What Era Did You Start With?

[YngVai]

Apologies if this one's been done before or to death.

What album cycle did you discover or do a deep dive on DT during? What DT album or DT side project was your way in?

I was lent a burnt copy of Suspended Animation during my shred phase in the Fall of '05 and loved it. Didn't properly start the prog journey until I got my hands on a copy of 8vm the following summer, picking up the CDs one-by-one until I was all caught up just in time for SC.
 

[Adami]

Scenes was the most recent album out when I started. My first new album with the, was 6DOIT a bit after.

[Samsara]

I put FII, but it really was more ACOS. I discovered them through a friend in 1996.

[efx]

An older mentor of mine told me one day in 1992 to go to the record store and pick up a cd with dream theater as it was "the best thing I have ever heard" and that all I went on. Took I&W home and that was it.

[Buddyhunter1]

I became a fan during the BC&SL cycle. Was able to catch one concert with Portnoy before he left the band later that year!

[Whitefish]

6DoIT had come out soon before I got into the band, but it was ACoS (the song) that really hooked me. I then saw them live for the first time on the TOT tour in London. Looking back the set list for that London gig was absolutely amazing.

[OpenYourEyes311]

Train of Thought was the first new album I got, and first tour I saw as a fan, so I put that.

However, I saw DT open for ELP and Deep Purple in the summer of '98. Then I picked up Scenes and Awake in the summer of '03, with Scenes really making the impact. By the time I saw them a second time on the ToT tour in the summer of '04 I had caught up and had all the albums.

[pg1067]

I've told this story many times before.

Sometime shortly after WDADU was released, I saw a snippet on MTV about "other bands you might like if you like Queensryche."  At the time, QR was riding high on the strength of Operation: Mindcrime, including being in heavy rotation on MTV.  They mentioned three bands:  Fates Warning, Crimson Glory and Dream Theater.  I took note of those names and set about trying to find albums by those bands.

I found FW and CG fairly easily.  I bought FW's current album No Exit and was immediately hooked.  I found a CG album (either the self-titled debut or Transcendence), but I didn't buy it because I was turned off by the silly masks they wore and the lead singer's pseudonym "Midnight."  However, despite my best efforts, I could not find anything by Dream Theater.  After several months, I gave up, but I would occasionally check when I'd visit a record store.  Of course, if I had been in the New York/New England area, I might have had better luck, but I was in southern California.

Fast forward to the summer of 1992, and a friend told me to keep my ear open for this song called Pull Me Under.  I wasn't listening to the radio much anymore because the local metal station had gone full glam and was in the midst of going heavy into grunge.  Nevertheless, I made it a point to listen, and I eventually heard the song and found out it was by Dream Theater.  Hey...they do exist!  I loved the song and went out and bought the album and discovered that PMU wasn't even one of the best songs on the album.  I was beyond blown away.  I saw the band live four times between November 1992 and June 1993.  After the first show, a handful of fiends spent a good half hour outside the band's bus chatting up JM, JP, JLB and MP (KM stayed on the bus).  Fast forward 30 years, and here we are.

[EvantheMotel6Owmer]

I got into Dream Theater around the ADTOE era. Been obsessed ever since.

[gzarruk]

I became a fan during the BC&SL era, but my first experience with DT was with SFAM (I think it was Live Scenes, actually). I was 14 years old then and had been taking bass lessons for a while. My teacher had already introduced my to a lot of jazz, fusion, funk and those kinds of things but one day, out of the blue, he played me some stuff from SFAM/Live Scenes and maybe a little bit of SDOIT and LTE. I had never listened to anything like that. I was shocked.

Fast forward a little bit and I went with my parents to visit some of my dad's family in central america. There I met an uncle who happened to be the craziest, most committed DT ever. Somehow, the topic popped up in our conversation and the next day he appeared at her house I was staying in with a plastic bag filled with all the studio and live albums + DVDs and let me keep them until I had to travel back. I was able to rip all the albums using itunes and well, the rest is history.

I had about a full year of DT fandom before MP left, so most of my journey has been with MM on drums, starting with ADTOE as my first new DT release. Let's see how things go for DT16.

[Trav86]

SFAM era. Became a fan in 2000.

[The Letter M]

I got into them in 2004, not long after Live At Budokan came out, so I picked TOT since it was their newest studio album at the time.

-Marc.

[HOF]

FII was the most recent album when I first got into them, but I heard Images & Words, Awake, and A Change of Seasons first (plus Once in a Livetime). Once in a Livetime was the first CD I bought for myself (my brother had all the others at that point).

[crystalstars17]

I became a fan when The Astonishing was the new album. My first exposure to them was Score, specifically Octavarium, ten years after its release. But the more I heard of their music, which was like nothing I had ever experienced before, and of course the lovely voice of James, I was hooked forever.

And now all other bands stand in their shadow, and unfairly enough, are all measured up to the gold standard set by DT.

[Chino]

I went and saw DT on the TOT tour. I had just heard Metropolis for the first time a few hours earlier and then decided to see them.

[Lonk]

I picked SC.

I heard 1 of their songs around 05-06, and did not like it (Under a Glass Moon). Then around the time SC came out, I heard Constant Motion and thought it was really cool, so dug a little more and ended up listening to mostly TOT songs. First release was BC&SL, as was my first show (Progressive Nation with Zappa).

[krands85]

Pretty cool seeing so many votes for I&W!

I wasn't introduced to the band until some point after Octavarium was released, when a friend thought I might like it and played some of the album for me. Come to think of it, I don't remember if I ever asked how he came across the band in the first place he's not exactly a prog or metal fan 

Anyway, I liked what I heard, but it wasn't until Systematic Chaos came out that I properly started getting in to the band and getting lost in everything they'd released up until then.

[Dream Team]

I picked SC.

