Has anyone considered the possibility that there hasn't been any serious push to cobble something together for a live rendition of The Astonishing b/c there's simply neither demand nor interest for it?
Argue all you want, but the people who champion the album are in reality the vocal minority. DT couldn't even do a full tour on it before having to drop some of the album's songs and inserting more standard stuff.
In the end, for all intents and purpose, people just didn't like the album. No amount of acting incredulous and being in disbelief at the lack of a live capture of it isn't going to change this fact.
Eh, there is
some truth to that, but it is only part of the picture. Interest in the album was lower than the band expected. That is true. And it is what it is. But the album was not panned by the fanbase as a whole. Album sales numbers and concert tickets
on the first leg of the tour support that. It didn't do great. But it did okay. Acting like most of the fanbase hated it just isn't accurate. But, yes, less people liked it than the band had expected. That is true. And that was a factor. As I have shared here, JP told me one of the factors in not recording it was that he didn't think there was a big enough demand to justify it.
But the bolded part above is not really accurate because it misplaces the causation. They didn't change the set
because people didn't like the album. They changed the set because the second leg of the tour was booked incorrectly. The second U.S. leg was supposed to only hit cities and regions they had not yet visited on the tour, and they were planning on playing the entire thing as they previously had. Somebody (and I'm not naming names) dropped the ball and booked them in many of the same places they had already been. When you take into account that interest was already lower for this album, and that the show was identical from night to night, it is no wonder that there was a pretty steep dropoff in ticket sales when they came back to places where they had already presented "The Astonishing live." The change in the set was a reaction to that. I.e., they could see that demand to see the show in the same place for a second time dropped off, so they were attempting to somewhat address that. So it isn't really that they couldn't do a "full tour" no the strength of The Astonishing. It's more that they couldn't do a
second leg of the tour in the same places they had already hit. That's an important distinction.