Theater of Dreams
So, after seeing local tribute and original bands for many years now, I finally saw my first 'real' gig, Dream Theater in Wembley Arena. I don't think it was what I expected, but a very worthwhile experience, and something I'd like to do from time to time.
We booked it months and months ago, so of course, there were three tickets for myself, Shanna and Graham. Since Shanna decided to run away, her place came under question as the time drew closer; for a while I thought she might still be coming with us even in the middle of all this mess, but I knew I should find somebody else just in case she didn't. The first person who came to mind was Connor, so I let him know that although it wasn't certain, there might be a free ticket for him. He seemed to like that idea, and when it got down to only a week to go Shanna was in her prime in terms of suckage, so I told him we'd take him. It didn't make much difference to the travel plans, but it was much to late to change the hotel booking so we'd have to share a room. In that respect, it was lucky that I decided to take a family member instead of another friend.
The night before was my wedding anniversary, the Friday that Shanna got the crazy notition it would be a good idea to threaten me, and for the evening I went down to the Bridge House for a drink with Graham. I hadn't realised it when I suggested it, but I remembered when we got there that it'd been quite a long time since I'd been there. Exactly one year, in fact; the last time I was there for a meal with family after getting married. Surprisingly, it didn't bother me as much as I'd have expected. It was actually quite a nice evening, and even Shanna's threats were just something to laugh about with Graham. Unfortunately I'd also forgotten that Friday night is 'jazz night' down there, and the band happened to be setting up right where the nice leather sofas are where we chose to sit. Once they actually started playing though, we moved away to the other end, and could sufficiently ignore them. We didn't stay too late; had a nice walk back up the road to Graham's house, and I ended up staying the night there.
Mum came the next morning and picked us up, since she would've been bringing Connor over to my house anyway. I'd asked for him to come a few hours before we had to leave because we wanted to have some breakfast and get a few other things ready first. We stopped at Iceland on the way over and I ran in quickly to buy some bacon, rolls and milk. When we got home I took a shower and packed a change of clothes, and then we had some bacon rolls and tea. I then started transferring some music onto an MP3 player I'd borrowed from Dave, but apparently didn't keep very good track of the time. It was quite late when I called a taxi, and it didn't arrive very fast either, but I still hoped he would get us there in time. However, we got unlucky there and I even had to explain where 'Travel Interchange' was (for the non-local, everybody knows where Travel Interchange is), and he drove there rather slowly. We arrived just to see our coach pulling away, so had to go into the office to try and get the tickets exchanged for the next available coach. We may've just about made it if the taxi journey had gone better, but most of the blame was mine for leaving it so late to try transfering music, so I paid the £5 fee to change the tickets. The next coach was an hour later, and I wanted to just stay there and wait, but Graham insisted on going over the road to a bar to play pool and Connor didn't care but agreed that anything was better than nothing, and so we ended up going. When we got there though, they told us we all had to have ID to show we were 21 even if we weren't drinking. Graham and I did happen to have our ID with us, but Connor is only 14, so we had to leave. We walked down towards Lansdowne and up to the clifftop, and then back again, which took up about the right amount of time.
The journey was fine until we entered the outskirts of London and the surroundings started to become familiar. Then it hurt me. It's actually quite interesting to me; people have commented how I probably need to get out of the flat because it's full of memories, but I don't have much of a problem being at home. Yeah I shared it with Shanna, but I was there before she was here, and it was also for me as well as her. London however, I'd been to several times over the past months, and each time only because of Shanna. Because of this, it's now entirely associated with her and nothing else, and adding that I never really liked the place anyway, it was a horrible feeling to be going there without her, and the closer we got to Victoria the stronger the feeling became. It was a kind of panic; I felt I needed to get away from all these people, these surroundings, and be alone and home and safe.
Also not helping was that there was some kind of problem going on at Cali, and Abi and Darius kept calling me and expecting me to sort it out. I did try as much as I could on the phone, but I couldn't think very well and they're not particularly good at explaining problems, so I couldn't help them. They kept calling regardless though, Abi at least; I'm sure he believes I deliberately withhold some secret solution that can fix everything. I'd already told him I couldn't help, but he called back and asked me to try some 'different codes'. They also pick up these words and phrases that they don't really know how to use, and so I get told that the problem is 'probably the IP number' and other such meaningless things. The calls went right on up until we were actually leaving for the Arena later, at which point I just had to tell them that they couldn't call anymore, and if there was still a problem they'd have to call out a technician from somewhere. By that point it'd been going on for hours, and probably cost them much more in confusion and lost orders than it would have cost to call someone out right at the start when I said I couldn't help.
