003 of course.

[GasparXR]

SDOIT [...] Around 2000, maybe 2001.

Interesting

SH*T! I knew this would happen in a long post , meant 2002/2003 of course.

Dude, if you managed to get your hands on a Flux Capacitor, you don't have to hide it from us, we can keep a secret.







....As long as you include us your schemes! /blackmail

[MonagFam]

I was 15 years behind, but I was introduced mosty in chronological order.   From I&W through Systematic Chaos, I believe I borrowed the CDs in order of their release.   FII might the the exception to this -- I know my friend was not a huge fan and may have held it back some as not as "representative" of DT....that said, it's an album that has really grown on me).

Pre-ordered on Amazon so received at or around the release date --
BCSL
ADTOE
Dream Theater

WDADU is one that I have only listened to once or twice, and was not introduced to me via my DT-enabler. 

[Dublagent66]

WDADU is the only one out of order.

1.  I&W
2.  Awake
3.  FII
4.  WDADU
5.  SFAM
6.  SDOIT
7.  ToT
8.  8VM
9.  SC
10.  BC&SL
11.  ADTOE
12.  DT

[son_ov_hades]

Images And Words(Got this in 1999 and fell in love)
Scenes From A Memory(when it came out)
Awake
When Dream And Day Unite
Falling Into Infinity
A Change Of Seasons

All the rest in order as they were released

[Daso]

Scenes From a Memory
A Change of Seasons
Falling into Infinity
Images and Words
A Dramatic Turn of Events

I think that was the order for me. I have not bought the others physically because I bought them on iTunes, but I like physical copies so I guess I'll get all the others at the same time.

[Juular]

I think it was in this order:

Live At The Marquee
Images And Words
Awake
When Dream And Day Unite
A Change Of Seasons
Falling Into Infinity
Once In A Livetime
Scenes From A Memory
Live Scenes From New York
6 Degrees
Black Clouds & Silver Linings
Train Of Thought
A Dramatic Turn Of Events
Dream Theater

Never bought Octavarium and Systematic Chaos since I just don't like them.

[Ben_Jamin]

Lets see.....

Scenes From A Memory (My friends recommended this)
Octavarium (got it on the release year)
Awake (Found it in my dads collection, and kinda made it mine...haha)
Train of Thought (only album I could find, plus it had Stream Of Consciousness on it)
6DOIT (heard it from a friend whom had it, loved it)
Systematic Chaos (Bought on release)
BC&SL (Bought on release)
ADTOE (Bought on release)
FII/I&W/ACOS ( I've had these songs on my computer and laptop since I had bought ToT. I borrowed them from a friend and burned them. On this list is when I actually bought the actual physical cds)
Dream Theater (on release)

I found WD&DU at FYE a couple years back but decided not to buy it, I have the songs from the another friend whom kindly burned me a cd.

[Lowdz]

Got into them exactly as they were released, including WDaDU, which i picked up in the summer of 89. Other than WDaDU and IaW (which I didn't know about when it was first released), every release of their's has been a first day buy.

Exactly this.

[donniekak]

The first dream theater song I heard was the Ytsejam. I may be one of the few people who heard their material in chronological order.

[KevShmev]

Except WDADU, in order of appearance.

Same.  WDADU came after I&W.

This.

[Marion Crane]

Wow...a lot of newer fans here.   Interesting.

I+W
FII
Awake
ACOS
then every other one in order

[Rodni Demental]

Small DT Story, tred if you can be bothered.

I had heard some songs in 2005 (think they were Honor Thy Father, Panic Attack, Pull Me Under). Didn't have any albums to go by, just these songs which started my DT obsession. In 2007 my friend was listening to Systematic Chaos on a fairly long car trip and afterwards, I asked to borrow the CD as I liked a lot of what I heard, and was still fairly new to DT having only heard a couple of songs before.

I liked the CD but never learnt the names of the tracks or anything, it was all just track 1, track 5, track 7 etc. in my head. Constant Motion and Forsaken stood out as more digestible and memorable tracks though, I remember those by name from that time.

Eventually come 2009 I must not have kept up paying attention to DT. And my windows media player randomly advertises some music to me on the side, I click a little play symbol and it starts playing me A Rite of Passage from the new album at the time. I'm fairly blown away and remembered everything about why I enjoyed listening to these guys a couple of years back  .

