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Dream Theater => Dream Theater => Topic started by: erasiel on July 26, 2013, 06:59:51 PM
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I'm curious to hear how people first became exposed to DT. Happenstance? Recommendation? Meet cute?
My story - well, it was 1994 and back then there these things called "record stores" and I had wandered into a Tower Records. Specifically the one in Nanuet NY, just a few miles from Bear Track Studios.
Anyway at that time Tower had these cool listening stations with earphones where you could check out new releases. And I played Awake and I remember within 10 seconds of hearing 6:00 I was sold, and done. It sounded like a cool and fresh take on Queensryche to me. I remember the little description next to the album said that it was Dream Theater's second album. For years, I had no idea of the existence of WDADU because of that. I have no idea how we got ANYTHING done pre-Internet.
Another quick story. A a couple of years later, my brother, who I had gotten into DT by then too, was buying dog foot at a pet store also in Nanuet, and saw a woman with a DT t-shirt in the store, and he complimented her on it.
She said "Thanks - I am Mike Portnoy's wife."
YES! That totally happened.
-Ethan
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Erm... Rock Band 2... yeah =S
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Metal Hammer UK reviewed Black Clouds & Silver Linings, and I thought it sounded interesting, so I bought it.
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Sophomore year in high school.
Computer class.
We can do basically whatever we want after we finish our daily assignment.
Last.fm.
Artists related to Rush.
A song called Octavarium comes up.
Hooked.
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Another one of these threads? Not that I care much but I feel like we get one of these on a monthly basis :lol
Anyways, for me, it was about a decade ago when I was really getting in to Rush, and as I browsed Amazon.com for more albums, I found reviews for a band named Dream Theater, whose early work was said to have been inspired by Rush, so I got their first five albums and was blown away, then caught up with SDOIT and TOT. My first new DT release was LAB, and studio album 8VM, and I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for new DT (almost) every year since!
-Marc.
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I was working out in a Navy gym and heard this amazing music over the gym speakers. I went down to the front desk to ask what the name of the band was. The lady didn't know; she was just playing something her co-worker gave her (the CD wasn't labeled). I was determined to find out the name of the band. I waited 20 minutes at the desk for the guy who owned the CD to show up. The lady was amused I waited so long; she didn't even like the music. He filled me in on DT. I had never heard of the term progressive before. Turns out he was the son of the base commander. I went home and bought BCASL and was hooked.
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Saw them open for Iron Maiden in 2010, As I Am rocked my face off. Picked up Awake a few weeks later and haven't looked back since. :metal
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I wrote a fairly long post about this a while ago, so I'm just gonna quote it.
I was on a political forum a few years back (still am, actually, though I don't post much as politics tends to just piss me off nowadays) and people were discussing Jon Huntsman as a contender for the nomination.
Someone mentioned that he (Huntsman) was a fan of Dream Theater, and I'm slightly fuzzy on exactly how it was said, but someone posted something to the effect of "there's only so many extended drum solos a person can take".
This piqued my interest, so I looked them up on Wikipedia. It mentioned that they were known for technical proficiency, but never got much radio play. I read some more, decided it was something I might like, and YouTube'd them.
Somewhat fittingly, the first song I heard was "Pull Me Under" as it was the first search result. I didn't think too much of it at first. I mean, it was good enough. The playing was top-notch, vocals were excellent, but it didn't really resonate with me at the time. (I was pretty into power metal at the time, so I guess I was looking for something"catchier").
Still, a couple of weeks later, I was rolling through my YouTube history (as I do when I'm bored) and found it. I thought, "well, I'll listen to that again,". So I did, and it was awesome! I couldn't believe I hadn't cared for it the first time. I looked up several other songs, Take The Time, Another Day, and loved those too.
Then I figured, "well, this stuff is all from the 90s. I should check out their recent stuff." Quick search of Wikipedia shows their newest album was Black Clouds. So I listen to A Nightmare To Remember.
I did not like it. At all. It was way too heavy, (power metal, remember :lol) and it just didn't sound like the Dream Theater I loved (for all of one week). Then I heard the Beautiful Agony section, and loved it. Then Count Of Tuscany, and so on. Eventually I grew to love the whole album. (too-heavy parts included :lol)
I bought the live version of Six Degrees from the Amazon MP3 store (¢99 for 42 minutes, can't beat that) After listening to it about a dozen times, I decided this was my favorite band. I ordered the CD of Black Clouds (which is one of the first three CDs I ever bought with my own money, the other two being Avantasia's The Scarecrow and Ayreon's 01011001 at the same time). I loved it, and the next time I had money, I bought I&W, Awake and Scenes.
This was the inception of my love for Dream Theater, and I owe it all to that condescending guy on some forum. I don't remember who it was, or I'd go thank him. Anyway, you probably weren't expecting this novel-esque reply, so I'll end this here.
tl;dr some guy on a forum recommended them.
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1992 - Pull Me Under on the radio. Bought I&W. Liked it, but whatever.
1999 - Went into record store. Looking for Doro album. Saw "Dream Theater" tab. "LOLwut? Metropolis pt. 2?? Dude, I'm buying it!" Loved it. Picked up missing back catalog and became uber fan.
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Another one of these threads? Not that I care much but I feel like we get one of these on a monthly basis :lol
Sorry - I'm new and haven't finished catching up on the 78 pages of old threads. :blush But I am really enjoying the stories that have been posted!
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This is just one of those threads that has a new reincarnation every 6 months or so. :lol
Long story short: My buddy caught SCORE on VH1 Classic around the time it came out. He was hooked. He then spent the next couple months getting me hooked. I'll admit the first couple tracks I downloaded were Learning To Live, Dance of E, and a couple Elements of Persuasion tracks labeled as DT (LOLOLOL).
I then became obsessed with Octavarium. And then the whole thing.
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Back around 2008 I was a huge metallica fan. I was only in 8th grade and was big on playing Dtar Ears Battlefront 2. Met this guy online and we were talking about metallica and he says his favorite band is Dream Theater and recommends the song As I Am. Great first song for me to hear back then, and pretty soon I opened up to the progressive side of DT and the next 4 years was nothin but DT. I owe that random gamer a lot.
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1992- On Rock Video Monthly. Saw "Pull Me Under" and ran out to Sam Goody and got the longbox CD version on Images and Words. A month later, found WDADU on cassette on Columbia House. Even MP was surprised to see that tape when he signed it for me in '02...
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1992- On Rock Video Monthly. Saw "Pull Me Under" and ran out to Sam Goody and got the longbox CD version on Images and Words. A month later, found WDADU on cassette on Columbia House. Even MP was surprised to see that tape when he signed it for me in '02...
Hey, is your username by any chance an Egypt Central reference?
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At some point between the release of Octavarium and Systematic Chaos, one of my friends played a track from Octavarium when he was driving me home from somewhere. I can't remember which song it was - I assume TRoAE - but the journey wouldn't have been very long, so either I got hooked right away or stayed in the car once we'd arrived back at my house and finished listening to at least that 1 song ;D
I checked out the rest of the album and enjoyed it, but I sort of forgot about them for a while until SC came out. It was only then that I began to explore the rest of their catalogue. Coming from a more metal background (eg. Metallica, Iron Maiden), I searched online to see what was considered DT's heaviest album - Train of Thought was the obvious consensus so I checked it out and loved it. It was my favourite DT album for quite a while (ItNoG and Endless Sacrifice duelling for my top song). Eventually I began to appreciate the genius of I&W (after only really liking Metropolis from it at one stage) and it overtook ToT - though it's still my #2 album.
No idea if I'd even have listened to them or heard of them by now if my friend hadn't played that song in his car that day around 7 years ago. Yet now I'm totally obsessed, they're just head and shoulders above every other band I like and have introduced me to a whole new type of music that I adore. February will be the third time I've seen them live and I'm travelling almost 300 miles to do so - I would never even think of doing that for any other band.
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All of these stories make me happy. :D
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My dad got Scenes based on a recommendation from a friend. He played it for me a couple of times, but it took a good 6 months for it to set in. I was a senior in high school. I remember the drumming was unlike anything I had ever heard. I then discovered LTE and was instantly hooked! I have seem them 7 times since including the SFAM tour.
I remember waiting anxiously for the release of SDOIT. The Glass Prison brought tears to my eyes as it ear fucked me in the parking lot of Best Buy. :metal
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Friend from marching band showed me The Glass Prison, The Dance of Eternity, and Metropolis my sophomore year of high school. I've been a follower since.
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1992 - Pull Me Under on the radio. Bought I&W. Liked it, but whatever.
1999 - Went into record store. Looking for Doro album. Saw "Dream Theater" tab. "LOLwut? Metropolis pt. 2?? Dude, I'm buying it!" Loved it. Picked up missing back catalog and became uber fan.
Kinda the same for me. Except it wasn't until 2009 that I found them again. Looked up what they had done since last hearing them :omg:
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I heard some of their songs on the Dragon Ball Z special, History of Trunks. It featured Home, Overture 1928, Dance of Eternity and Through Her Eyes. Best soundtrack to any DBZ movie, ever!
Anyway, my friend told me who they were, I looked them up, and I was so blown away, I couldn't even listen to them for another few years, haha. But that's how I became aware of the band.
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Erm... Rock Band 2... yeah =S
Yeah, that.
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1992- On Rock Video Monthly. Saw "Pull Me Under" and ran out to Sam Goody and got the longbox CD version on Images and Words. A month later, found WDADU on cassette on Columbia House. Even MP was surprised to see that tape when he signed it for me in '02...
So much win, for mentioning longbox CDs, Columbia House and SAM GOODY in one post. :biggrin:
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A cousin of mine was staying at my place, quite older than me and quite into music. I was looking for new stuff, so I asked him for some CDs and he gave me his whole CD holder. I didn't get all music from him, and from Dream Theater I said like "Hmmm...don't know who these guys are, but I'll get a live album and their most recent album! That should be good enough for my music library!" and so I ripped both Live Scenes from New York and Train of Thought (this was 2003). I got the stuff and began listening everything, but didn't care much for Dream Theater. Endless Sacrifice came one day as a shuffled song, and I thought it was nice but a little bit long. Weeks later, Honor Thy Father came up and I was like "HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN", and was sold completely. Honor Thy Father was the first Dream Theater song I really fell in love with, and after that I proceeded to listen the whole Train of Thought album which completely floored me. Later on, I check out Live Scenes which I also had in my hard drive, and Overture 1928/ Strange Déja Vu had me like...Holy shit, who are these guys? Bought Scenes from a Memory immediately and well, 4 or 5 months later I joined DT.net so I could find people to chat with about my unhealthy obsession with this band.