Anyway, I kind of took the lead when we arrived in Victoria, having been there far too much recently and neither Connor nor Graham knowing the area. The underground had decided to close the line that we intended to take, so we had to find an alternate route and change trains. We got to Wembley without a problem though, and found the hotel quite easily from there.
I'd been half-prepared to deal with some comment regarding why we had a single and double room booked but were two men and a boy, but either they didn't notice or care or just wisely decided to keep quiet. The hotel was an insane maze of corridoors and stairs like none I've ever seen before; the door numbers didn't seem to follow in any direction or pattern, but more distributed randomly. We eventually found them though, and offloaded our stuff and decided to get started for the arena right away. There was a taxi office right outside the hotel, but when we asked for a taxi there they just laughed and said it'd be quicker to walk. Indeed, it turned out to be just up the road, though we did manage to take the longest route possible and unnecessarily walk entirely around the stadium only to find that the arena was only a bit further along from where we'd started. Still, we made it, and were still an hour or so early as intended, and went to find their restaurant which supposedly filled the entire upper floor. It turned out to be closed, but the 'bar' was open and we went there instead. Hardly the image of a 'bar' I'd been imaginging - it was probably one of the nicest places I've ever eaten in, and the food and service was excellent to go with it.
Eventually it was time to go in, so we joined the mass of people making their way to their seats. I led us all off down the wrong aisle to begin with, but then found the correct one and settled into our seats. The support act, Symphony X came on before long, and it was then that I became properly aware of the size and atmosphere of the place. So many thousands of people, all here to enjoy the show... I can't describe what's good about it, but it is something special, and adds hugely to the experience. Then Symphony X started playing, and I was shocked - the sound was bad! I'd heard that the Arena was regarded as the best in the country, but what I was hearing was very poor.
Luckily (for us, anyway - not so good for the support) it was just their kit. The main sound system had obviously been set up for Dream Theater, so Symphony X were having to use their own equipment, which clearly wasn't desgined for somewhere quite as big as that place. I wasn't much impressed by them anyway; a few songs were okay, but I'd already sampled them before I came and hadn't liked it much, and they weren't who I was here to see. Once they'd finished and started moving off though, somebody tested out a bit of guitar and a couple of hits on the drums behind the curtain, and I could tell just from that that the sound was far superior. Indeed, after a short break Dream Theater came on, and then I was impressed. The sound, whilst still admittedly not the best I'd ever heard, was damn good considering where we were sitting in relation to the stage, the atmosphere intensified, and of course the incredible skill of the band made it an amazing show.
I'd expected them to focus mainly on the recent album, and indeed the one that the tour was to support, but they actually played songs not only from that or their recent albums, but from all over their long career, right back to some of their earliest. They didn't play one I was hoping for in particular, 'Disappear', but they did play two others I hadn't expected at all, 'Surrounded' and 'Trial Of Tears', which more than made up for it. The total number of songs played wasn't that many, but you have to remember that most are easily ten to fifteen minutes long, especially when you add their constant improvised additions, and there was no break, so it was plenty long enough. If I've learnt one thing for next time though, it's don't bother with seating, get down there on the floor! I'd been aprehensive about doing so for my first time, not knowing quite wat to expect, but having seen it, that's definately where I wanted to be. Not only would we be in front of the stage, but in the midst of the excitement of the crowd, and no doubt recieve the very best of the sound as well.
Graham somehow managed to fall asleep for a part of it. He'd always said that Dream Theater makes him tired, and we were all tired anyway, but how he could actually get to sleep in a place like that, and with the noise, I have no idea.
When the show was over, we went downstairs and bought some merchandise. It was unreasonably expensive, of course, but it's just something you have to do. Connor and I both bought a t-shirt and went to find Graham who'd wandered outside to smoke after saying he wasn't going to buy anything. When we found him though, he'd changed his mind and bought one anyway. I'd hoped to get a taxi back to the hotel, but there weren't any making themselves obvious and Graham was keen to walk anyway, so we did. We got back just after midnight, and despite being incredibly tired, stayed up for another few hours watching television in my room. That too, is just something we have to do. It's a tradition Graham and I have, that whenever we travel somewhere and stay in a hotel, we must find something really crappy to watch on television in order to make the event complete. We weren't disappointed: there was a really bad show about some rappers in Birmingham with the worst acting imagineable, and a little too much use of 'yo'. After that, we went to bed.