So next day I get the whole Black Clouds album, funnily enough it took a few weeks for me to realise that disk 2 was entirely covers.  I actually figured that one out because of To Tame A Land which was just so familiar to me and I couldn't figure it out. Until I saw online that it was an Iron Maiden cover and I felt silly because I knew this song from my Maiden phase.

I think at this point, I went somewhat backwards and all over the show. Train of Thought was the next one that clicked with me and I suppose I related it to Black Clouds in a lot of ways because it seemed like the album was structured similarly. Big long songs, only 6 or 7 tracks.

I then went to some slightly familiar ground and got more accustomed with Systematic Chaos and was starting to work my way through various tracks off of Falling into Infinity, Six Degrees and Octavarium. Although the only albums I was familiar with were ToT, SC and BL&SL as I was practically listening to their entire discog on shuffle (minus Scenes, Awake, I&W, WDADU, ACOS).

A couple of parts of FII stood out to me (Opening track, LITS, Trial or Tears.) although the vocals threw me off until I became more appreciative of the tonality and styles of James' singing. Some of 6Degrees was cool, but some of it wasn't clicking (also didn't realise that disk 2 was supposed to be one song at this point so I just heard the different sections pop up on my shuffle bit by bit). I'm fairly sure I didn't realise that A Change of Seasons CD was mostly covers. The Big Medley was most obviously covers but shame on me that I didn't even recognise that track 4 was a Zeppelin Medley.

For some reason I didn't add WDADU. I&W, Awake, to my shuffle until a year later when I wanted to explore more of the bands material. I think I got the impression that this particular content was different to the stuff that I was getting into from the band, maybe I just thought it was too old or something, I just remember these albums took the longest to 'click' with me even after I did start listening through, they're growers for sure and now they're up there with the best of the newer stuff too.

Scenes was last for me. I honestly couldn't tell you why but I never got around to listening to it until I became somewhat familiar with the rest of their discography. Maybe it was the whole concept album thing, I might have felt a bit intimidated and obligated to listen to it all at once or something. It just felt like it wouldn't be right to listen to it all out of order as I was accustomed to doing). In any case it was a treat to leave it until last because it blew my face off.

By this point it's 2011, the whole MP stuff went down. So I heavily anticipated ADTOE. Following this album I kinda started getting into all the live stuff. I had heard bits and pieces but never watched the concert DVDs in full until last year. Then this year I started getting into bootlegs and other rarities and anticipated DT12 and Live at Luna Park more than ever.

Looking back I might have actually first been exposed to DT in 2003 when I saw Dragon Ball Z: History of Trunks for the first time. But I don't really count this, although I remember the music being especially badass and quite memorable, I never bothered to seek out the soundtrack. In fact I only realised the film had DT music a year or two ago XD. Maybe I should have searched for the music from the soundtrack and I might have discovered DT a little bit earlier. Ironically though, it's Scenes From A Memory extracts that are used in the film which ended up being the last of their music I would hear in context.

[Setlist Scotty]

Except WDADU, in order of appearance.

Same.  WDADU came after I&W.

This.

n00bs   

[Lowdz]

Except WDADU, in order of appearance.

Same.  WDADU came after I&W.

This.

n00bs   

[ytserush]

Got into them exactly as they were released, including WDaDU, which i picked up in the summer of 89. Other than WDaDU and IaW (which I didn't know about when it was first released), every release of their's has been a first day buy.

What he said!

Some of them were even pre-first day aquisitions.

[wolfking]

I think;

I&W
SFAM
Awake
FIF
WDADU
SDOIT

then the rest as they were released.

[Nearmyth]

I think the first albums I got into were:

Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
Octavarium
Black Clouds And Silver Linings

I got into DT about right after Portnoy left, Octavarium, SDOIT, and ANTR being my first songs, give or take.
I remember then listening to I&W a bit on youtube and thinking "what is this crap??" then after hearing people say it was a great album, I listened to the album in full and was completely blown away.

I got into SC and SFAM a bit, then bought ADTOE when it came out, which took me a while to get into.

