Some would say Portnoy was behind some of it, to my lack of knowledge at the time, but the point was that I didn't need to think, "Man, there is this guy in the band doing all of this stuff," to think the band was special. The music alone was what made it so special.
Without question, it was the music that got my attention.
But Portnoy stood out from the beginning (for me, the beginning being Images and Words tour). He has a personality trait that is very rare (and to be envied). He remembers people. And not like some card trick where he just has a good memory. He remembers you in ways that are, quite frankly, surprising.
From I&W to SFAM, I was the obsessed fan. DT shows: I must attend all local shows. If that meant one in Orange County, a back to back in Los Angeles and one in Ventura County, I'm rearranging my life around it and making a day out of it (showing up way too early and staying after way too late). Guitar clinics and drum clinics: I'm so there. NAMM show appearance and NAMM show concerts, I will exhaust the friend of a friend of a relative's son's connection to go there. LTE shows: I have to sneak my video camera in.
And every event (except the guitar clinics), I'd run into Portnoy. I'd run into the other members, but Portnoy was the consistent run in. And despite the fact that these were just fan-musician run ins, Portnoy would say "hey Calvin!!!" before I even got a word out. And he'd bring up stuff I posted on ytsejam or other things that the average musician person would ever notice, let alone recall. And it didn't come off as some strategic promotion plan. It didn't seem like any kind of forced plan at all with some hidden agenda. It seemed very natural and sincere.
The other band members just don't have that trait (except maybe Sherinian, but not to Portnoy's degree). And that isn't a knock on them because most don't have that. I don't have that. I wish I did. I've tried to force it because it is a desired trait, but it turns detrimental to other positive traits I have. Quite frankly, you either have it or you don't.
And I'm going to stop right there because I could go on ... but sometimes I roll my eyes at myself when I talk too much about a band outside of the songs.
Great post, and it brings a lot to the table for someone like me, who hasn't had the opportunity to see them live. I've only gotten to see DT once, but I've been a fan of the band since the I&W days.
You're right, that is just apparently something that MP has that the other members don't (although, to be fair, I have heard similar stories about Jordan).
For me, my relationship with the band has been remote. I get all the CDs on release day, and I have all the live releases, and I have tons of bootlegs.
Whenever there is a change of membership, it isn't just a plug-and-play. The entire group dynamic changes.
Frankly, the other four members may have been a little naive when making announcements about taking up the stuff that MP was doing. That's what I expected.
Some of the things that MP contributed outside of the actual music was fantastic (his constant information stream about DT projects, his setlist variation), but some got kind of old too (his occasional outbursts, his insistence on playing cover songs). So, for fans like me, there was good and not-so-good, which is fine; there is no such thing as perfection.
For me, the musicians are so good, that live shows are ALWAYS going to be entertaining. So the most important thing to me is what is also the most important thing to the current incarnation of the band: the music they write and record. And that had definitely started to slip (IMO) toward the end of the MP regime. And that has dramatically improve with the two albums the band has created since his departure.
I certainly miss the great things that MP contributed to the band, but those things were never the things that made DT my favorite band - those things were bonuses. The music is what made DT my favorite band, and frankly I wouldn't know any other way to judge a band.
The music is the thing.
So I think that MP was right that THAT incarnation of DT had run its course for a while, because the music on the last 2 albums (really, the last THREE albums other than the title track of
Octavarium) had taken a nose dive from their previous glories. Sure, good things here and there, but for me, the last album from the Portnoy era that was really good in its entirety was
Train of Thought.
I'm not saying the MP was the problem, but with him gone, the band certainly has has a renewed enthusiasm and spirit. And I MUCH prefer the last two albums from the band to the previous three. And if the tradeoff for that vastly improved music is that we don't get some of the great things that MP contributed, I'm OK with that.
But if they could bring back the rotating setlists, that would be sweet.
All of that is to say that our viewpoint on this matter is largely shaped by our individual experience of the band and its output and what is important to us as individuals. There is no right or wrong, there are only different perspectives.