That was the second time the feeling came back to me. The panic had faded once we actually arrived at Victoria and started the second phase of travelling to Wembley, mainly because the place is so busy and you have to concentrate on where you're going, but now another more profound sadness descended upon me. I went into the bathroom to wash, and when I came back out, there in the double bed was my brother not my wife. Memories of staying with Shanna in London the last time we were up here, to see Rachel, came back to me. I lay on the bed, plugged my headphones into the MP3 player and laid them next to the pillow, and listened to Counting Crows as I tried to get to sleep. It took me eventually.
When the morning came, I think all of us just wanted to get home as soon as possible. We made our way to the tube station, only to find that all southbound services (everything, pretty much, since they only have on line there and there's not much to the north) were cancelled, so we had to find where the replacement bus services was running from. We made it back to Victoria with a lot of time to spare, so we ate, much against Graham's will, at Subway, and then walked round the corner and found somewhere that would've been better. No point in eating again, but we ordered some tea and sat in their leather chairs to pass a bit more time before heading for the coach station.
I was for some reason convinced we needed gate 20, so I led us all to the far end of the coach station only to realise that was the gate for Oxford, which Shanna and I had used last time because we missed the one for Bournemouth. We walked back the way we'd came and found the right place. There was a group by the doors all wearing Dream Theater t-shirts like we myself and Connor were, and when they saw us one of them pointed us out to the rest of them, so we went over and said hello. That was quite an interesting experience in itself, something I haven't really done before. Suppose a good reason to talk to total strangers doesn't often present itself, but since it was clear we were in London for the same reason, it somehow seemed appropriate to start a conversation about it. We didn't speak much after we got on the coach, and I've no idea where they went when we arrived back home, but it was interesting to talk for a while we were waiting to leave.
The journey home wasn't a particularly nice one either. I was glad to be returning, but drawing into Bournemouth and seeing the sign outside Asda, the one Shanna took a picture of, made me feel almost as bad as entering London. The rest of the time was kind of peaceful, though equally depressing. I spent most of it staring at the clouds, which were unusually beautiful. Mum met us at Travel Interchange and dropped Graham and I back at the flat before taking Connor on home. Not long after that was when Rachel came online and told me of Shanna's incredible accusations, so that is the hole I left in that entry entirely filled.
It was a great show and I'm glad we saw it, though I did question for a while whether it was worth all the effort involved. It cost a lot of money and took a lot of time to travel to and stay in London, for only a few hours of music... but I think that once in a while, it's definately worth doing. I was also being a little unfair in my judgement, because most of the negative feelings I had were realted to Shanna, not the trip itself - if she hadn't gone insane and run away, and the three of us had gone together as planned, I probably would have enjoyed all of it a lot more.
Graham and I are already talking about seeing Counting Crows or The Wallflowers live, although to do that we know we will have to go to America. We're willing to do it though, and since Rachel has said we're welcome to go and stay with her, if we see they're playing in that area I think we'll take the opportunity and go. Rediculously expensive just for a gig, but got to just live sometimes, eh?
We booked it months and months ago, so of course, there were three tickets for myself, Shanna and Graham. Since Shanna decided to run away, her place came under question as the time drew closer; for a while I thought she might still be coming with us even in the middle of all this mess, but I knew I should find somebody else just in case she didn't. The first person who came to mind was Connor, so I let him know that although it wasn't certain, there might be a free ticket for him. He seemed to like that idea, and when it got down to only a week to go Shanna was in her prime in terms of suckage, so I told him we'd take him. It didn't make much difference to the travel plans, but it was much to late to change the hotel booking so we'd have to share a room. In that respect, it was lucky that I decided to take a family member instead of another friend.
The night before was my wedding anniversary, the Friday that Shanna got the crazy notition it would be a good idea to threaten me, and for the evening I went down to the Bridge House for a drink with Graham. I hadn't realised it when I suggested it, but I remembered when we got there that it'd been quite a long time since I'd been there. Exactly one year, in fact; the last time I was there for a meal with family after getting married. Surprisingly, it didn't bother me as much as I'd have expected. It was actually quite a nice evening, and even Shanna's threats were just something to laugh about with Graham. Unfortunately I'd also forgotten that Friday night is 'jazz night' down there, and the band happened to be setting up right where the nice leather sofas are where we chose to sit. Once they actually started playing though, we moved away to the other end, and could sufficiently ignore them. We didn't stay too late; had a nice walk back up the road to Graham's house, and I ended up staying the night there.
