The Official Flying Colors Thread

[Perpetual Change]

We also had a quick run-in with Mike Orlando. Fun.

Did anyone go Psychosane?

Also, I'd probably go psychosane with temptation to make audible AMOB slagging comments... Just sayin' 

[Scrub206]

No, but Nick and I made up a new freight train hand shake that's pretty gay... and were going to show Russell Allen one day.. hes going to hate us.. or love us.

[Mebert78]

Mike sang awfully off pitch the whole song.

Mike portnoy sings like a bird.

Fascinating.

I think one reason for the discrepancy in opinion is that in the main room they had pulled down his voice quite a bit. In the lounge area you could clearly hear the mix though, and it was pretty bad.

Actually, I think the reason for the discrepancy is me consuming lots of alcohol.  But seriously, ZepDT and I were talking on the ride home and we thought he sang "Fool In My Heart" pretty well, but "Repentance" wasn't as good. 

That was a fun night tho.  I feel like I met a mini DT celebrity: rumborak. 

[rumborak]

The Storm was hands-down my favorite tune last night. So energy, so powah.

EDIT: Also, wtf at the Fonz joke!

[Scrub206]

Actually, I think the reason for the discrepancy is me consuming lots of alcohol.  But seriously, ZepDT and I were talking on the ride home and we thought he sang "Fool In My Heart" pretty well, but "Repentance" wasn't as good. 

That was a fun night tho.  I feel like I met a mini DT celebrity: rumborak. 

You have bad luck with meeting celebs... You should probably get that checked out. 

[Mladen]

Portnoy's tweet yesterday:

To all the people commenting on my FC house music CD asking why no metal...I make diff playlists for different bands/tours...FC is NOT metal.

Just sharing! 

I saw the playlist on facebook, that's one awesome playlist. Can't go wrong with Weezer, Muse, Coldplay, Travis and Radiohead. 

[rumborak]

Steve Morse should take Casey to the side at some point and teach him how to prepare a guitar for a gig. His constant tuning was rather distracting.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

It's cool when you can hear a guitar solo or a guitarist's tone and know immediately who it is.  There are a couple of songs where there would be solo passages where even if I didn't know it was Steve Morse, I'd have guessed it to be him, simply because of the way some of his solos sound.  Which isn't a bad thing, of course.

[FlashCE]

Just watched the live videos on YouTube and they weren't very good live...

[Perpetual Change]

I saw a video of "The Storm" which seemed completely passionless. I saw "seemed" because you can never really tell if you weren't there.

Mike was trying to bring the energy to the performance, as always, but the rest of the band and the audience were just completely stationary. Neal Morse seemed like the most bored of all up there, too. Ultimately, I dunno, it doesn't look like a band up there. I could be wrong, but after watching some of these vids I'm kinda realizing why this is just a part-time gig.

[King Postwhore]

Rumbo, I heard you yelled out at the top of your lungs, "Piss break" at the perfect moment.

[Mladen]

There are some nice videos to be found, I'm really digging them. I hope this won't be their only tour because I really couldn't really sort it all out in order to see them live this year. Casey is a pretty cool guy onstage, and it's so weird to see Neal Morse hanging in the background not being in the center of attention, that must feel weird for him as well. 

[King Postwhore]

Yeah. I am too.  Wish I got to see them live.   I really dig the album. Hope to here more from them.

[robwebster]

There are some nice videos to be found, I'm really digging them. I hope this won't be their only tour because I really couldn't really sort it all out in order to see them live this year. Casey is a pretty cool guy onstage, and it's so weird to see Neal Morse hanging in the background not being in the center of attention, that must feel weird for him as well. 

Funny ol' performance in general - you can tell they're a new band. Just finding their roles. That's a good thing, though, I think. I like the unpolished nature. New, raw, unknown. Very nifty stuff. Vocals sound great to me. And how neat's the instrumental stuff in The Storm?

Though, Casey's not quite got the trademark JLB backstage-wander down pat.  That's fine, early days!

