How long have you been a fan?

[bosk1]

And I was besotted.

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds so cool I'm going to start saying it all the time. 




Anyway, I went out and bought I&W when I heard Pull Me Under on the radio.  Through the years, I would go on binges where I would listen to little else for long stretches.  But for some reason, I never brought myself to buy anything else from them until 1999 when Scenes came out.  That is the album that finally really hooked me.

[drummerThatShreds87]

Since around 2003-2004. The first song I heard, oddly enough, was "About to Crash", and I thought it just had cool piano, cool, major/happy sounding riffs, then the vocals came in and I kind of had mixed feelings, a little too "dramatic" I thought.

Then the second and third songs I heard were Fatal Tragedy and Dance of Eternity, then I was hooked. Then I quickly realized that I loved JLB as a vocalist, he just had to grow on me.

Moral of the story, people think it's weird as hell that I got hooked on DT because of "About to Crash", pretty out-of-left-field song to hear first, haha.

[Setlist Scotty]

And I was besotted.

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds so cool I'm going to start saying it all the time. 

It's Brit-speak. You gonna start sounding British now? 

Anyway, I went out and bought I&W when I heard Pull Me Under on the radio.  Through the years, I would go on binges where I would listen to little else for long stretches.  But for some reason, I never brought myself to buy anything else from them until 1999 when Scenes came out.  That is the album that finally really hooked me.

It may have had something to do with the fact that Q2Krap came out the same year and you were probably looking to find another band to listen to!   

[Dirty30]

They year was 2001...  The album was Live Scenes From New York... It was like a sock in the eye. Been hooked ever since.

[ddtonfire]

Friend gave me a burned copy of I&W right after 6DoIT came out, so 12-13 years ago. Wow. I still remember the first time I heard Pull Me Under. I thought he didn't copy it correctly when the end cut out.

[Daso]

Since 2009, but it has been 4 years and 2 months to be exact. First time I heard them was when my brother (who is also a fan but not as much as me), out of pure curiosity, bought Greatest Hit (...and 21 other really cool songs). I thought Pull Me Under was cool, but Take the Time got me absolutely hooked. I had been playing keyboards for about 10 months at that point, and KM's soloing on TTT was unbelievable for me.

[YOWspotter]

I've been a fan since 2007.  The first songs I listened to were Panic Attack and These Walls.  I was attracted by the band's metal bias and became hooked fairly quickly.

[TAC]

I went to see Iron Maiden on June 8, 1992 at The Ritz in NYC. We got there early to get a good spot, but that would mean having to stand for some sucky no name band.
30 seconds into Dream Theater's set, my jaw was on the floor.

My avatar was a picture that I took of the marquee that afternoon.

Oddly, I had WDADU in my hands back in 89.  I did a Heavy metal show on my college radio station. I remember flicking through the New Arrivals, and seeing the name Dream Theater. I thought that it was a cool name. I sampled the album "in cue", meaning while something else was playing we set up the next song "in cue". It's a low phonic, so you really can't hear it great. All I could really hear was the keys, and I though, seems kind of artsy. I thought the album cover was queer, and the band picture was horrific.
The whole episode was erased from my mind until..

Flash forward to mid 1993, and I'm a huge DT fan at this point having seen them 4 times already, when I decide to mail order DT's first album, albeit with a different singer. When it was delivered to my house, I opened it....and immediately recognized the album cover. Oh shit, that was THEM??

[yorost]

...then you swore them off for the next decade, right?

[TAC]

...then you swore them off for the next decade, right?

Me?..No.

I remember being very disappointed with FII and then relieved when SFAM came out.

I missed the 6D's and TOT tours as my kids were born during those years and it was tough to get out for the shows.
They've basically been my favorite and most listened to band since the first time I saw them.

[Setlist Scotty]

Flash forward to mid 1993, and I'm a huge DT fan at this point having seen them 4 times already, when I decide to mail order DT's first album, albeit with a different singer. When it was delivered to my house, I opened it....and immediately recognized the album cover. Oh shit, that was THEM??