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I was raised on classical, prog and jazz as a kid so it was probably only natural for me to eventually hear of them. My mother gave me a copy of Images and Words when I was in my teens and I clicked with it pretty deeply. My entire family has pretty strong music roots, actually. I suppose that's why I had an initial appreciation for great music like DT. Hell, from what my mother tells me, my grandfather played some Bach cello suites right as I was being born... haha. Grandfather was a cellist for Berlin Philharmonic (was best friends with Rostropovich), mother is a concert pianist, father a keyboard and guitar player, uncle is a jazz drummer. List goes on. Mother and father were in a band back in the day that was heavily influenced by Rush/Genesis/ELP, too. I remember as a kid hearing them cover stuff like Tarkus in the practice room.
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My best friend's ex-stepfather is really into Dream Theater, and he introduced my best friend into the band through I&W live in Tokyo. He loved the band, but I didn't want to listen to it because I had read some harsh criticism from a DT fan to another of my favorite bands and thought the band had to be absolute shit or that I had to hate them because it was my obligaton (I was 14 :lol). Couple of months later my brother bought "Greatest Hit... and 21 other really cool songs". Pull Me Under played and I thought it was cool, but not the best I had heard. Then Take the Time played and that was it for me. I had to listen to their whole discography, learn as much about the band as I could and so on. I was absolutely in love and, well, I still am :biggrin:
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A friend of mine was a big fan of them and tried to get me into them; he first showed me The Dark Eternal Night (Which I didn't like :lol) and then showed me Panic Attack on Rock Band 2 (Which I loved on the first listen). Loved them ever since
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Rock Band 2 sparked an interest in them for me. I started with Panic Attack and moved on to Wither. I was really shocked when I heard Pull Me Under on the internet, as it sounded nothing like the other 2 songs I listened to beforehand. And it really started after listening to ACoS on Youtube. God, I love that song. :angel:
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Someone recommended Hollow Years to me, but I didn't like it very much because it wasn't very... metal. Eventually I played Rock Band 2 and I became obsessed with Panic Attack and eventually Dream Theater. Later on when I got to listen to Falling Into Infinity I started to like Hollow Years lol.
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became aware of them through Bass Player magazine sometime around 1994. Listened to a small sample of I&W, but it didn't grab me at the time.
5 or 6 years later I decided to give SFAM a shot since it was so highly rated on a couple of album review sites I frequented after I discovered Rush. Loved it and never looked back.
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Not really sure, I think just hanging out on the internet and browsing forums and stuff. I must have been 12 or 13 or so (this is probably like late 2005). When you're into the bands I was when I was a kid (Rush and Maiden and other classic progressive-ish metal bands), Dream Theater just sort of naturally comes up (what with them being the most popular underground band and all). First album was Images and Words, which I grew to love, though I think it was a bit too heavy and complex for my tastes back then. As a result, I would sort of just end up listening to Surrounded again and again (that one's still in my top 10). Learning to Live and Metropolis just left me confused.
Anyway, while I&W didn't speak to me immediately, I stuck with it and listened to it repeatedly, only because I had a feeling I would eventually get it if I stuck with it for long enough. (My dad had taught me that a lot of really great music can take multiple listens to digest properly.) After Images clicked, it was sort of a free-for-all. SFAM came next, I think, then Awake and 8V and SDOIT. I heard WDADU, TOT, and FII later because, of course, the internet seemed more divided about how good those albums were. Score was the first release while I was a DT fan, though I still only had a vague familiarity with their music.
I got SC on the day of its release (made my parents drive me and all that). I liked it initially. Saw DT for the first time on the Chaos in Motion tour. Met MP and got my copy of Score signed on the day of the show.
I don't know, I think the honeymoon period wore off, because after a while I was really disappointed with SC. As much as I liked the overwhelming majority of DT's back catalog, I was unenthused enough about the band's direction that I didn't buy a physical copy of BCSL and instead just downloaded it from iTunes. Sort of weird, I guess, that I got into this band whose current musical output was so unappealing to me, but DT had cemented itself as one of my favorite bands by the time BCSL rolled around.
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I walked in on Petrucci making sweet love to his guitar in Hollow Years L@B. It was not only my introduction to Dream Theater, but also my introduction to what has become an obsession with music of a higher quality. A life altering event.
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Pull Me Under on the radio, been hooked since. A little sidenote, it was about a month or so between hearing it on the radio and buying the album for me, so I do remember getting uber fucking stoked every time 96.9 The Eagle played it., I'd be all "Fuck Yeah, it's that song again!!!!" and then proceed to slaughter the lyrics in the kitchen at full volume.
:metal :metal :metal
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In early 2003, my brother bought SDOIT after reading a magazine review that compared TGP to Metallica. The first things I heard were the intro arp solo of TGP and Overture. That was more than enough to get me hooked. :hat
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I saw PMU on Headbangers Ball back in 92, picked up I&W, was kinda like... huh... ok.
Skip forward a couple years. I'd lost track of my I&W CD, saw they had a new one. Didn't buy it.
Found my I&W CD.... played the shit out of it. Fell in love.
Bought Awake the next day.
Been buying everything they release as soon as I can get my hands on it since 94.
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I heard Pull Me Under and Caught In A Web during late 2000, and liked them so I bought I&W and Awake. Listened to them but it didn't really click with me so I put them on the shelf.
Returned to the band in mid 2007 right after the release of SC and gave them a new shot. Suddenly I got to love the band so I got their discography and haven't looked back since.
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Back in 2005 I was playing my first ever MMORPG, The Matrix Online and I got to be friends with the leader of a fairly big faction on there. Me and her used to talk on AIM quite a lot and we both shared music as a passion. Back in 2005 I was starting to become more passionate about music, my final year of Secondary School had lead to me discovering a lot of older rock and falling in love with Pink Floyd. She asked me one night if I had heard of a band called Dream Theater and that she was listening to their latest album, she started sending me little snippets of the title track.
I looked up a video of the track and fell in love with it so went out and bought the album, from there I went on to discover Scenes From A Memory and everything else Dream Theater had to offer until they became my favourite band. :)
The best thing really about being into them isn't just that they're fantastic but through learning about them and their influences and side projects I've also gotten into so much more music.
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speaking oktober 2002. A guy (a close friend now) I recently met invited me to see DT live..(hmm...why not!)
Before getting into the music madness I listened to Metropolis pt 1 a couple of times 2/3 weeks before the concert.
11/3/2002 DT absorption day:
Finally Free outro (intro tape)
1. New Millennium
2. The Mirror
3. Lie (w/ Tool jam)
4. Through My Words
5. Fatal Tragedy
6. Blind Faith
7. Lifting Shadows Off a Dream
8. Beyond This Life
9. Hollow Years
10. Instrumedley:
11. I The Dance of Eternity
12. II Metropolis pt.1
13. III Erotomania
14. IV The Dance of Eternity
15. V Metropolis pt.1
16. VI A Change of Seasons
17. VII Ytsejam
18. VIII The Dance of Eternity
19. IX Paradigm Shift
20. X Universal Mind
21. XI The Dance of Eternity
22. XII Hell's Kitchen
23. Lines in the Sand
~~~intermission~~~
24. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence:
I Overture (orchestra-only intro tape)
25. II About to Crash
26. III War Inside My Head
27. IV The Test That Stumped Them All
28. V Goodnight Kiss
29. VI Solitary Shell
30. VII About to Crash (reprise)
31. VIII Losing Time/Grand Finale
~~~encore~~~
32. The Spirit Carries On
33. Children of the Damned (Iron Maiden)
~~~2nd encore~~~
34. Learning to Live
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It was a 3 hour drive and I was totally mindblown.. :mehlin ???
The next day a new fan was born: bought SDOIT, played grey before the next buy: LSFNY.
Didnt care for tv but played de DVD for hours and hours reliving that beautiful evening of November the 3th.
Hooray! :metal
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When BC&SL came out, I read a review of it in a metal magazine, and immediately decided to give it a listen. I was blown away.
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I found out about them through Rock Band 2. Panic Attack was the first song I heard by them. When Constant Motion was released as DLC, I listened to it, and thought it was awesome. I started listening to other stuff, and since then, I've loved them.
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Sorry, I am one those newbies that started one of these topics months ago :blush
I was watching the Rush in Cleveland video on cable and the video for OTBOA came on. Exactly what I was looking for, a hard driving song with a singer that did not scream at me. I was hooked and own most of the studio catalog.
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My father bought Train Of Thought, so I decided to borrow the CD and rip it to my computer. One day, I was listening to some music on random (I normally never do that, no idea why I decided to do it back then) and Stream Of Consciousness came on. I immediately fell in love with it and checked out the rest of the album. I was hooked instantly :metal
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well, I think i'm the newest of you guys. My story goes like this:
year 2009: I was 10 then. I received a Wii and Guitar Hero World Tour. There was Pull me Under on it. Didn't care at first, as most of the band I fell in love with
year 2011: 12 y/o. At my drum school, here in Italy, my teacher says "Hey, wassup, Mike Mangini's coming for a clinic here!" and I was like "Who is this guy" "Dream Theater's new drummer!" "Oh, DT, I heard a song some time ago." (Note: at that time I was really getting into the metal scene, listening to the big 4 of thrash, and some other bands too) He showed me some videos of Mangini rockin' his giant kit. I was shocked by his talent and the massiveness of his kit (is that even a word?). So, along with this, there was a fellow drummer of mine who was a big DT fan, and he was constantly playing the drum rythm of Under A Glass Moon. He was totally obsessed with it. So the actual first song I really heard from Dream Theater was UAGM.
year 2012: in the studio with my school, my friend played Trial Of Tears. This was a bad move for my unborn interest for DT, UAGM didn't hit me musically, and I thought "Man.. this song is boring.. maybe DT aren't my thing". This was up until the MM clinic was starting to get near. I thought "Man, I have to get documented about him and what he did in DT". So I watched "The Spirit Carries On" documentary. Fell in love, but not so much, with The Dance Of Eternity.
