I know I'm nearly a week late, but here are my thoughts about the Montreal show (also posted in that thread):
Right off the bat, however, I have to say that we made it onto Jordan's iPhone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WohhaUZYs_UI bussed from Ottawa to the Montreal show with setrataeso, ZachyDou, Space Invader, and another friend. By sheer luck, we stumbled into Dream Theater doing a signing at the HMV on St. Catherine's and were one of the last people in line before they cut it off. From 0:50 in the video and onwards, you can see me (tall, long hair, grey shirt), setrataeso (tall, black hair), and ZachyDou (shorter, glasses). We were excited to be on the iPhone but we totally froze when she asked if we had messages. So embarassing.
Not having known that Dream Theater would be there, I didn't have anything for them to sign, so I bought a copy of Awake (my favourite album). I had to laugh at Rudess signing for the girl in front of us. She was in Montreal on holidays and although she wasn't a Dream Theater fan, she decided to pick up a few CDs to get signed for her friends back home in Italy. Not knowing anything about the band, she bought Images and Words, Awake, and Falling into Infinity and asked them to be signed. When it came for Rudess to sign them, he paused and then exclaimed "I'm not on
any of these!" and she started blushing like crazy.
I got to shake each of the band members' hands (except for Mike, who gave me props) and I took a picture of each of them. I asked Jordan to do his Prime Cuts face (see below), but he seemed baffled when I tried to explain it. He told me my request was too complicated and that I was holding up the line, so I ended up just taking a normal one. I'll post pictures from the whole night later.
The show was, of course, incredible. It was my first time seeing Dream Theater live, and it was totally worth the trek. Zappa Plays Zappa were phenomenal and I thoroughly enjoyed the other two bands as well. I share a lot of setrataeso's opinions, particularly those about A Nightmare to Remember, Solitary Shell, and The Dance of Eternity. I had been staying away from the forums as much as possible so that I could keep the setlist as secret as possible, and let me say that I was absolutely stunned by them playing The Dance of Eternity and One Last Time. They were the biggest and best surprises of the night for me given how much I love both of them and how rare they are to hear live on their own. The setlist did seem short, but I would have picked TDoE/OLT over Erotomania/Voices anytime.
While As I Am was a bit of a disappointing closer (mostly because it works so much better as an opener), they more than made up for it with a great performance of The Count of Tuscany as the encore. Portnoy actually kept the crowd waiting a little longer than usual so that he could conduct for the fans as we could belted out the famous "Olé" chant that has become synonymous with Montreal and the Bell Centre. After the encore, hearing him honestly say that we were the best crowd of the tour to date was a great way to end the night. We met up with Blind_FaithX and one of his friends after the show to chill for a bit, and then headed back to Ottawa the next day.
In short, it was definitely A Night
mare to Remember!