LOL! Great story. But I'm glad I didn't make the same mistake as you!   

[KevShmev]

Anyway, I went out and bought I&W when I heard Pull Me Under on the radio.  Through the years, I would go on binges where I would listen to little else for long stretches.  But for some reason, I never brought myself to buy anything else from them until 1999 when Scenes came out.  That is the album that finally really hooked me.

It may have had something to do with the fact that Q2Krap came out the same year and you were probably looking to find another band to listen to!   

Ya know, maybe that is why I was never disappointed by FII (even though I always knew it wasn't as good as I&W or Awake); it came out the same year as Hear in the Now Frontier, and the drop-off from Promised Land to that was so severe that the drop-off from Awake to FII didn't seem so bad.

[TAC]

Flash forward to mid 1993, and I'm a huge DT fan at this point having seen them 4 times already, when I decide to mail order DT's first album, albeit with a different singer. When it was delivered to my house, I opened it....and immediately recognized the album cover. Oh shit, that was THEM??

LOL! Great story. But I'm glad I didn't make the same mistake as you!   

The most frustrating thing about it was that if I had given it a proper listen, I definitely would've liked it and caught their appearance at The Living Room in Providence. Now that would've been cool. I used to go there all the time.
If the album cover and band pic were cool enough, I would've given it a real opportunity, but they were both kind of turn offs.

[mikeyd23]

I guess I've been a fan for almost 10 years now, wow time flies! I first got into DT when by buddy showed me Live at Budokan and I have been hooked on them ever since.  I honestly can't believe its been almost 10 years, what a great ride! 

[ich bin besser]

A friend of mine gave me Images & Words to listen to when it came out. Been hooked ever since. My first gig was in 1993.
On a side note: my friend never really got into progressive music. 

[AngelBack]

I remember seeing them on MTV with PMU as I was a metal head then, but did not really get into them until 2000 when I asked a musician friend of mine who he was listening to.  He told me to drop what I was doing and get a copy of SFAM.  I did.  I next had to break up with Rush as our 25 year exclusive was now over.

[Podaar]

I just realized this is a fairly new thread. I assumed it was the same one I posted in about six months ago and have been skipping it... apparently that was, "How did you get into DT."

Anyway, 1992, late summer IIRC. I heard Pull Me Under on the radio and when it was finished the DJ said they would play Images and Words in its entirety that weekend. The following Monday after leaving work I picked up the album from the record store (remember those) and have been breathlessly anticipating every subsequent release since.

[Enalya]

I&W is of the year I was born.. I discovered DT last summer and have never been more addicted to anything. I might've annoyed my friends

[DT_1928]

heavily into Muse at the time. A guitar salesman/friend of mine there said offhandedly one day 'pfft, you think Muse are a great band? Try Dream Theater'.

Very very similar - my ex's brother was into DT, Vai, Satch, Gilbert etc & knew i was a Muse fan so played me Train of Thought which blew me away!! (i repaid him by taking him to the CiM tour!) 
That was around 2005 just after 8V so my first but was that along with Score when that came out - where does time go?!?!?!

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Since 1998.

[BMcP_2112]

2007. I was in FYE (music/movie store) at my local mall, and they were playing In the Presence of Enemies Pt. 1 over the store speakers. I stood in that store and listened to the rest of the song. It was amazing. I bought Systematic Chaos that day and have been a fan ever since. It was so damn fun collecting and listening to their past material. They still continue to impress and amaze!

[kirksnosehair]

Summer, 1992.  Can't recall the exact day.  Friend of mine gave me a cassette tape of some band he said was blending old-school progressive rock with metal.  He didn't really care for it, he was more of a Pantera/Metallica-style thrash fan.




First spin: 




Second spin: 




Third spin:   

[Kotowboy]

Sometime between Octavarium and Systematic Chaos.