Enter Mike Mangini, and his awesomness. The guy was extremely hilarious and so much talented. He played a 20 min. drum solo which was like :o
and at the end of the clinic he played a song from ADTOE. That song was Outcry. That song: the metal/epic elements, the insane instrumental section that Mike played like if he was drinking a glass of water, hit me so much. I fell in love with DT since then. I feel like the most lucky DT fan because I fell in love with the band and like 10 minutes later I got an autograph and a photo from their drummer. :hat My first album was Octavarium.
year 2013: after learning every song from the catalog, in January JP announces the new album. I was like "New album = tour = concert nearby". And yes, I did it. I bought a ticket for the Rome concert this January, and when the ticket arrived I looked at it. It said "An Evening With Dream Theater". I almost fainted when I noticed it. 3 whopping hours of concert are waiting for me in 6 months. And a new great album in even a shorter time!
oh, I love this band so much. I also think I improved a lot in technique as a drummer. Also, they opened me a whole new scene, the prog scene. I was already a Rush/Pink Floyd fan when I started listening to DT, but they brought me a lot of other stuff: Opeth, Porcupine Tree (another clinic-event with Gavin Harrison, in which I did the translator for him ;) ) and the side projects like LTE, Adrenaline Mob and recently The Winery Dogs. Currently I'm in a DT/Porcupine Tree period, because I'm listening to PT just to make time pass up until September. At that point new album to the max and at January concert :metal
tl;dr: Mike Mangini did a clinic, played Outcry, fell in love with the band after a few months of doubts.
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i originally found out about DT because my dad was a big DT fan, and one day he wanted to show me some DT music, so he played metropolis Pt 2. i really liked it, but i didnt get into DT yet, and i didnt know it was metropolis pt 2 at the time. i finally got into DT when a year or two later my friends convinced me to listen to the ministry of lost souls. i loved it, and i right away got systematic chaos. i didnt even like metal before i heard DT, but i loved the entire album. thats basicly how i got hooked
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Went to see Iron Maiden at The Ritz in NYC on June 8, 1992. Got there early to get a good spot, which of course means suffering through some no name lame ass band.
This group called Dream Theater hit the stage, and within 30 seconds, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.
My avatar is a picture of the marquee that I took that afternoon.
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Here we go again!
Saxophone lessons; my mother always drove me there when I was young. As far as I can remember one of three CDs would be playing in the car: Images & Words, Metropolis Pt. 2 and 'Legacy' by Shadow Gallery. I always liked them, but back then I was still indifferent about music as a whole. Later when I started listening to music more I got into metal somehow and found this song called 'Under a Glass Moon', which I remembered from 'so long' ago (which in reality only wasn't too long ago). I bought Images & Words when I was 15 and loved it. I later found Awake in my mom's CD cabinet, put it on one morning when she was away and was completely amazed. Those two still remain my two favourite Dream Theater albums.
Fun note; when I did my album top 50 I&W came in at #1, while Shadow Gallery's 'Legacy' took the #2 spot. So much for indoctrination, right?
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Today I was thinking how long didn't we had thread like this :P And that reminded me I heard (saw) about DT on t-shirt (ToT) of one Serbian pop-rock drummer :D
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Today I was thinking how long didn't we had thread like this :P And that reminded me I heard (saw) about DT on t-shirt (ToT) of one Serbian pop-rock drummer :D
DUDE, which one :biggrin:
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1988-a band I knew opened for Majesty. Saw them that night...................the rest is history.
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My story's not very interesting. I just had a friend who talked about Dream Theater all the time, and I eventually decided to check them out myself. That's all there is to it.
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I go back almost as long as The Trooper.
I grew up in Commack, Long Island, and back in the mid to late 80s John Petrucci taught guitar at Focus II, a music store around the corner from my house. So I knew folks who knew of this band, especially friends of mine who were just starting to learn instruments back then (I was born in 1975). Anyway, fast forward to 1989, and my bass teacher--who was a Berklee graduate--comes to lessons with a cassette, says he ran into his friend John from Berklee who had given him a tape of his band's new album. My bass teacher wasn't much into heavier music, but he figured it'd be right up my alley. That was John Myung, and the album was WDADU.
It was a wild time. I had the tape, I copied it for some of my friends, and we were a bunch of 14 and 15 year old kids who had discovered pretty much the best band ever. We felt like we were in on some secret--we were too young to know much about the local music scene, and this was pre-internet, so we had this amazing tape by a band that nobody else knew, and we all just played the damn thing to death.
I'll also never forget the day I walked into my local music store (Music Den, for any Long Islanders here) and saw Images and Words in the new releases. This band, this amazing band that it seemed like me and only a handful of others knew about, had a second album! I was literally shaking when I brought it up to the register, and all I could say to the guy at the counter, over and over again, was "thank you!"
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Around christmas 2001 i guess. My uncle had just gotten LSFNY and showed it to me. The rest is history.
As a 15 year old guitar player and metalhead, i had never seen or heard anything like it. Been a fan ever since :D
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1994 - A buddy of mine bought I&W on cassette and we listened to it on a road trip. End of story.
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Anyone here know Frets on Fire? It's basically a free guitar hero clone with tons of user-charted songs. When I got the game, I just got the biggest song pack, figuring that it would keep me busy. It contained ITNOG, on which I was hooked after I finally managed to survive that unison section.
Got LAB (I usually start with live releases unless I know that a band isn't very good live), then ToT. The rest is, as they say, history.
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1992- On Rock Video Monthly. Saw "Pull Me Under" and ran out to Sam Goody and got the longbox CD version on Images and Words. A month later, found WDADU on cassette on Columbia House. Even MP was surprised to see that tape when he signed it for me in '02...
So much win, for mentioning longbox CDs, Columbia House and SAM GOODY in one post. :biggrin:
:tup I was old school like that. PMU and Take The Time on Headbanger's Ball for me, went on from there.
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I heard the song Impulse by An Endless Sporadic on Guitar Hero 3 in 2009, before I had a clue what kind of music I liked or what prog was. I loved their music, and iTunes recommended I listen to this band called Liquid Tension Experiment. So I did, and I loved it, and I kept hearing the name Dream Theater tossed around. I listened to some of their stuff, didn't like it, forgot about it.
Flash forward to late 2011. My art teacher sees me drawing a logo for LTE in my sketchbook and recognizes it. She asks if I listen to Dream Theater, and I say that I've heard of them but never really given them a good listen. So eventually later I go on vacation up in Cape Cod, and I stop at this musical store and get my dad to buy Systematic Chaos on vinyl to get my first taste of DT. I didn't really like it at all (at the time, I was extremely metal-phobic and thought metal was horrible [I still don't like metal, but I like prog metal]), except for Forsaken, which I loved.
So from there I listened to some more of their stuff, not liking much of it, but I did like A Rite of Passage (I know...), and A Nightmare to Remember, which I loved (I was like, "Why do I like this? This is metal!!! Metal can't be *good*!"
And then for my 13th birthday, I asked for some DT... I got Scenes from a Memory, Six Degrees, and Octavarium all on CD (I was so lucky, considering my parents don't know what a DT is, but got all the right albums for me to be introduced properly). I ended up loving all of it, then I bought ADToE, which had just come out, and I loved it, and so forth. I was hooked. I listened to and purchased their (debatable...) entire discography within a month or two.
tl;dr: Liked An Endless Sporadic, moved onto LTE, got into DT some years later
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What I'm about to say is probably borderline regarding the rules, but it was so long ago and the method no longer exists, so I think I can get away with it. :\
Anyway, I am uncertain how I got onto the band in the first place, but my first experience with Dream Theater was in 1999 when I downloaded a handful of random songs on, of all things, Napster. :lol Back then I was about 15 or so and didn't care about supporting artists by buying things or care about sound quality (I was an asshole at 15), so Napster was how I found new music back then, and how I aquired any music I wanted. There was no Youtube to sample artists and on a 56kbit dial-up connection I don't think streaming would have worked too well anyway, so I'd just search a band and then grab a few songs at random. If I liked them, I'd get more and build albums, eventually entire discographies, in horrible 128kbps.
Surprisingly, that didn't happen with Dream Theater though. I liked most of the songs I downloaded and listened to some of them a bit, even burned them to a CD so I could listen to the songs away from my computer. But, for some reason I was never compelled to go any further, so after a while I stopped listening to those songs and moved on to other things. It wasn't until about 2003 that I was cleaning out a lot of crap on my hard drives and came across a folder of random MP3s from Napster, and I listened to some of the things in there again. I was buying CDs by this point and it was from listening to those MP3s again that I decided to go out and buy Awake and Scenes From A Memory. So that was the beginning.
I don't remember all the songs I had that ultimately got me into the band, but some of them were: Another Day, Pull Me Under, Hell's Kitchen, Fatal Tragedy, Beyond This Life, The Mirror, Space-Dye Vest, Hollow Years, Peruvian Skies.
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I was in Cali, Colombia in 2003 and me and a friend of a friend struck up a conversation about music, had a lot in common so he loaded me up burning disc after disc of mp3s for me to take home. When I returned to the U.S. I gradually listened to the tons of music and ran across ACOS. I liked it, but wasn't floored. Fast forward to:
Salt Lake City in 2004 or 2005, went to a local independent record store, was browsing and noticed Octavarium. Remembered the name Dream Theater and liked the cover. Asked to listen to it. Was absolutely floored by what I heard. Skipped through the tracks, but listened to all of Sacrificed Sons. Octavarium is still my favorite to this day.