I think the last albums I ended up listening to were Awake and Train of Thought, 1) because I thought ToT would be too heavy for my liking,
and 2) I associated "old" DT (included Awake for me) with WDADU, and wanted to stay far away from Awake

How wrong I was about both.

It's usually the albums that take me the longest to get into that end up being my favorites.

[hefdaddy42]

Except WDADU, in order of appearance.

This, I got WDADU after discovering I&W in 1992, otherwise on or shortly after release date, in order of release.

[LTE3]

1.Awake ( its when I discovered them)
2. A Change of season (on release)
3. Falling Into Infinity (")
4.Scenes from a memory(")
5.Images &  Words ( for some reason my ear just didn't appreciate Pull Me Under and then one day I saw or heard the light, and continue to gravitate towards this album all the time, every song is a gem.
6. Six Degrees of inner Excellence ( my desert island DT album)
7. Train of Thought
8. Somewhere around this time I got the autobiography with the anniversary version live of WDADU special disc's that were included (very cool)
9. All the rest have been in order of release purchased on release date, and this includes every side project everyone had done with the exception of some of JL solo stuff.

[Eldomm]

Got into them exactly as they were released, including WDaDU, which i picked up in the summer of 89. Other than WDaDU and IaW (which I didn't know about when it was first released), every release of their's has been a first day buy.

Pretty much this, except I got WDADU at end 89 and got I&W the day after it was released (with long search in several of Milan's record shops, it was sold out almost everywhere... )

[Kotowboy]

Absolutely no idea as my DT CD buying has been so sporadic and sometimes i've pawned off CDs and DVDs for some food money ( that's proper poor ).

And then bought some back later so I've no idea.

I can only confirm that the last three I bought were the last three they released and I got SDOIT for nothing in a charity shop 5 years ago.

[Dream Team]

From first, to last...
Octavarium
Train Of Thought (MP3)
Black Clouds And Silver Linings
Systematic Chaos
Images And Words
Awake
When Dream And Day Unite
Dream Theater
Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
Train Of Thought (CD)

I believe that's the order I got them in. Missing FII, SFAM, and ADTOE. I'll probably get SFAM, then FII, then ADTOE.

That must have have been an amazing experience, hearing the beautiful and flawless I&W after those first 4 you listed. Must have been hard to believe it was the same band. 

[aprilethereal]

From first, to last...
Octavarium
Train Of Thought (MP3)
Black Clouds And Silver Linings
Systematic Chaos
Images And Words
Awake
When Dream And Day Unite
Dream Theater
Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
Train Of Thought (CD)

I believe that's the order I got them in. Missing FII, SFAM, and ADTOE. I'll probably get SFAM, then FII, then ADTOE.

That must have have been an amazing experience, hearing the beautiful and flawless I&W after those first 4 you listed. Must have been hard to believe it was the same band. 

Yeah, since half of the albums he had heard before are actually better than I&W

[Vipmetal]

First time I heard DT was around '94, when a cousin of mine made me a tape of Awake album. I remember that liked it a lot . Then years went by until 2001 when my bandmates were so into this "new" band that had released Scenes from a memory. I found Live scenes from NY, but I couldn't find studio album so I bought the live album instead. So that was my first cd purchased. After that I bought Six degrees when it was released and have done ever since. I bought I&W, Awake, FII, WDADU on sale about 2003-04. I have seen them live on Octavarium, BCSL and ADTOE tours. And waiting to witness them again next month.

I haven't bought any tab books until last spring, now I have only Awake left to buy. It's been nice to be able to play their songs after band went down.

[Dream Team]

From first, to last...
Octavarium
Train Of Thought (MP3)
Black Clouds And Silver Linings
Systematic Chaos
Images And Words
Awake
When Dream And Day Unite
Dream Theater
Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
Train Of Thought (CD)

I believe that's the order I got them in. Missing FII, SFAM, and ADTOE. I'll probably get SFAM, then FII, then ADTOE.

That must have have been an amazing experience, hearing the beautiful and flawless I&W after those first 4 you listed. Must have been hard to believe it was the same band. 

Yeah, since half of the albums he had heard before are actually better than I&W

[The Curious Orange]

Again, from I&W in order. Can't remember at what stage I bought WD&DU, but it was down the line a while.