I can't figure out the exact date because It was a gradual thing. I'd heard "As I Am" and thought that was pretty good. Then I heard Train Of Thought at some point after that and enjoyed it and finally I heard all of Octavarium on a road trip sometime around 2008/9 and was hooked.

[flintdragon]

1994-ish for me.  Found I&W at a used CD store.  Awake shortly afterwards and attended my first DT concert during the Awake tour.

[jammindude]

I was working for Tower Records when we got the promo for Images and Words.   My first thought was...."Wow! TOTAL Fates Warning clone!"   But it only took about 2 or 3 spins before I started to say, "Holy crap! This is EVEN BETTER than Fates Warning!!!"

Myself and one other guy played the album in store so much that we made the other employees hate the album.   But every time we played it, we sold one.   We had to band together to force the buyer to bring more copies into the store.   Then we started bugging the local rock station to play Pull Me Under...they resisted at first, and then finally relented.    So we felt at least partially responsible for creating the original buzz about the band in the Seattle area. 

When KISW brought them to town as a rising star show, I was the only person standing in line on the first day to buy tickets...and I bought the first ones off the press.  Row A, Seats 1 and 2.   I was the only one who sang along and knew the words to Status Seeker...Mike noticed, and handed me a broken purple Hot Stick (the brand he played at the time) at the end of the show.  (about 5 years later...my mother was helping me move after my divorce...you could hear me scream a block away when she told me she had found an old broken drumstick, and threw it in the garbage)

Anyway...that's my "old school" story. 

[Another_Won]

I was working for Tower Records when we got the promo for Images and Words.   My first thought was...."Wow! TOTAL Fates Warning clone!"   But it only took about 2 or 3 spins before I started to say, "Holy crap! This is EVEN BETTER than Fates Warning!!!"

Myself and one other guy played the album in store so much that we made the other employees hate the album.   But every time we played it, we sold one.   We had to band together to force the buyer to bring more copies into the store.   Then we started bugging the local rock station to play Pull Me Under...they resisted at first, and then finally relented.    So we felt at least partially responsible for creating the original buzz about the band in the Seattle area. 

When KISW brought them to town as a rising star show, I was the only person standing in line on the first day to buy tickets...and I bought the first ones off the press.  Row A, Seats 1 and 2.   I was the only one who sang along and knew the words to Status Seeker...Mike noticed, and handed me a broken purple Hot Stick (the brand he played at the time) at the end of the show.  (about 5 years later...my mother was helping me move after my divorce...you could hear me scream a block away when she told me she had found an old broken drumstick, and threw it in the garbage)

Anyway...that's my "old school" story. 

Cool story.  I actually lived in the Seattle area when PMU first came on the radio.  Thanks for making that happen!

[Lowdz]

25 years now.
Where has the time (and my hair) gone?

[PixelDream]

In the second half of the 90's I was gradually getting into Metal (other than Metallica which I already got introduced to through my parents). 'Pull me Under' was on the TV one time and I quite liked it. Downloaded a few songs off of Images & Words, but it didn't quite catch on. In my class (I was 13/14 years old) was a girl who also had discovered DT, not through I&W (like me) but through Awake. She said it was fantastic. Checked that one out too, and seemed less 'cheesy' than I&W but for some reason I didn't give it the effort to get addicted to it.

A few months later I got SFAM from the local library, and it blew my head straight off. This was the record I was meant to hear from the start. It opened up a whole new world of music for me. Nowadays SFAM does almost nothing for me, which is the weirdest thing. One of the most important records of my life, but I'd rather listen to something else nowadays..

6DOIT was the first record to come out while being a fan, and it remains a favorite to this day. It was Dream Theater building on the creative momentum of SFAM and at the same time branching out in a more interesting experimental - and still heavy - direction. After that ofcourse Train of Thought followed, and its dark direction, riffs, and SFAM-on-steroids instrumental passages really hit the mark for me. At the same time there was real emotion and beauty in the form of the Vacant - SoC - ITNOG segment.