I heard 1 of their songs around 05-06, and did not like it (Under a Glass Moon). Then around the time SC came out, I heard Constant Motion and thought it was really cool, so dug a little more and ended up listening to mostly TOT songs. First release was BC&SL, as was my first show (Progressive Nation with Zappa).

  I have to ask just out of fascination, what about CM appealed to you much more than UAGM?

[Cool Chris]

A friend of mine who knew my musical tastes and was always pushing me to explore new bands loaned me I&W, toid me I'd love it. The first song was familiar so I must have heard it on the radio, I don't recall ever seeing the video until that Live in Tokyo release. I didn't know who the band was, so was happy that mystery was solved. I loved the whole album, and went out and bought my own copy.

[Lonk]

  I have to ask just out of fascination, what about CM appealed to you much more than UAGM?

The style of music I was listening to at the time (a lot of straight forward metal).

CM reminded me of Metallica, but better. And to this day, the drum parts played during the guitar solo is some of my favorite DT moments.

UAGM felt kind of chaotic and all over the place at the time.

[NoFred]

14yo, knew PMU from headbanger’s ball, made Images and Words one of my 10 for 1¢ columbia music club picks, they’ve been band #1 since.

[Bentower]

I discovered the band via the MTV Europe's Headbanger's Ball where they were featured pretty heavily around '93. I'm pretty sure that the first thing I saw there was the clip of Puppies on Acid from Live in Tokyo. Quite an obscure choice by the editorial staff, but that heavy JP intro, augmented with the cool lighting, totally drew me in. I&W was the first album I bought promptly and I still remember the tiny store where I came across WDADU soon after.

[nobloodyname]

6DoIT had come out soon before I got into the band, but it was ACoS (the song) that really hooked me. I then saw them live for the first time on the TOT tour in London. Looking back the set list for that London gig was absolutely amazing.

Hammersmith Odeon on the 17 January 2004? They'd played the entirety of Train of Thought the previous night which was in Manchester and was the opening night of the tour, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, same as you, I got into Dream Theater between Six Degrees and Train of Thought. And that Hammersmith show was my first, too. On my birthday Death On Two Legs made an appearance, didn't it?

[Zydar]

I became a fan in 2007, so SC was the most recent one. BC&SL would be my first new album as a fan. Little did I (or we) know that MP was to leave the band shortly after

I had bought I&W and Awake a couple of years before, but they didn't really click for me. I liked SC though so I revisited those two again. This time they blew me away, especially I&W.

[Whitefish]

Hammersmith Odeon on the 17 January 2004? They'd played the entirety of Train of Thought the previous night which was in Manchester and was the opening night of the tour, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, same as you, I got into Dream Theater between Six Degrees and Train of Thought. And that Hammersmith show was my first, too. On my birthday Death On Two Legs made an appearance, didn't it?

Yep! Also the whole of AMBI, which I was particularly excited about at the time. At that point I listened to Erotomania constantly.

[Eldomm]

Since the beginning, with WDADU.

[Zydar]

Since the beginning, with WDADU.

I'm kind of envious of that, being along for the ride (pun intended) for the whole journey to where we are today.

[TheBarstoolWarrior]

Either ToT or 8VM had just come out. I remember seeing six degrees in the rack at Tower Records so it was after that. I want to say it was the ToT era. However, the first song I ever heard was Take the Time and the first album I bought/listened to was I&W.

[MirrorMask]

Officially, it's Scenes from a Memory.

Took a long time to warm up to them, I heard through my cousin some songs here and there. Falling Into Infinity was the new album and I did have it in my hands and I remember copying the lyrics for a schoolmate as a favor, but I really didn't care for it at the time and all I knew was Hollow Years and Anna Lee put at the end of a cassette tape to fill out the space.

When I finally got into them after 4 months of listening to The Mirror and realizing they rocked, it was 1999, I basically properly got "into" the band a couple of months after Jordan did. And I went to the store blind to buy "the new Dream Theater album" and discovered only then and there it was Metropolis pt. 2.

Ah, those good ol' days without the internet......

[Stadler]

I saw Pull Me Under on MTV (I think) and I heard it a lot on WPLR out of New Haven. I can remember thinking "that singer is AWESOME!" and "that drummer is SICK!".   

Look, I love John and John, and Jordan is a beast, but to this day, the essential parts of Dream Theater, the parts that set them apart from everyone else, for me are "that awesome singer" and "that sick drummer".  And while I probably like parts of other things (SFAM, O8, 6DOIS) better, I&W will always have a special place in my heart, and all the prog metal I've heard since (a LOT of which I do not really care for) is compared to that.

[Zantera]

I think I first heard the band after Octavarium because I remember my first experience being hearing Panic Attack and Root of All Evil and then their Iron Maiden/Metallica live album covers. Systematic Chaos was the first new album released when I was into the band, I don't really recall in what order I experienced the previous albums, but I remember Budokan and Train of Thought being two early purchases.

[YngVai]

Looking at the results, dang there's some olds here...

I say that with a hefty helping of jealousy, though. I'm such a fanboy for anything KevMurr's done in and outside of DT.

[Eldomm]

I'm kind of envious of that, being along for the ride (pun intended) for the whole journey to where we are today.

That’s in fact the only one band for which I can say that, but it’s indeed a good feeling!

[Awaken]

Add me to the list for I&W, thanks to a long lost friend who leant me the cassette that I really hope I returned  .  No turning back since the opening of PMU, they've been a release day buy ever since (with the exception of Awake, which I hadn't heard was coming I just kind of stumbled on it about a week after release at my local Strawberries).  For me, the big draw for any band has always been the guitars, and JP raised the game for a lot of what I was listening to at the time.   

[hefdaddy42]

Images & Words.  Pull Me Under on the radio changed everything.