[Scrub206]

I saw a video of "The Storm" which seemed completely passionless. I saw "seemed" because you can never really tell if you weren't there.

Mike was trying to bring the energy to the performance, as always, but the rest of the band and the audience were just completely stationary. Neal Morse seemed like the most bored of all up there, too. Ultimately, I dunno, it doesn't look like a band up there. I could be wrong, but after watching some of these vids I'm kinda realizing why this is just a part-time gig.

Nah man, at the show i thought Neal Morse was the most energetic next to portnoy. Casey did kinda seem out of place, and his vocals weren't the strongest. but that's because I'm not used to that kind of show environment i guess? idk it looked like Larue and Morse were having a blast aswell. Casey just kinda sat there tho. he didnt seem to be all into it.

[dbrooks22]

How many people were there?

[ytserush]

I'd say it was pretty close to full. Hard to tell becuase the venue is pretty spacious with some corridors. (First time I was there, Great place to see a show.)


It was great meeting everyone again and in some cases for the first time. It was a blast.

It felt great to hear some dynamic range on the Flying Colors tunes.   I'm glad Dave LaRue was unleashed. It was so sweet to hear the songs as they were meant to be heard. It's going to be hard going back to the album now.

A live album/DVD package would be great.

So would some 2013 shows.

[ZeppelinDT]

I'd say it was pretty close to full. Hard to tell becuase the venue is pretty spacious with some corridors. (First time I was there, Great place to see a show.)

Nah... definitely wasn't full.  Two of the three seating sections weren't even open, so it wasn't anywhere near capacity.  With full seating it holds 2,100.  But with the two sections closed, I would say there were closer to maybe 1,000 - 1,200 people there.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IJybiW-KstM

Couple of observations:

1) Cool thing they did the DT tune. Really, really cool. Also, I think that out of the AA suite Repentance is the song that will less likely get rotation in future DT tours, so it's good to see it live in one way or another.

2) With all due respect, how can there be people that argue that Portnoy sings better than LaBrie? I mean yeah, his lyrics and everything, but come on.

3) I'm all for cool new arrangements in music and stuff, but Steve Morse's solo wasn't the best thing ever.

[Mosh]

This is just a hunch, and it's hard to tell with the distortion, but I think they're playing this in a different key. Probably E.

And yea, JP's solo is better. But it's hard to beat that awesome solo.

[Nel]

While this album isn't really my cup of tea, I got to hand it to Everything Changes; that's a quality tune right there.  Hopefully in time, I can get the rest of the album to click too.

[Scrub206]

IMO Portnoy should not have sang. It was still really cool to see them play it, but I feel Neal or someone should've sang. Not trying to be disrespectful but the vocals aren't the best But he did a really good job singing "Fool In My Heart"

[BlobVanDam]

This is just a hunch, and it's hard to tell with the distortion, but I think they're playing this in a different key. Probably E.

And yea, JP's solo is better. But it's hard to beat that awesome solo.

I think the original was in C# and this one is in C, down a semitone.

IMO Portnoy should not have sang. It was still really cool to see them play it, but I feel Neal or someone should've sang. Not trying to be disrespectful but the vocals aren't the best But he did a really good job singing "Fool In My Heart"

Even though they have better vocalists in the band, I can see why that song is closer to MP and he wanted to sing it himself.

[Mosh]

This is just a hunch, and it's hard to tell with the distortion, but I think they're playing this in a different key. Probably E.

And yea, JP's solo is better. But it's hard to beat that awesome solo.

I think the original was in C# and this one is in C, down a semitone.

I could've sworn that the original was in B.

[BlobVanDam]

This is just a hunch, and it's hard to tell with the distortion, but I think they're playing this in a different key. Probably E.

And yea, JP's solo is better. But it's hard to beat that awesome solo.

I think the original was in C# and this one is in C, down a semitone.

I could've sworn that the original was in B.

On second thought, the intro is in C#, the verses are in B, so I think we're both right. I think the majority of the song is in B though, so you're more correct.