In the meantime, I&W and Awake had revealed themselves to be true DT classics, as they're (together with 6DOIT) my three favorite DT albums since at least 2003, and that has never changed.

In 2005, Octavarium was a welcome change of pace, but the first DT record where I felt the DT-ness was slightly toned down. The magic was gone in places. Still, TROAE, These Walls, Sacrificed Sons and especially the title track (a top 5 DT song for sure) removed any doubts of the band getting stale. When in 2007 Systematic Chaos came out, it instantly seemed like a return to form, with the overwhelmingly good ITPOE pt. 1 opening the record. But somehow the album had no staying power beyond the initial honeymoon phase. NOW in 2014 I'm revisiting it, and it suddenly eems a lot more emotive and creative than DT's recent works with Mangini. Guess the record seems pretty good after all, with the exception of Prophets of War, which is possibly my least favorite Dream Theater track ever.

BC&SL is the weirdest record for me as I was totally hooked at first and seemed to have a lot of classic tracks on it. Now, I'd say only The Count of Tuscany is truly great, and fortunately a well deserving high note to end the DT-with-MP era with.

I won't go into ADTOE and DT12. I like both records, listen to them, buy them and I'm still regularly visiting DT's gigs. I'm of the opinion that things haven't improved with Mangini on board, but the music they're making now has redeeming qualities and a different flavor ofcourse. I just happen to prefer the slightly more raw energy they had with MP.

This entire post was purely to illustrate my DT 'story' and every statement is 100% my opinion, not fact!

Oh and one more thing, I can't understand the 'I can't hear JM' thing at all. I believe people were saying that about SC, but listening to it now: He's definitely not MORE audible on the two new DT records. Listen to how freakin' loud his bass is on ITPOE pt. II for instance, in the mellow sections.

[jammindude]

I was working for Tower Records when we got the promo for Images and Words.   My first thought was...."Wow! TOTAL Fates Warning clone!"   But it only took about 2 or 3 spins before I started to say, "Holy crap! This is EVEN BETTER than Fates Warning!!!"

Myself and one other guy played the album in store so much that we made the other employees hate the album.   But every time we played it, we sold one.   We had to band together to force the buyer to bring more copies into the store.   Then we started bugging the local rock station to play Pull Me Under...they resisted at first, and then finally relented.    So we felt at least partially responsible for creating the original buzz about the band in the Seattle area. 

When KISW brought them to town as a rising star show, I was the only person standing in line on the first day to buy tickets...and I bought the first ones off the press.  Row A, Seats 1 and 2.   I was the only one who sang along and knew the words to Status Seeker...Mike noticed, and handed me a broken purple Hot Stick (the brand he played at the time) at the end of the show.  (about 5 years later...my mother was helping me move after my divorce...you could hear me scream a block away when she told me she had found an old broken drumstick, and threw it in the garbage)

Anyway...that's my "old school" story. 

Cool story.  I actually lived in the Seattle area when PMU first came on the radio.  Thanks for making that happen!

Very cool! 

[mike099]

About 1.5 years.  I was watching the Rush Time Machine concert on a cable music channel and this video came on and I was amazed by the music and vocals.  The video was OTBOA and I immediately went to ITunes and looked up DT thinking they were a new band.
Rush led me to DT and the folks on this site led me to other bands that I otherwise would not have discovered.

Haken, Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson and more.

[ytserush]

Here we go --- vertigo....

