Dream Theater - Adeliade 2009 Review
First off - I got to the venue at around 2pm. I was second in line. So I was pretty much guaranteed a spot dead centre at the front...hell yeah! I chatted with fellow fans for the hours before the concert and we had many lol's. Doors opened at about 7pm and we rushed ourselves down to the front. Fantastic. So we milled till 7.45pm and then PoS started. Not knowing any PoS I didn't know what to expect. A funny side story to PoS is that while reparking my car to avoid a parking ticket before the doors opened, these tourist type looking people pulled up next to me. I said g'day and these nice chaps all said hello with big grins on their faces. I thought geez! These are nice people and continued back to my spot in line. It turns out they were PoS...big face palm!
Anyway they played and while the sound mix was not that great they performed very, very well. The singing in particular. I was very impressed. An added bonus was that MP made a guest appearance on one song on the drums and he played it very well. The crowd went a little crazy over that one!
So they finished the set and got a good reaction from the crowd..including Tony one of techs, if anyone else was there they'd understand that one.
So came Dream Theater. Opening with A Nightmare to Remember, the crowd went bonkers...there were even crowd surfers lol! I managed to get myself kicked in the head doh! To say DT nailed aNtR is an understatement. It was awesome!
I won't go through all the songs as they were all played to the highest degree. The highlights were the Dance of Eternity and The Count of Tuscany.
One thing to note is that JP didn't look to well or was really tired. Regardless he played with amazing precision. The ambient section to TcOT was very mesmerising. The boys seemed to really enjoy themselves for this show. It was nice getting visual interaction with JLB, JR and MP - JP mainly stayed in his spot and we all know the JM never moves...although he did walk around and headbang on several occasions.
I was really going bonkers on the night. MP was throwing sticks out as per usual and one landed in the empty concourse between the crowd and stage. I didn't think anything of it. At the end MP pointed straight at me (my guess is cause I was air drumming everything all night and going bonkers). After that I didn't think any more of it. When the walked off stage the security guard got word down and handed be the stick and said, "I think somebody thinks you were the best fan tonight, you are to have this stick...oh and thanks for being behaved" (there were some di..heads crowd surfing and lighting up cig's int he pit which was annoying) - to get recognition like that made me blush but it's nothing really...I got MP's stick wooooo!
All in all it was the best concert I've been to. From where I was the mix was almost perfect - the vocals were a little low in the mix but Labrie kicked some major arse. Overall Kudos to DT for providing a defining moment in my life.
Oh and proof I got the stick:
Im also in JR's twitter video - Im the guy in the middle at the front with a bald head and blue shirt - I stand out quite nicely! (7:26 onwards)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoOhV4tRWhc&feature=autoshare_twitterMore photos will be posted soon when Im on a break at work.