Mum came the next morning and picked us up, since she would've been bringing Connor over to my house anyway. I'd asked for him to come a few hours before we had to leave because we wanted to have some breakfast and get a few other things ready first. We stopped at Iceland on the way over and I ran in quickly to buy some bacon, rolls and milk. When we got home I took a shower and packed a change of clothes, and then we had some bacon rolls and tea. I then started transferring some music onto an MP3 player I'd borrowed from Dave, but apparently didn't keep very good track of the time. It was quite late when I called a taxi, and it didn't arrive very fast either, but I still hoped he would get us there in time. However, we got unlucky there and I even had to explain where 'Travel Interchange' was (for the non-local, everybody knows where Travel Interchange is), and he drove there rather slowly. We arrived just to see our coach pulling away, so had to go into the office to try and get the tickets exchanged for the next available coach. We may've just about made it if the taxi journey had gone better, but most of the blame was mine for leaving it so late to try transfering music, so I paid the £5 fee to change the tickets. The next coach was an hour later, and I wanted to just stay there and wait, but Graham insisted on going over the road to a bar to play pool and Connor didn't care but agreed that anything was better than nothing, and so we ended up going. When we got there though, they told us we all had to have ID to show we were 21 even if we weren't drinking. Graham and I did happen to have our ID with us, but Connor is only 14, so we had to leave. We walked down towards Lansdowne and up to the clifftop, and then back again, which took up about the right amount of time.
The journey was fine until we entered the outskirts of London and the surroundings started to become familiar. Then it hurt me. It's actually quite interesting to me; people have commented how I probably need to get out of the flat because it's full of memories, but I don't have much of a problem being at home. Yeah I shared it with Shanna, but I was there before she was here, and it was also for me as well as her. London however, I'd been to several times over the past months, and each time only because of Shanna. Because of this, it's now entirely associated with her and nothing else, and adding that I never really liked the place anyway, it was a horrible feeling to be going there without her, and the closer we got to Victoria the stronger the feeling became. It was a kind of panic; I felt I needed to get away from all these people, these surroundings, and be alone and home and safe.
Also not helping was that there was some kind of problem going on at Cali, and Abi and Darius kept calling me and expecting me to sort it out. I did try as much as I could on the phone, but I couldn't think very well and they're not particularly good at explaining problems, so I couldn't help them. They kept calling regardless though, Abi at least; I'm sure he believes I deliberately withhold some secret solution that can fix everything. I'd already told him I couldn't help, but he called back and asked me to try some 'different codes'. They also pick up these words and phrases that they don't really know how to use, and so I get told that the problem is 'probably the IP number' and other such meaningless things. The calls went right on up until we were actually leaving for the Arena later, at which point I just had to tell them that they couldn't call anymore, and if there was still a problem they'd have to call out a technician from somewhere. By that point it'd been going on for hours, and probably cost them much more in confusion and lost orders than it would have cost to call someone out right at the start when I said I couldn't help.
Anyway, I kind of took the lead when we arrived in Victoria, having been there far too much recently and neither Connor nor Graham knowing the area. The underground had decided to close the line that we intended to take, so we had to find an alternate route and change trains. We got to Wembley without a problem though, and found the hotel quite easily from there.
I'd been half-prepared to deal with some comment regarding why we had a single and double room booked but were two men and a boy, but either they didn't notice or care or just wisely decided to keep quiet. The hotel was an insane maze of corridoors and stairs like none I've ever seen before; the door numbers didn't seem to follow in any direction or pattern, but more distributed randomly. We eventually found them though, and offloaded our stuff and decided to get started for the arena right away. There was a taxi office right outside the hotel, but when we asked for a taxi there they just laughed and said it'd be quicker to walk. Indeed, it turned out to be just up the road, though we did manage to take the longest route possible and unnecessarily walk entirely around the stadium only to find that the arena was only a bit further along from where we'd started. Still, we made it, and were still an hour or so early as intended, and went to find their restaurant which supposedly filled the entire upper floor. It turned out to be closed, but the 'bar' was open and we went there instead. Hardly the image of a 'bar' I'd been imaginging - it was probably one of the nicest places I've ever eaten in, and the food and service was excellent to go with it.
Eventually it was time to go in, so we joined the mass of people making their way to their seats. I led us all off down the wrong aisle to begin with, but then found the correct one and settled into our seats. The support act, Symphony X came on before long, and it was then that I became properly aware of the size and atmosphere of the place. So many thousands of people, all here to enjoy the show... I can't describe what's good about it, but it is something special, and adds hugely to the experience. Then Symphony X started playing, and I was shocked - the sound was bad! I'd heard that the Arena was regarded as the best in the country, but what I was hearing was very poor.