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In my penultimate year of Sixth Form, there was a a chemistry field trip to a local pharmaceutical laboratory (it was an interesting trip, too, no less), but at one point, I left my pen in a lab coat and realised half way through lunch (I like my fountain pens, so I wasn't going to leave it there). Thus, I asked if I could go and get it (a technician who worked there had to come with, as doors needed codes and stuff to open and it was on another floor.) I can't quite remember how, but we got onto the subject of bass (I'd recently picked up bass guitar), and thus the subject got onto Yes (he was a huge fan of Yes).
I mentioned I was really into this band called "Spock's Beard", although I'd only heard one of their albums, as you could never find the damn things in music shops over here, and he mentioned that he was really into this band with an amazing bassist, and the band was called Dream Theater, and that one of the best gigs he'd seen was DT/Spock's Beard.
Previously a friend of mine had tried to suggest DT to me, but I resisted as I didn't like metal, but if someone who was massively into old prog was suggesting them, then what the hell? That summer, I was on holiday on a road trip with my father down the west coast of America, and I found a Dream Theater album in a shop, so I bought it. Metropolis Pt 2, it had the tracklist divided into "Scenes", so this has got to be pretty proggy, I'll give it a listen.
And I did.
First song: Kind of ordinary accoustic opener.
Second: Instrumental. Ok, these guys are good.
Get to the keyboard solo in Fatal Tragedy
:metal :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal
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In 2008 my dad played In the Presence of Enemies Part 1 in the kitchen.
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I've probably told this story before, but I have a phone and some spare time, so what the fuck:
Back in 2009 I was into melodic metal bands with soloing keyboardists (being an amateur keyboardist myself) and I watched some "Janne Warman (Children of Bodom) vs Jordan Rudess" video. It included a solo by Janne and Jordan's solo from LSFNY. I automatically thought Jordan's solo was boring, because he used a piano patch instead of a proper lead tone (fucking stupid, I know) and I was a huge Janne fanboy anyway and I thought no-one could beat him, except maybe Jens Johansson.
I kept hearing praise for DT and I found the idea of huge epics interesting, so I wanted to try their music. I listened to snippets of Pull Me Under and Caught in a Web, but James' voice turned me off in both songs. I thought he sounded like a woman in PMU and the grittier singing in CIAW just annoyed me.
However, I visited a store and at the CD place they were playing BC&SL, which sounded nice. I visited another store after that and bought BC&SL and ACOS, because they were the only available DT CD's. Unfortunately neither release clicked with me, although I liked the heavier moments on Black Clouds.
I still wanted to give DT a chance, because I knew I could love them, so I bought I&W and Awake. At first I only liked a few songs, but one day I listened to those albums in full on my MP3 player on a car trip and suddenly they just clicked! It was a wonderful feeling and that's the moment when I finally became a DT fan for real.
I got the rest of the DT albums within the next 4 or 5 months and I loved all of them except FII, because I had become a helpless fanboy :lol Later I've become more critical of DT's later albums and my tastes have shifted in favor of less technical music, but I still love DT and that's all that matters.
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1988-a band I knew opened for Majesty. Saw them that night...................the rest is history.
I go back almost as long as The Trooper.
I grew up in Commack, Long Island, and back in the mid to late 80s John Petrucci taught guitar at Focus II, a music store around the corner from my house. So I knew folks who knew of this band, especially friends of mine who were just starting to learn instruments back then (I was born in 1975). Anyway, fast forward to 1989, and my bass teacher--who was a Berklee graduate--comes to lessons with a cassette, says he ran into his friend John from Berklee who had given him a tape of his band's new album. My bass teacher wasn't much into heavier music, but he figured it'd be right up my alley. That was John Myung, and the album was WDADU.
It was a wild time. I had the tape, I copied it for some of my friends, and we were a bunch of 14 and 15 year old kids who had discovered pretty much the best band ever. We felt like we were in on some secret--we were too young to know much about the local music scene, and this was pre-internet, so we had this amazing tape by a band that nobody else knew, and we all just played the damn thing to death.
I'll also never forget the day I walked into my local music store (Music Den, for any Long Islanders here) and saw Images and Words in the new releases. This band, this amazing band that it seemed like me and only a handful of others knew about, had a second album! I was literally shaking when I brought it up to the register, and all I could say to the guy at the counter, over and over again, was "thank you!"
Holy fucking shit :metal
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Summer of 2001. I had been to a sort of band camp during summer, and we were sitting in a bus on our way to play a concert. One of my mates handed me a discman (yeah, we used portable cd-players back then!) and told me to listen to "number five". I skipped to the fifth track and pressed play, and suddenly my ears were filled with the most amazing music. Melodic, virtous, heavy, melancholic ... I had never heard anything like that before. The song seemed to go on forever, but when it eventually stopped I was left with this huge grin on my face. I gave the discman back and was like "dude! What was that?!" He answered "Liquid Tension"-something, a band neither I nor any other of my friends had heard of. Huh. I would never forget that music, that's for sure.
Autumn came, back to school, and there I told one of my other friends about this Liquid Tension-thingy. "Isn't that the guys from Dream Theater?", he asked. "-Don't know, but what is this Dream Theater?" A few days later he brought me "Once in a LIVEtime and I borrowed it for a while. I can remember that I thought the music was good, although somewhat too complex to my ears, that the keyboard/organ was kinda annoying and the vocals were bloody awful. Everytime something cool happened musically, that horrendous vocalist had to ruin it. I gave the cd back. Thanks, but no thanks ...
Later that year, I was browsing through a record store and saw "Awake" in the bargain-bin. My mate still spoke really highly about them, and I thought I could give them another try. It turned out this was miles better than the live recordings I had been listening to earlier. After some time of listening, I don't remember exactly how long, let's say two weeks, "Erotomania" just ... clicked. (:eek <- me). Then "Lifting Shadows of a Dream". Then "Space-Dye Vest". Then everything else on the album.
After that, I spent many months and even more money tracking down all the Dream Theater albums, as well as various side projects and other bands I read about on forums and such. My cd-collection grew rapidly, and I had found myself a new favorite band. :)
And the mysterious "number five"? Liquid Tension Experiment - When the Water Breaks. Still my favorite song.
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Today I was thinking how long didn't we had thread like this :P And that reminded me I heard (saw) about DT on t-shirt (ToT) of one Serbian pop-rock drummer :D
DUDE, which one :biggrin:
It's band Amadeus. They are privately listening to rock but their music is directing towards folk and we know that's not good thing on Balkan :-X
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Friend : Have you heard Dream Theater ?
Me : I have not !
Friend : Listen to Dream Theater !
Me : Ok !
Fast Forward to Sat July 28.... And here we are :metal
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I saw Pull Me Under on Headbanger's Ball.
Well, it's true. :lol
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Growing up, my favorite genre was heavy metal. My favorite bands were the usual suspects like Metallica and Ozzy. In 1995, I heard Pull Me Under on the Radio. But it wasn't until the 1997 that I truly got into the band. My step dad played bass guitar. He joined a band, and they sent him home with two cassette tapes. One was a copy of Images & Words, the other, a copy of Awake. I pretty much took those tapes from him, because the music absolutely blew me away. Plus, he was never going to come close to replicating John Myung anyway.
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Back in 2004 I was just starting a band up with my friends. I played keys so one the drummer in my band showed me DT and jokingly said "play like this guy". I heard Rudess play stuff from Glass Prison and how fast his fingers were and thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Octavarium was soon released after and I spun that thing thousands of times. I always felt a connection and inspiration from Rudess as a keyboard player and loved how time signature changes made you think more and react to the music you were hearing.
Bam. I love DT.
Bring on the new album!
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Used to go to this competitive Pokemon site back in 2007, 2008, I was big into that back then. This friend of mine once posted a Rate My Team (where we would give advice to each other about the teams we were using) using a Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence concept. After talking to him a bit, he recommended the album to me (and for 5 years, I thought the song was the only thing on it). I loved it. Then he told me to listen to In the Name of God. I loved it.
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heard PMU on the radio in Fall of 1992, whatever the hard rock radio station in Los Angeles was at the time. It was the best song on the radio I thought. I told my older brother about it since we liked similar music, and for Christmas, he got me the cassette version of I&W (I didn't have a CD player yet.) I loved that cassette, although the prog-wankery was pretty new to me at the time (Rush was my favorite band at that point but was as proggy as I got) so I didn't actually like the instrumental part of Metropolis that much back then. But the rest was so good it didn't matter. When I finally got a CD player the next year, I&W was one of the first CDs I bought to replace the cassette. I don't remember in the pre-internet days how I found out Awake was coming out, but I know I was looking forward to it and got it as soon as I could. Been buying the new releases as soon as they come out since Awake.
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Anyone here know Frets on Fire? It's basically a free guitar hero clone with tons of user-charted songs. When I got the game, I just got the biggest song pack, figuring that it would keep me busy. It contained ITNOG, on which I was hooked after I finally managed to survive that unison section.
Got LAB (I usually start with live releases unless I know that a band isn't very good live), then ToT. The rest is, as they say, history.
LOL. I was obsessed with that game. xD
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I usually never remember stuff like this, but I think I checked them out after a couple of guys in my high school class had been to their 2005 concert in Oslo and said it was great. Took a while before I got into them though, I just listened to a few TOT songs every now and then. I guess I started to like the band a lot in 2007 or so.
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Hmm? I discovered JP first I think with the G3 tour. Being a guitar player myself I had never encountered such technical ability!Also,I was ,and am a huge Rush fan and in searching for similar bands I ran across DT.The first album I bought was Budakon,and at first I wasn't really impressed with Jame's voice(took some getting used to like Geddy's I guess)But on the musicianship alone I was hooked.Went and bought the entire catalog except for WDADU(which I still don't own).
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Looks like I'm the third longest fan here (fourth when Scotty gets here.)
"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
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Thank you ytserush for these precious memories.
I was hooked when I first heard Metropolis Part I. I thought it was so strange and exciting. So hugely different from anything I'd heard before. I was 15 and it was 1999. And then SFAM came out. Been a full-time fan since then.
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Oddly, a few years before I actually discovered Dream Theater, I was doing my college radio show in the late 80's. I remember seeing this new album in the bin by a band called Dream Theater. I thought, wow, that's a cool name for a band. I checked it out "in cue" which basically is used for "cueing up" the next record. By no means is the audio great at all. Well, whereever I dropped the needle, I could hear the drums and the keys and it sounded kind of artsy. Unfortunately, the guitars did not come through, and being that I was doing a metal show, I chocked it up to a new artsy band.