"The Spirit Of Rush Fanzine Number 8 which I bought in New York City about August 1989. On the back inside cover was a Dream Theater feature and When Dream and Day Unite album review that was reprinted from an issue of Kerrang (Never found out what issue it was)
There weren't too many recent bands recording music that I liked in the late 80s save for maybe Kings X, Queensryche, Faith No More and Living Colour.
The feature and review mentioned influences such as Rush, The Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and at that time it didn't seem like anyone new was recording music with those influences so I was easily suckered in.
I couldn't find the CD anywhere and was forced to spend $17 at a mall chain store for it. I listened to it constantly for about 3 solid months until Presto came out. I never heard another word about them until I stumbled on their mispelled name on the marquee at the Ritz November 14, 1989 opening for the Hogarth-fronted Marillion's debut in New York City.
Yes, I was lucky.
Never heard a word about them again until I found a promo copy of Images and Words for $5 at a spring 1992 record show. It took me a while to get used to James' voice since I'd been listening to Charlie for about 3 years, but I got used to it. James has improved SO much since then.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this amusing quote (I'm not sure who is responsible for it but I think it was the editor) regarding When Dream And Day Unite from The Spirit Of Rush Number 9 (Fall 1989)

"The aforementioned opener (A Fortune In Lies) sums up the album completely--a dense hard rockers paradise with more time changes than the entire Rush and Yes back catalogs put together. A drummer who puts Neil Peart to shame, a vocalist fully capable of holding his own and a sound so full that it actually takes 20 plays to hear everything that's going on in the mix, and all this perfectly crafted and laid down on tape in just four weeks.
Quite frankly, this album rubbishes at least three Rush albums, and the entire Yes series, Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery being the only album I can think of in the same league. I never thought it would happen, but this album makes something like Signals sound resolutely boring; I know I'm going to get hate mail for saying so, but I have to be honest...
If Geddy, Neil and Alex have heard this album, then they probably reacted in one of two ways--become blubbering nervous wrecks, in the knowledge they have some serious young competition, or (hopefully) they have pulled out their fingers in order to show that they can indeed rise to the occasion. This album will either bring out the best in our friends or finish them off...""

That quote was what sold me being a Rush fan.



First CD 1989: When Dream And Day Unite
First Cassette 1992: When Dream and Day Unite promo
First Vinyl 1990: When Dream and Day Unite
First CD single 1990: Afterlife promo
First Cassette single 1992: Another Day
First Video 1993: Live At The Marquee
First DVD 2001: Metropolis 2000 Scenes From New York

[TTD]

Since 1992 or thereabouts, so ... 22 years, give or take. I got WDADU a while after release, and saw DT live on the Awake or Waking Up the World tour.

I first saw them at the Edinburgh show in 1993 where support Fate's Warning had hired an 'exotic dancer' for James' birthday, and he was treated to an interesting sight or two during the ballad medley

[PolarizeMe]

I became a fan just in time for my 18th birthday which was in 2012, but the journey to how I became a fan took 4 years in the making. As a newly proclaimed Rush fan in 8th grade (circa early 2008) I YouTube'd their A Passage To Bangkok cover (which in all honesty was a horrible way for me to discover them IMO) and got turned off by them, but always felt that it wasn't James' fault that the vocals were spotty (that song is WAY out of his comfort zone) then I saw their cover of The Camera Eye and I thought it was a better cover than the A Passage To Bangkok one. Made a point in listening to their original material but for some reason never got around to it until after Portnoy left.

First album I listened to was ADTOE shortly after it was released and while I enjoyed it (and even placed it in my top 5 albums of 2011), I felt like there was something about them that hasn't click with me yet, which to this day I don't know what it was. I almost lost hope in ever really liking DT until one day  a good 2 weeks before my birthday, I decided to shamefully download their discography and listened to SFAM after googling "Best DT Album". By the end of Regression, I was like . By the first minute of Overture 1928 I was like and by the end of it, I was like . I was totally blown away and was extremely happy that they finally clicked with me. Got Octavarium at Barnes and Noble for my 18th birthday which sealed the deal, and I haven't looked back since.

[Obfuscation]

Since 2007 when I was saw the Live at Budokan video of Stream of Consciousness on Youtube. Can't believe its been 7 years and I still feel like I have more to learn about the band.

[Rattlehead]

Just a tad more than 3 years now... I was introduced to them by my girlfriend's dad