So.... I wasn't expecting much. I listened to the album on the way up and wasn't really any more impressed than I was the first (and only) time I listened to it. "JLMB" is a great song, but while I like "LITS", I can't stand the vocals, so it depended on how they did it.
First, I thought it odd that the two "stars" of the band - Derek and Mike - were both up in the back (where they stayed for the entire show) and were the least energetic and enthusiastic of the band. He played really well, but that was by far the least animated I've seen Mike at a show.
Second, Billy was Billy. He rocked, and unlike the videos I've seen before, he played the double neck the entire show and played both necks, not quite equally, but enough to make it more than a prop.
The stars, though, were Bumblefoot and Jeff. I knew Bumblefoot was good, but not that good. I went by myself, but in line to get in, I started talking to three guys, including a father and son, the father having seen Mike something like 25 or 30 times or something like that. None were ecstatic about LaBrie, so the one "wild card" for the Dream Theater material were the Petrucci parts. At the end of JLMB, the father turned and sort of nodded his head like "not bad, not bad". I thought he was great. I he delivered on everything, from the album material to the DT material, to the Queen song (an "acoustic" version of Save Me) to the metal of Van Halen. I had seen him with Guns and Roses, but he wasn't carrying the band like he was here. Derek was good, but it seemed as if the melodic portions of the songs were carried by Bumble, not Derek. He really was the backbone of the sound, and nailed it.
The real revelation was Jeff. He blew me away. The album material was sung note-perfect, and in fact, he breathed life into some of the parts that were for me pretty average. The other criticism I had of the album is that it is too one-dimensional; it seemed like the guitar, keys and vocals were all sort of competing for the same frequencies and it made it sound like mush to me; live not so much. I know Jeff had a pedal-board that he used periodically through the night (mostly during the a cappella part of "The Prophets Song") which added some depth, but he really cut through in a way that he didn't for me on the record. I didn't really notice the drinking aspect, except during the first encore, which he spent walking up the stairs toward the back (where there was a bar). He was making a thing about getting a drink and not having a wrist band, which I took to be funny schtick, not sincere drunk complaining. He sang the whole song just about from the audience and I thought it was just the right mix of "cool rock and roll frontman" and actual performance.
I feel a little bad about this, but it's inevitable, in my opinion: while I much prefer LaBrie's vocals on record, and he's sung some of the most iconic lines in prog-metal history, live, I believe Soto schooled him. I'd much rather listen to what I heard last night than some of the passages I've heard from LaBrie live. Plus, while the band was on stage, Soto was on stage. In my opinion, what I saw last night was what Derek - by the way, introduced by Soto as "Shit-stirinian", among other things during his little rhyme introductions - was promising. That was a well-played, energetic, even emotional at times ("Save Me" was a really moving performance) show that may be my second favorite DT/Portnoy related show I've ever seen (behind the Similitude show I saw).
Felix Martin: certainly technically impressive; nothing I saw would have been out of place on any Crimson album from 1980 onward, but it just didn't connect emotionally with me. It didn't touch me. The opening act, The Sifting, wasn't earth-shattering, but they were WAY better than they should have been for an opening act on a three-act bill in a club with 500, 750 people tops. Singer was a little over the top, and he has to work on his sound (he was throwing shapes like a madman, but it was as if his guitar wasn't plugged in. Loses it's effect!) but I would check them out again.
Poll
Topic: Sons of Apollo (feat. Portnoy & Sherinian) (Read 468082 times)