Plus the album cover was so queer, and the band pic was worse!
Well, a few years later, I was in full blown I&W mode. Even had Live At The Marquee. Well, I decide to finally order the first DT album. I knew it had a different singer, but whatever. When I got the CD in the mail, I opened it and immediately recognized the cover. I was like, Holy Shit!. There's that album that I had in my hands 4 years earlier!
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In late 1999 or early 2000, a friend kept telling me how good a song "Metropolis part 2" by Dream Theater was. Couldn't find any Metropolis part 2, but I listened to Metropolis Pt. 1 and it blew me away. Figured out Metropolis part 2 was actaully a CD, so I went out and got that. Listened to it for a good while before getting anything else, eventually I got all of their past albums, in this order, as I could afford them (I was only 14):
I&W > Awake > ACOS > FII > WDADU
Been a fan ever since. While I don't like most of their more recent efforts as much as those earlier albums, I'm still a huge fan. Really liked ADTOE and hope the S/T keeps things fresh.
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around christmas/new year season 93-94, I was 12.. my brother show up with live at the marquee CD. I saw it and liked the art so i gave it a spin
metropolis pt1 - :o
a fortune in lies - :metal
bombay vindaloo - :hefdaddy :flame: :omg: :o Jiiiiiizzzzzzz....
Obsessed with DT ever since.
listening to bombay vindaloo right now ..
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Hi there DTF! Long, long time lurker here, first time poster, I have decided to take a dive into this forum! I figured a good first post would be about how I discovered DT.
A friend in high school who I started to play guitar with turned me on to some of his favorite guitar players, including Satriani, Vai, and all those G3 guys. Included in that bunch was Petrucci, I remember being blown away watching him on the G3 Live in Tokyo DVD and wondering who the heck this guy was! My friend informed me of who he was and his band called Dream Theater. My buddy had the LaB DVD, shared it with me and I was hooked. My first DT album was Train of Thought, so I guess I fall into that category of DT fans that were exposed to their heavy attributes initially, but since then I have come to appreciate all the unique characteristics that make DT special.
I have been a loyal follower ever since then! :metal
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Pull Me Under on the radio, been hooked since. A little sidenote, it was about a month or so between hearing it on the radio and buying the album for me, so I do remember getting uber fucking stoked every time 96.9 The Eagle played it., I'd be all "Fuck Yeah, it's that song again!!!!" and then proceed to slaughter the lyrics in the kitchen at full volume.
:metal :metal :metal
That is enough like my story that I will just quote this one. :metal :metal
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I walked in on Petrucci making sweet love to his guitar in Hollow Years L@B. It was not only my introduction to Dream Theater, but also my introduction to what has become an obsession with music of a higher quality. A life altering event.
This.
Live at Budokan was my introduction to DT and a great one at that! Needless to say, they've been my favorite band since. Hollow Years and INTOG during this set were absolutely amazing! :metal
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I walked in on Petrucci making sweet love to his guitar in Hollow Years L@B. It was not only my introduction to Dream Theater, but also my introduction to what has become an obsession with music of a higher quality. A life altering event.
This.
Live at Budokan was my introduction to DT and a great one at that! Needless to say, they've been my favorite band since. Hollow Years and INTOG during this set were absolutely amazing! :metal
Yeah I agree, LaB was my intro to DT as well and that Hollow Years solo....!! Truly incredible guitar work, as a guitar player, the first time I watched that solo I wanted to never play the instrument again (why even bother, lol) and at the same time I was inspired to pick up a guitar and play right then and there!
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I walked in on Petrucci making sweet love to his guitar in Hollow Years L@B. It was not only my introduction to Dream Theater, but also my introduction to what has become an obsession with music of a higher quality. A life altering event.
This.
Live at Budokan was my introduction to DT and a great one at that! Needless to say, they've been my favorite band since. Hollow Years and INTOG during this set were absolutely amazing! :metal
Yeah I agree, LaB was my intro to DT as well and that Hollow Years solo....!! Truly incredible guitar work, as a guitar player, the first time I watched that solo I wanted to never play the instrument again (why even bother, lol) and at the same time I was inspired to pick up a guitar and play right then and there!
Haha, TOTALLY had the same reaction. Being a guitar player and my buddy who also loves DT and plays bass, we constantly listen/watch them play and say "we give up"
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Back in 1992, listening to the local Rock FM radio in Montreal, Pull me Under, ... liked it and got the CD. And then I saw them live in a small club in Montreal in 1992 or 1993.
Then one night in 1999, working with a contractor, this guy had two CDs, FII and SFaM, I said, wow you know them ? They have new music ? I burned these two on my laptop to see how they did evolved, and the next day I was at the store to buy all that was already released from them.
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I walked in on Petrucci making sweet love to his guitar in Hollow Years L@B. It was not only my introduction to Dream Theater, but also my introduction to what has become an obsession with music of a higher quality. A life altering event.
This.
Live at Budokan was my introduction to DT and a great one at that! Needless to say, they've been my favorite band since. Hollow Years and INTOG during this set were absolutely amazing! :metal
Yeah I agree, LaB was my intro to DT as well and that Hollow Years solo....!! Truly incredible guitar work, as a guitar player, the first time I watched that solo I wanted to never play the instrument again (why even bother, lol) and at the same time I was inspired to pick up a guitar and play right then and there!
Haha, TOTALLY had the same reaction. Being a guitar player and my buddy who also loves DT and plays bass, we constantly listen/watch them play and say "we give up"
Haha yeah! I'm glad I'm not the only one!! Its this interesting paradox of wanting to "give up" as you put it and at the same time being very inspired by what is quite obviously amazing ability and wanting to be able to achieve something that might be close to that someday.
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I first got into DT at about age 15 by playing rock band. At that age I was just into mainstream stuff and alternative rock (late bloomer I know). But I loved the song Panic Attack, though I never looked for anything else by them.
Then I made a new friend when I was 16 and one day he showed me Metropolis Part 1. My first thought was: "This guy sings too high, I don't like it". But he told me to keep listening to them, they would grow on me. I finally decided to buy I&W just for fun.
I still remember the first day they "clicked". By that time I was getting into heavier rock. So I was mowing the lawn and listening to Pull Me Under for the 10th time, when it got to the chorus... BAM!! Huge chills down my spine. Same thing happened with Metropolis. I knew then I was hooked, so I bought 8VM next, then SC, Six Degrees, BC&SL, Awake, TOT, ACOS, SFAM, and ADTOE was the first one I was waiting for (which turned out to be in my top 3), and got into each one of them before buying the next. Truly changed my musical life.
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This was my very first post here back in 2009:
I wish I had some cool story, but the truth is last September, I had just got Rock Band 2 for my 17th birthday. I already had Rock Band 1 and had downloaded Constant Motion (simply because it sounded hard to play on Expert guitar). I honestly thought the song sucked, but my friend kept asking me to play it because he liked to see me play (or should I say butcher?) the solo. He hated the song itself though (he was just starting to like metal).
Anyways, then I saw that this band had a song in RB2, so I started thinking to myself, "oh no, here we go again," and I played Panic Attack. I actually kind of liked it. Even though I wasn't sold yet, I thought, "I have to look up these musicians, they play like crazy. I wonder if they can play live." I looked "Dream Theater Live" up on YouTube, and it was the Score (2nd disc) version of Another Day. I was blown away, but I thought I looked up the wrong band, because Another Day sounded nothing like Constant Motion.
Fast forward about two months, and I hadn't really researched them anymore. My friend was over and asked me to play Constant Motion again. I said, "Fine, but I swear I'm never playing this song again after this." I played it, and something clicked this time. I really was enjoying the song. I looked up Dream Theater again, looked up some of their other stuff and noticed that they had a song on Guitar Hero World Tour (I had it but hadn't unlocked the song yet). I played through the game and finally got to "Pull Me Under."
My life changed after I heard that song. I immediately ran out and chanced it: I bought all of their albums from Images and Words to Systematic Chaos (they were cheap at my local cd store). I sat down and spent a whole day just listening to the albums.
Fast forward another few months, and here I am, with all of their albums, dvds, and most of their Ytsejam releases. Whew, sorry I went on so long. But yeah, I have to thank Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour for getting me into Dream Theater.
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My dad introduced me to them when I was 9. He had first seen When Dream And Day Unite many years ago in a store in South Africa. He said he never bought the record because, judging by the cover, he thought it was a hair/glam metal band :D.
Fast forward about 20 years, my dad wanted to hear something new in the metal world. He looked up the progressive metal genre on rhapsody and Dream Theater was the first name to come up. Somehow he recognized the majesty symbol on one of DT's album covers and realized that this was the band he had overlooked when he was younger. I think Train of Thought was the first album he listened to. The first song he showed me was This Dying Soul. We've bought every album and DVD and have been fans ever since then.
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I listened to "Panic Attack" on the internet...in 2006 I guess. But at the time, I didn't like keyboard solos and James' voice, so it didn't took my attention. Then I listened to "The Answer Lies Within" and "A Change Of Seasons"...downloaded the discography and start to listen everything patiently. Then, DT became my favorite band.
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When I was in high school I was really into Metallica and those freakin long 8 minute songs. And then a friend of mine told me to listen to this band, who all were virtuosos and that had a 23 minute song. He lend me the album and I was impresed by the album: It was "A change of seasons" and it only had one song and a some live covers.
The song was a 23 minute piece divided in 7 sections. That was interesting.
The next thing I noticed was that in the back, the guy who was in the middle of the back cover was the guitar player, not the singer. That was not common.