[Perpetual Change]

2) With all due respect, how can there be people that argue that Portnoy sings better than LaBrie? I mean yeah, his lyrics and everything, but come on.

Kinda an "easier said than done" type of thing. I mean, if you like Portnoy's voice (which I don't) you can still easily see that he ONLY sang parts in DT which were completely in his comfort zone. Wasn't that why he'd sing in the first place? He'd hear a part of a song that was more suited to his voice than James' (allegedly), and he'd sing there. And he'd never try to sing any melody that wasn't outside his already pretty limited vocal range. 

Well, there's MP singing Repentance. It's not really in his vocal range, but there it is. 

[Mosh]

This is just a hunch, and it's hard to tell with the distortion, but I think they're playing this in a different key. Probably E.

And yea, JP's solo is better. But it's hard to beat that awesome solo.

I think the original was in C# and this one is in C, down a semitone.

I could've sworn that the original was in B.

On second thought, the intro is in C#, the verses are in B, so I think we're both right. I think the majority of the song is in B though, so you're more correct.

Haha, OK. I can live with that

[hefdaddy42]

Rumbo, I heard you yelled out at the top of your lungs, "Piss break" at the perfect moment.

[skydivingninja]

2) With all due respect, how can there be people that argue that Portnoy sings better than LaBrie? I mean yeah, his lyrics and everything, but come on.

Kinda an "easier said than done" type of thing. I mean, if you like Portnoy's voice (which I don't) you can still easily see that he ONLY sang parts in DT which were completely in his comfort zone. Wasn't that why he'd sing in the first place? He'd hear a part of a song that was more suited to his voice than James' (allegedly), and he'd sing there. And he'd never try to sing any melody that wasn't outside his already pretty limited vocal range. 

I wish he did that live too.  Then we'd have a Schmedley Wilcox that wasn't ruined by his stupid falsetto.

[Perpetual Change]

I just remembered: didn't Portnoy once say he has "perfect pitch" or something to that effect? I never really questioned it, because he always sounds right on the money with the live DVDs. But that performance was not what I'd expect "perfect pitch" to sound like.

[Mosh]

He probably has relative pitch. At least he should, as a former music major. Perfect pitch, maybe, it's quite possible.

[rumborak]

https://www.mikeportnoy.com/aboutmike/faq/answers/7.aspx

Item 8.

[ytserush]

Rumbo, I heard you yelled out at the top of your lungs, "Piss break" at the perfect moment.

Strangely, I didn't hear that.

But I did look back briefly during the song (which for the record I enjoyed) and he was gone.

Definately a moment of levity right there.




Yeah, Zep Best Buy is quite the labyrinth. I found it hard to accuarate determine just how big the crowd was.

[BlobVanDam]

I just remembered: didn't Portnoy once say he has "perfect pitch" or something to that effect? I never really questioned it, because he always sounds right on the money with the live DVDs. But that performance was not what I'd expect "perfect pitch" to sound like.

Then I'm not sure perfect pitch means what you think it means. It's to do with the ear/brain, not the voice. You can have perfect pitch, and still sing completely pitchy.
And singing is usually more difficult when you're also playing an instrument, especially drums I would imagine. MP should be used to it with his backup vocals in DT, but lead vocals are probably a bit more demanding.

[Cyclopssss]

I just remembered: didn't Portnoy once say he has "perfect pitch" or something to that effect? I never really questioned it, because he always sounds right on the money with the live DVDs. But that performance was not what I'd expect "perfect pitch" to sound like.

Then I'm not sure perfect pitch means what you think it means. It's to do with the ear/brain, not the voice. You can have perfect pitch, and still sing completely pitchy.
And singing is usually more difficult when you're also playing an instrument, especially drums I would imagine. MP should be used to it with his backup vocals in DT, but lead vocals are probably a bit more demanding.

I can tell you from experience that it is. It´s not so difficult to sing backup a couple of lines in a chorus or something, but to sing lead all the way through while playing drums? That´s quite a different kettle of fish!

Kudo´s all the same!