IIRC, the Asian leg of that tour was before the US leg, and those songs were only played in the US leg, not the whole tour.
Oh right.
Damn, that makes it even more annoying, honestly. They added it at the very last minute, for just a couple of shows. MANNN. If only they'd thought of it from the beginning. I could've seen them play it in London... Ah well. I can still hope they bring it back someday.
This is all quite absurd. The "babies in the audience" did sit through it. They just didn't enjoy it, and the band didn't like having a song in the set that the majority of the audience didn't know and wasn't enjoying, and which their singer wasn't performing well. "People who care about seeing shows with unique songs" are very much in the minority, and I don't agree that shows should be tailored to such a minority.
The way I see it, as long as they introduce "Hey guys, here's a song we've never played live before but we wrote for Images And Words, about the same time as A Change Of Seasons, and the label cut it", the audience should at least appreciate it. Certainly, they should at least appreciate it as much as the Score audience appreicated Raise The Knife...
Naturally, the whole show shouldn't be catered to the hardcore fans only (unless it's a special case like the Rotterdam '98 fan club show), that's the mistake Portnoy made with the When Dream And Day Reunite show in 2004 and their full album cover shows (even though I love the WDADR DVD); most fans just don't care and taking up a full hour of the setlist with something only the really hardcore fans will like is a bad idea. But, dropping a rarity here or there is a great treat for the hardcores, and at least a neat novelty to the newbies. It's only one song in the set, and it's not like it was taking the place of anything else, on the 2017 tour!
Plus, most casual fans don't know When Dream And Day Unite very well at all, and yet A Fortune In Lies and YtseJam saw plenty of play in 2011/2012, and Afterlife got played throughout 2015. To Live Forever is another non-album track, and got played in 2011 and 2017...
No one is suggesting the next tour should be a whole tour of Rotterdam '98-type shows (or even WDADR or the Dark Side Of The Moon '05 show)*, but dropping a Don't Look Past Me, a Rase The Knife, or a Killing Hand here or there in the setlist would be great to have among all the more conventional choices, and it's a
damn shame DLPM was only so brief an inclusion on the 2017 tour.
*
(Granted, I did imply this in my earlier post, but really I just want to see non-album and obscure tracks get played now and then. Just one super obscure thing per tour would be nice. Wouldn't hog the show and alienate fans,but would be great for us hardcores)