Then I listened to the song. Then I asked my friend for more albums and the obsession began and it has been going for more than 10 years ;D
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First time I ever heard Dream Theater, like a lot of people here it seems, was Rock Band 2, when I was 17. And I remember enjoying the song but at the time with my oh-so-pop sensibilities, I found the track too complicated to get into, other than the occasional play-through on RB. A few months later I remember my sister showing me TCoT, and I remember being blown away that a band that had come up with such a driving metal song could come up with this wandering and haunting tracks. She also gave me the files for SFAM and I remember putting them on my mp3 player (not even an iPod... I was such a deprived child :lol). I didn't understand the idea of concept albums so I tried listening to one or two of the tracks out of order, and I remember the hypnotist's voice creeping me out, so I stopped, assuming I just didn't like Dream Theater that much.
Fast forward to a few months ago (I'm 22 now), and I was bugging my friend for suggestions for band to listen to. He flat out told me I had to listen to Dream Theater. I explained I'd tried them before and not enjoyed it, but he told me I should try Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. He showed disc 2, and from Overture to Losing Time, I was completely engrossed. After Octavarium and I&W, I was completely hooked. :heart They're now my most-played band on Spotify. He's a pretty fantastic friend for showing me what I was missing out on! :biggrin:
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Late '92, my band's drummer gave me I&W, still have his copy :blush
Had to wait 1 year to see them live, but it was worth it :omg:
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I remember being introduced to them by someone i knew online. I really didn't enjoy it. I was a fan of Iron Maiden, Metallica and Pink Floyd then. He said i would love it, judging by those three bands. Too me it just sounded too cheesy :P I can't remember which songs i listened to, but i am pretty sure the first one was Octavarium. I found that song really cheesy. Then a while later after discovering other progressive bands, like Tool and Mastodon, i decided to give them a listen one more time. At the moment they are my favourite band alongside Iron Maiden. No other band have i ranked this high before.
ps. Octavarium is now my favourite song :lol
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One late summer afternoon in 1992 I was watching a movie with my sons when the phone rang. My buddy was on the line urging me to quickly turn on the radio to the local college station. I paused the movie and flipped the receiver over to KRCL. What I heard at first was a little confusing...it was metal, it was melodious, it was intricate, it had KEYBOARDS, it was awesome, it was Pull Me Under. When the song finished, the DJ said the station would be featuring the entire album on 'Behind The Zion Curtain' program on Sunday night so everyone could stop calling and begging to hear more from Dream Theater. I made a point of listening to the program and by Tuesday I had purchased the cassette (I didn't actually own a CD player at that time) from Circuit City.
That was basically it. So no need to read any more of this post unless you're interested in why I liked it.
I was raised in a home always full of music. My mother played piano and was trained in opera as a soprano. Her piano and stereo belted out classical and jazz with equal frequency so there was always Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Bach, Debussy, Herb Albert, Sinatra, Buddy Guy, etc. playing. Add to that, I was the youngest child in the late 60's and early 70's so I was also hearing my Brother and Sister rocking out to Cream, The Doors, ELP, Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Todd Rundgren, King Crimson, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and especially Kansas. My brother probably wore a groove all the way through Song For America.
As I started buying records my tastes were more on the Metal/Hard Rock side: Sabbath, Mountain, Amboy Dukes (Ted Nugent) Deep Purple, Bad Company, Uriah Heep, Styx, UFO, Rush, and Judas Priest. In the late 70's I really got into Zappa and a world of avant garde music opened to me. Other than Iron Maiden and Ozzy the 80's were kind of a wasteland for rockers and all the "art rock" groups (that's what we called prog before it was called prog) all went weird. But then came Metallica.
I know they are not universally loved on this forum but man, at the time their sound was like a life-raft to a man drowning in a sea of glam-rock. Ride The Lightning changed everything and with in a few years metal was back and bigger than ever.
That's why when I heard Dream Theater I was instantly hooked. They had everything that I loved in music (except for Jazz) all mashed together and yet, it still was approachable and there were melodies in there! I've really enjoyed following their discography ever since.
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My dad introduced me to them when I was 9. He had first seen When Dream And Day Unite many years ago in a store in South Africa. He said he never bought the record because, judging by the cover, he thought it was a hair/glam metal band :D.
I will quote your words next time someone tells me that covers don't matter.
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My dad introduced me to them when I was 9. He had first seen When Dream And Day Unite many years ago in a store in South Africa. He said he never bought the record because, judging by the cover, he thought it was a hair/glam metal band :D.
I will quote your words next time someone tells me that covers don't matter.
Hahaha I think we can all agree that they can definitely matter to people who've never heard the group before.
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I think it was about 2006 when I was recommended ToT on some metal message board. I had that on my computer for the longest time and it wasn't until I heard BC&SL when I became a fanboy. It was The Count of Tuscany that really stood out to me.
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I heard Lie on the radio back when Awake came out.
I kept waiting for the DJ to announce the name of the band but he didn't. Finally one day the DJ said it was Dream Theater so I went out and bought Awake. I loved it so I bought Images and Words next.
I then found an import of When Dream and Day Unite and paid big bucks for it. I was very disappointed that it was not James singing. I thought to myself at the time that the singer was a Steve Perry wannabe and I was sad it wasn't James. hahaha. I was also a little sad that I spent $30 on it which was a lot for me back then (I was 14) because Charlie's voice ruined it for me
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It was my Junior year of high school, so 2009. In my AP lang class there was this kid who shared lots of musical tastes with me, and we constantly talked about classic rock. My favorite band was Led Zeppelin, and his was Rush. One day he told me I could borrow his CD collection and I could grab some tunes from it. It was a big fat CD folder, probably containing over 100 CDs at least. I asked if there was anything in particular inside that I would likely dig. He said that since I was really into Pink Floyd and Rush, I might like Dream Theater. He also reccomended a bunch of other bands.
Back at home, I copied dozens of discs onto my computer, including Awake, ACOS, Greatest Hit, and the second disc of SDOIT. Somehow, I didn't end up listening to them for a long time. It was summer of 2010, and I was out in Bristol Bay, Alaska, commercial fishing. Much of the time I was out on sea, but when I was on land, I had no internet access. No friends around, either. I sat in my bunk listening to music on my laptop, and I eventually came across Dream Theater. Having nothing better to do, I threw on ACOS. I'd been drumming for about a year or two at this point, and Portnoy blew my mind. Everytime I went out on the fishing boat after this I was replaying sections of ACOS in my head, trying to figure them out. By the end of fishing, I had listened to most of Awake as well, and I had discovered one of my new favorite bands. When I got home, I used my fishing advance to buy Images and Words (totally on a whim, did no research) from my local record shop and well....the rest is history! It's odd, I got into them quickly enough that when MP quit in late 2010 I was pretty devestated, even after only listening to them for about half a year.
For a long time, I&W, ACOS, and Awake were the only albums I liked, but I eventually listened to more and more of their records, and now appreciate most of their stuff, though ToT and SC are still sinking in :D
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My family was poor, so we had no cable or MTV, but we did get a somewhat fuzzy feed of The Box over the local airwaves. Kudos to those who remember The Box. It was a 1-900 number video jukebox over TV, and you could pay like $3 to have a music video of your choosing play. The best part was they had a ton of bands that flew under MTV's radar. Someone dialed in Dream Theater - Lie, and I saw it and was impressed. The next time it came on, I had a VHS ready to tape off of TV.
At the time, I was more into Metallica, Megadeth, and Pantera, so the heavier sound of Lie really appealed to me. But I was also trained on classical piano growing up, so I appreciated the complex musicality of DT. It took me about a half a year to get into the rest of the album, though. It was hard getting used to JLB's voice, as he sounded more like an opera singer than a metal vocalist. But around this period, I started listening to whole CDs through headphones to fall asleep, and I eventually put Awake on. The whole sequence of the album is so powerful when listened to start to finish, and the last three songs have a dreamy sort of atmosphere that helps you drift off to sleep. I was hooked after listening to the album all the way through for about the third time.
At this point, though, I'm far more of a progressive rock fan. Other than DT, my favorite rock groups are Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Radiohead. I'm also heavily into electronic music. I like music for its atmosphere and moodiness more than the technical virtuosity of the musicians. Early DT is kind of the best of both worlds, if you ask me. My favorite songs now are the semi-heavy progressive epics like Scarred, A Mind Beside Itself, Learning to Live, Take the Time, Trial of Tears, and even Stream of Consciousness. Post Kevin Moore, though, the band has lost a lot of its mysterious atmosphere and dynamic style. I'm not sure if that's actually due to Moore's absence, or simply the band pursuing one specific direction. But I'm not thrilled about the direction the band has turned in the last 15 years. It seems like MP wanted the band to become Progressive Pantera. But if I wanted to hear Pantera, I'd put on Pantera. I like DT because its more musically nerdy. Earlier DT wasn't afraid to write songs in Ionian or Mixolydian modes -- i.e. happy-sounding metal/rock that sounded more like Queensryche. Instead, they've gone a direction where almost every non power ballad they write is driven by an uptempo djent-y, palm-muted guitar riff in a minor key. I think some of this is fine and great actually. I still liked most of TOT and TGP from SDOIT, but I'm currently missing the musical diversity they used to bring. Perhaps post Portnoy, we will see more of this, but I'm not sure.
I sort of lost interest in the band after Octavarium, but in the last few weeks, I've re-discovered their older material, and am trying to catch up with what they've released since.
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In 1992, a guy I knew bought I&W and we made some copies in tape. :metal
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Looks like I'm the third longest fan here (fourth when Scotty gets here.)
"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
It was this very review in Kerrang that led me to DT. I was heavily into the Neo- Classical widdly guitarists and loved Rush so this album sounded right up my street. Bought the cassette version from my local record shop and the rest is history.
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oddly enough, from GNR fan forum
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I can't remember what led me to the pivotal moment, but sometime in 2008, I came across Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence on YouTube, and I was blown away by the idea that a 42-minute rock song existed. I didn't properly get into it then, but a few months later (I think), I discovered Octavarium, and was completely hooked. The rest, as they say, is history.
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2006 - I'm 14 years old and is looking for music to bring for a trip down to Germany/France with my parents. I stumble upon and download Octavarium because I thought "Dream Theater" and "Octavarium" sounded cool, basically, but I didn't know anything about the band. Listened to it a few times during that trip and thought the music was a little bit weird (especially the title track ;D), but appealing and different somehow. It was not like I had much else to do while riding in the car anyway. Didn't think much about it afterwards, as far as I recall.
~2007-2008: A friend starts talking about the new DLC for Rock Band, "Constant Motion" and how the song is quite cool. I listen to it on YouTube and instantly remember hearing Octavarium a few years back. I also fall in love with the song (it remains one of my favourites to this day and SC is one of my favourite albums). I get Systematic Chaos the same year and the rest is history.
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I would say I got into DT sometime in 2005 if I remember correctly. I was not really familiar with any prog music at the time and was mainly into heavy/thrash metal. I remember my brother and I got the Octavarium album and I thought it was pretty awesome. I was really into Megadeth at the time and had tickets to see them on the 2005 Gigantour, it so happened that DT was co-headlining on the bill as well. (I believe the main reason we picked up Octavarium was to check out DT to get a taste of what we were going to be seeing live, also here is the setlist if anyone was curious, https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/dream-theater/2005/sdsu-open-air-theatre-san-diego-ca-5bd6d3d8.html ) Later on down the road when I was a senior in high school a guy in one of my classes was REALLY into DT and brought his iPod every day and started showing me songs/videos from them and my love for them had come full circle. From then on we talked DT pretty much every day for the whole year, it was pretty damn awesome.
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forum iron maiden 2003 year,I listened to TOT and it started.
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how did you discover Dream Theater?
I was looking for a passage to India, but Dream Theater got in the way.
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I believe I first saw them mentioned on the unofficial Offspring forums, but everyone was trash talking them. The usual stupid critisisms, boring, cant write songs, LaBrie sounds like a girl. Unfortunately I based my opinion around that, and moved on. The more I got into metal the more I saw their name pop up, but it wasn't until I was getting into Symphony X that I heard my first Dream Theater song: Surrounded. On a review for Twilight in Olympus, the reviewer mentioned the striking similarities in the opening to Through the Looking Glass to Surrounded, so I checked out the DT song. I guess it was ok, so I put it on a mix CD. I wasn't sure about the vocals, but the song was growing on me. The next time I went to the local CD store I asked about DT and was recommended Live at Budokan. I was quite shocked when I looked at the track list as every song was like over ten minutes long. The only song I remember actually catching my attention was The Test That Stumped Them All, but I ended up trading it back.
I was already downloading music, but discovered some new and awesome websites where I could download full albums! Rhapsody would be the first victim (still haven't listened to any, this was in 2006), but then I found a torrent of Images and Words. Unfortunately the first track was corrupt, noted in the description, but it was cool, I just faded out the cut off. Images and Words became my favorite new album. I played the hell out of it. Then I discovered DT.net and learned that Pull Me Under is supposed to stop suddenly. I didn't ask, a bunch of people already had. But I didn't own the album yet, so I just continued listening to the faded out version. Soon I bought my first DT album, Scenes from a Memory (technically second if you count LaB), got IAW for Christmas and the rest of their discography over the next year, including Live at Budokan again.
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My cousin, back in 2005 showed me Octavarium (Album).
But, I actually really got into them by looking up A7X and learning more about their replacement drummer M.P.
From there I went out and bought a couple albums and now I have them all.
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Seems like getting used to JLB's voice is somewhat of a rite of passage. :D That, and the fact that so many people in this thread mention taking a while to get used to DT in general. The music is so complex that it takes a couple of listens to get used to it.
I have friends that would forsake their own mother to see a Yes show or a Metallica show, but after about 5 years of trying, I simply couldn't get them into DT. The #1 complaint was JLB's voice. I'm used to it by now and have grown to love it, and he has unbeatable range, but I think some of the comments MP made are sort of valid -- if DT is going to be a metal band, they could attract more fans with a different singer. He sounds like he's singing opera. Of course, I'd rather them not be a metal band and go back to the styles of I&W and Awake...styles for which JLB's voice is just fine. But if they are to go the Progressive Pantera route, I think they need someone with a grittier voice.
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Am I the only person that never had any trouble getting acclimated to JLB's voice? It's never seemed out of the ordinary to me. It's just a voice. A great voice, in my opinion.
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Hmm.. Somehow I remember I had replied this post already , But here goes! :)
It was year 2000 and my brother had come home from his worktrip at Denmark.
at Sunday 8:00am I woked up as he stormed at my room and Threw this CD next to me saying, "You should propably check this shit out!"
It was Scenes from a memomy. So I decided to take a listen to it before getting up from bed. The Music was something like I had never before heard!
I had this rare feeling I get sometimes when I hear music that is larger than life;
1997 - Emperor
1998 - Rammstein
2000 - Dream Theater
2005 - Opeth
What a great day in my life!
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Am I the only person that never had any trouble getting acclimated to JLB's voice? It's never seemed out of the ordinary to me. It's just a voice. A great voice, in my opinion.
Likewise for me. I never had a problem with JLB's voice at all, and I don't know why it's apparently a common thing. My first DT album was SDOIT, and I never gave a second thought to getting used to the vocals. :dunno:
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Am I the only person that never had any trouble getting acclimated to JLB's voice? It's never seemed out of the ordinary to me. It's just a voice. A great voice, in my opinion.
Likewise for me. I never had a problem with JLB's voice at all, and I don't know why it's apparently a common thing.
Count me in too.
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Likewise for me. I never had a problem with JLB's voice at all, and I don't know why it's apparently a common thing. My first DT album was SDOIT, and I never gave a second thought to getting used to the vocals. :dunno:
It could have something to do with when you got into DT. Six Degrees is a completely different animal than the early albums and partially why it is my favorite. JLB tamed.
When I&W came out I really loved it and listened to it a lot but JLB did get on my nerves sometimes. I remember turning down the music when my wife (at the time) came into the room because she would scowl whenever she heard James...and this coming from a big Geddie Lee fan (her not me).
Then when Awake came along and I heard Caught In A Web I literally laughed out loud at the unintelligible and unnecessarily high pitched delivery (4:11 for those who like time stamps) of the melody. This was also the beginning of the breathy-exaggerated-vibrato James which has been revisited many times over the years and is probably my least favorite styling of his...although it's not bad.
It took time but all those moments are now part of the charm of Dream Theater but I will admit I do not lament the passing of screechy JLB. The whole F# worship has never made sense to me. His work since SDOIT is way more my taste.
There is no question that when he is on, there is no one like him. Beautiful, powerful and expressive voice but for many of us it was an acquired taste.
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I don't even understand this fanbase. :lol
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
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I don't even understand this fanbase. :lol
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
This, completely.
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I don't even understand this fanbase. :lol
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
This, completely.
:hefdaddy Gentlemen, I bow to your superiority! I'll even break into the superiority dance in your honor :footloose:
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In 9th grade, 2 years ago, my friend randomly was like "dude, on this one album, a guy talks to you in the first like minute. isn't that weird? then he comes back later halfway through the album. actually, the album's pretty cool, you should check it out.."
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Am I the only person that never had any trouble getting acclimated to JLB's voice? It's never seemed out of the ordinary to me. It's just a voice. A great voice, in my opinion.
Definitely not. I got into the band with CD on vocals and when I heard 2 tracks fom I&W played by a dj in a pub I didn't recognise it as the same band at all. I had to ask him what those 2 awesome songs were and was amazed to find it was DT. I'd heard nothing about them for like 3 years and then blam, new sound, new singer, same awesomeness.
I was into the hair bands of the 80s so JLB was not a shock to me. I thought he was agreat singer. The amount of people I played the Surrounded intro to- "check out this singer!"
If DT had gone the gruff metal singer route I would've likely jumped ship faster than Bruce Ismay on the Titanic.
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I don't even understand this fanbase. :lol
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
This.
Those other vocalists DT tried out would have massacred an awesome album. I won't have a bad word said against the Steve Perry of Prog-Metal. ;D
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I don't even understand this fanbase. :lol
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
This, completely.
:hefdaddy Gentlemen, I bow to your superiority! I'll even break into the superiority dance in your honor :footloose:
:yeahright
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Am I the only person that never had any trouble getting acclimated to JLB's voice? It's never seemed out of the ordinary to me. It's just a voice. A great voice, in my opinion.
Definitely a great voice and I loved it from the get-go. However, it threw me for a serious loop when I realized how old he was. I assumed someone with a voice that high had to be younger. It made me respect them even more. :biggrin:
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For me, the first time I heard about them was when I read an interview or rather a short blurb with some comments from JP and JM in Guitar Player in 89 around the time WDADU came out. Didn't impact me one bit and I probably forgot about this new group right then and there. A couple of years later in 92 a friend of me who was like an older metal-mentor at my dads job told me about this group Dream Theater who had released a new album and it was literally the greatest thing ever. I went out with my dad that day to the record store and we found I&W newly released in the import bin which was twice as expensive but I (or rather my dad) bought it for me. There was something intriguing about long songs and keyboards that I wanted to hear so we took a chance. Still to this day turning that record on without knowing anything and being floored the way I was is a unique experience that I'll cherish forever. As a 15 year old at the time it impacted me a lot in terms of how I listen to music.
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I don't even understand this fanbase. :lol
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
I&W and Awake are simply awesome. I had to get used to it, but now that I am, I greatly prefer JLB unleashed to how they've tried to disguise his voice in the most recent albums. But I think it's mostly due to the music I was into before--Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Nirvana, etc. Mostly I was used to the hyper-alpha male growl voice of thrash metal or the hungover dude voice of Kurt Cobain. And I was an insecure teenager, so anyone who actually tried to sing really good sounded "wussy." You had to either growl or pretend like you didn't care to sound cool.
It still boggles my mind how someone who grew up listening to Jon Anderson (my Yes friends) can be so against JLB. They both can hit the roof of the register, but Anderson sounds like a choir boy when he does it, while JLB sounds like an opera singer. Still, they don't seem all that different to me.
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I saw the 'Pull Me Under' played on a late night metal show on TMF, my country's (back then) music channel. The metal show soon disappeared, and nowadays we don't even have a station in the basic channel packet in Holland that plays music, since MTV stopped playing music too.
I soon downloaded Images & Words and listened to some tracks, didn't click right away. So I went on to Symphony X's V, which I liked right away.
A few weeks later I found 'Scenes from a Memory' in my local library, which instantly converted me to a DT fan. I listened to that album for months almost exclusively.
Following that, I began reading DT interviews about their upcoming album 'Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence'. I bought it when it came out, and now it's my favorite DT album (along with I&W and Awake), and while SFAM still holds the honor of getting me hooked on DT, I don't really like it that much nowadays as a recorded piece of work. It is a classic, yes, but I think LSFNY is much more interesting, and that the definitive version of TSCO is on 'Score'.
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I saw the 'Pull Me Under' played on a late night metal show on TMF, my country's (back then) music channel. The metal show soon disappeared, and nowadays we don't even have a station in the basic channel packet in Holland that plays music, since MTV stopped playing music too.
I soon downloaded Images & Words and listened to some tracks, didn't click right away. So I went on to Symphony X's V, which I liked right away.
A few weeks later I found 'Scenes from a Memory' in my local library, which instantly converted me to a DT fan. I listened to that album for months almost exclusively.
Following that, I began reading DT interviews about their upcoming album 'Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence'. I bought it when it came out, and now it's my favorite DT album (along with I&W and Awake), and while SFAM still holds the honor of getting me hooked on DT, I don't really like it that much nowadays as a recorded piece of work. It is a classic, yes, but I think LSFNY is much more interesting, and that the definitive version of TSCO is on 'Score'.
Wow, you actually saw music on both TMF and MTV? That was well before my time man. Jammer :P
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Well this seems like a good thread for a first post.
I read about them in some rock magazine that was actually bagging on them, saying something to the effect of "blah blah wankery blah blah blah...only for guitar nerds". I was 12 and had picked up guitar a few months before and thought "hey, I'm a guitar nerd". I bought Images and Words and it exploded my face. Then I got SFAM, which was the most recent album at the time and it's been my favorite album since. I kinda fell out of being obsessed with them after Train of Though, but I kept up with their albums more or less. I picked up ADTOE a few months after it was released and it was absolutely awesome and now I'm way back into them. TOT thru SC have grown on me a lot since then as well.
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Very cool! Welcome aboard!
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:welcome: Mr. Duhk
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Nice, we need more ducks around here. Welcome!
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Looks like I'm the third longest fan here (fourth when Scotty gets here.)
"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
It was this very review in Kerrang that led me to DT. I was heavily into the Neo- Classical widdly guitarists and loved Rush so this album sounded right up my street. Bought the cassette version from my local record shop and the rest is history.
You are the ONLY other person I've heard about that got into them because of Kerrang.
Quote from: BlobVanDam on August 20, 2013, 09:13:25 AM
I don't even understand this fanbase.
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
Lowdz:
This.
Those other vocalists DT tried out would have massacred an awesome album. I won't have a bad word said against the Steve Perry of Prog-Metal.
That was my initial reaction. Why the hell did this band turn into Journey? Took more than 6 months to get over that.
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WSOU Pirate Radio Seaton Hall college radio station, 1994. A great day had just played golf and heard Caught in A Web. Saw my first show in 98 leaning against the stage right in front of Petrucci. Only bummer was James and Mike and just cut their hair really short and it looked retarded. Also my ears were ringing for about a week after. DT has def cost me some hearing loss over the years. Sorry going off in tangents here.
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Years back I was in a music chat room and someone suggested Take the Time to me. I listened to it online and was like wow I dont know what to make of this...I've never heard anything like this. I remember later going to Tower Records and buying Images & Words and after that it was all over for me. That album is one of the best things, musically, to ever happen to me.
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1993 a friend of mine went to DT concert in Rockfabrik Ludwigsburg Germany to their IaW Tour. He knew that I was a big Heavy Metal fan. I decided to go with him to these guys but at that time I listen more to German Trash Bands like Sodom,Kreator,Tankard and so on. Bands with Keyboards I called pop bands:)
But I thought I'll give them a try a I was hooked right at the beginning of the concert. They played so well a had a great sound I can't believe. that was the best concert in my life ok I was 18 years old but I went to much concerts listen to harder stuff. So I went home bought IaW and loved it. Last year I went to Rockfabrik Ludwigsburg again listen to Mike Portnoys new band Adrenalin Mob(we were maybe 100 people:)) a MP talled us that 20 years ago he played first time in Rockfabrik a he has a lot of memories thinking back a he asked the audience who was there 20 years ago. I raised my hands a I was the only one a he said well guy your a true fan a all people starring at me hahahahahha. so I'm now for 20 years a big DT fan a went to 42 concerts in Europe to see them live but the first one will always be very special to me.
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Looks like I'm the third longest fan here (fourth when Scotty gets here.)
"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
It was this very review in Kerrang that led me to DT. I was heavily into the Neo- Classical widdly guitarists and loved Rush so this album sounded right up my street. Bought the cassette version from my local record shop and the rest is history.
You are the ONLY other person I've heard about that got into them because of Kerrang.
Quote from: BlobVanDam on August 20, 2013, 09:13:25 AM
I don't even understand this fanbase.
IaW was just about the most awesome thing ever to hear for the first time, because of JLB.
Lowdz:
This.
Those other vocalists DT tried out would have massacred an awesome album. I won't have a bad word said against the Steve Perry of Prog-Metal.
That was my initial reaction. Why the hell did this band turn into Journey? Took more than 6 months to get over that.
Kerrang used to be such a good mag in the 80s, then it died.
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In the spring of 2005, i was a huge Rush fan, and while raving on about Neil Peart to a friend, he suggested that i should check out the drummer of this band called Dream Theater. I had heard some things with them that didn't catch my attention at the time. TGP IIRC, and maybe something else. I looked them up on the internet and saw an interview where MP described themselves as being "Metallica, Rush and Pink Floyd thrown in a microwave together and turned up until exploding". These three bands being my absolute favorites, i realized that i needed to give them another chance. Found the OIALT versions of LITS and Scarred, which totally knocked me. A few weeks later, 8VM was released, and the rest is history.
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For me it happened gradually so I can't refer to a specific moment. My brother started playing in a band and the other members were really into Dream Theater. My brother started listening to DT at home and I would often hear some bits and pieces of songs coming from his room. Back then I was mostly into regular metal so while I thought that some of the things I heard from his room were pretty cool I didn't become a fan back then. A year or so later I heard something new from his room that caught my interest and I asked him what it was. He told me that Dream Theater had just released a new album called Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence. This was probably the moment I became a fan but to be fair, this was also the first time I sat down to actively listen to one of their songs. 6DOIT was also the first DT album I ever bought.
Okay, so by then I was what I would call a casual fan. I enjoyed listening to their music and I was blown away by their songwriting skills as well as their musicianship but I was definitely not a Dream Theater fanatic. I listened to Train Of Thought when it was released but it didn't blow me away and I never actually went back to explore any of their older albums. A key moment that I actually can point to is the moment I felt as if the song I had just listened to forced me to redefine the word music and what it meant to me. This song was the first to move me to tears on the first listen and it's still to this date the only one to have ever done so. I was completely blown away and overwhelmed. It was Octavarium and I felt as if I had just opened a door that had previously been closed to me. This was when I finally decided to go back and explore their older albums and let me tell you, to have just been "awakened" and to get to experience Images And Words, Awake and Scenes From A Memory for the first time was something truly amazing. The rest is history.
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Just quoting myself from another thread:
A friend of my sister called me one day and said that he had two tickets for a band named Dream Theater and if I wanted to go with him, because the original ticket holder was sick. I asked him what they sound like, because I hadn't heard of them and he replied that they sound like a mixture of Iron Maiden (the heavyness) and Yes (the proginess). Being a fan of both Maiden and Yes I was interested but unfornately couldn't make it because of other commitments. The concert in question was the European leg of the Images and Words tour in 1993.
Some months later I was at the local record store and they had both WDADU and I&W for sale. Remembering what my sister's friend said about them I thought, well, let's give it a try and bought I&W without ever hearing a single note. This was in fact the first time thatI ever bought a record where I haven't heard anything before. I chose I&W because I liked the album cover better, lucky me ;D. I don't know what would have happened if my first record of DT would have been WDADU.
So anyway, I went home, put the disc in the player, not knowing what to expect and listened closely. Wow, cool intro. Cool guitars and now great drumming and nice keyboards. Now if only the singer is good I'm gonna like this a lot. Then James began singing and I was completely hooked. The next week I bought WDADU and Live At the Marquee and while I liked them I was a bit disappointed especially with WDADU. But I played the shit out of I&W and from then on bought every new DT album on the first day.
Then came Awake and my first DT concert on the Waking up the world tour (2/11/1995 Düsseldorf, Philipshalle). I remember that I thought that Kevin Moore had cut his hair and that he looked different from the photos in the booklet, until I had a closer look and realized that this, in fact, wasn't even Kevin Moore but someone else and I was very surprised. But then this were the days before the internet and info on bands like Dream Theater, who weren't excactly mainstream, were hard to get.
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It must be really weird to go at a gig an find out there's a stranger in place of a band member :D
Ah, the wonders of the pre-internet era :lol
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It must be really weird to go at a gig an find out there's a stranger in place of a band member :D
Ah, the wonders of the pre-internet era :lol
And when the band members were introduced I understood something like "Dirk Sheridan", it was only a few days later that I learned Derek's real name.
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I was 14 or 15 (maybe) and i used to play hacked versions of Guitar Hero 2...
In one of them, there was this song called The Dance Of Eternity that i liked very much and made me download all the discography of this band called Dream Theater.
Then, i heard Octavarium (the song), Metropolis pt.1, full SDOIT, full SFAM and they instantly turned in my favorite band at the time.
Nowadays, at the age of 20, i don't listen to them so much anymore (and progressive metal in general) but i always gonna like them ;)
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It must be really weird to go at a gig an find out there's a stranger in place of a band member :D
Ah, the wonders of the pre-internet era :lol
I remember going to see Alice Cooper on the Hey Stoopid tour expecting to see Vinnie Moore on guitar only to find an imposter in his place- Ryan Roxie I think. Not a good trade and it spoilt the whole gig for me as VM was (and is) a top 5 guitarist for me.
No surprises in the internet age.