Luckily (for us, anyway - not so good for the support) it was just their kit. The main sound system had obviously been set up for Dream Theater, so Symphony X were having to use their own equipment, which clearly wasn't desgined for somewhere quite as big as that place. I wasn't much impressed by them anyway; a few songs were okay, but I'd already sampled them before I came and hadn't liked it much, and they weren't who I was here to see. Once they'd finished and started moving off though, somebody tested out a bit of guitar and a couple of hits on the drums behind the curtain, and I could tell just from that that the sound was far superior. Indeed, after a short break Dream Theater came on, and then I was impressed. The sound, whilst still admittedly not the best I'd ever heard, was damn good considering where we were sitting in relation to the stage, the atmosphere intensified, and of course the incredible skill of the band made it an amazing show.
I'd expected them to focus mainly on the recent album, and indeed the one that the tour was to support, but they actually played songs not only from that or their recent albums, but from all over their long career, right back to some of their earliest. They didn't play one I was hoping for in particular, 'Disappear', but they did play two others I hadn't expected at all, 'Surrounded' and 'Trial Of Tears', which more than made up for it. The total number of songs played wasn't that many, but you have to remember that most are easily ten to fifteen minutes long, especially when you add their constant improvised additions, and there was no break, so it was plenty long enough. If I've learnt one thing for next time though, it's don't bother with seating, get down there on the floor! I'd been aprehensive about doing so for my first time, not knowing quite wat to expect, but having seen it, that's definately where I wanted to be. Not only would we be in front of the stage, but in the midst of the excitement of the crowd, and no doubt recieve the very best of the sound as well.
Graham somehow managed to fall asleep for a part of it. He'd always said that Dream Theater makes him tired, and we were all tired anyway, but how he could actually get to sleep in a place like that, and with the noise, I have no idea.
When the show was over, we went downstairs and bought some merchandise. It was unreasonably expensive, of course, but it's just something you have to do. Connor and I both bought a t-shirt and went to find Graham who'd wandered outside to smoke after saying he wasn't going to buy anything. When we found him though, he'd changed his mind and bought one anyway. I'd hoped to get a taxi back to the hotel, but there weren't any making themselves obvious and Graham was keen to walk anyway, so we did. We got back just after midnight, and despite being incredibly tired, stayed up for another few hours watching television in my room. That too, is just something we have to do. It's a tradition Graham and I have, that whenever we travel somewhere and stay in a hotel, we must find something really crappy to watch on television in order to make the event complete. We weren't disappointed: there was a really bad show about some rappers in Birmingham with the worst acting imagineable, and a little too much use of 'yo'. After that, we went to bed.
That was the second time the feeling came back to me. The panic had faded once we actually arrived at Victoria and started the second phase of travelling to Wembley, mainly because the place is so busy and you have to concentrate on where you're going, but now another more profound sadness descended upon me. I went into the bathroom to wash, and when I came back out, there in the double bed was my brother not my wife. Memories of staying with Shanna in London the last time we were up here, to see Rachel, came back to me. I lay on the bed, plugged my headphones into the MP3 player and laid them next to the pillow, and listened to Counting Crows as I tried to get to sleep. It took me eventually.
When the morning came, I think all of us just wanted to get home as soon as possible. We made our way to the tube station, only to find that all southbound services (everything, pretty much, since they only have on line there and there's not much to the north) were cancelled, so we had to find where the replacement bus services was running from. We made it back to Victoria with a lot of time to spare, so we ate, much against Graham's will, at Subway, and then walked round the corner and found somewhere that would've been better. No point in eating again, but we ordered some tea and sat in their leather chairs to pass a bit more time before heading for the coach station.
I was for some reason convinced we needed gate 20, so I led us all to the far end of the coach station only to realise that was the gate for Oxford, which Shanna and I had used last time because we missed the one for Bournemouth. We walked back the way we'd came and found the right place. There was a group by the doors all wearing Dream Theater t-shirts like we myself and Connor were, and when they saw us one of them pointed us out to the rest of them, so we went over and said hello. That was quite an interesting experience in itself, something I haven't really done before. Suppose a good reason to talk to total strangers doesn't often present itself, but since it was clear we were in London for the same reason, it somehow seemed appropriate to start a conversation about it. We didn't speak much after we got on the coach, and I've no idea where they went when we arrived back home, but it was interesting to talk for a while we were waiting to leave.
The journey home wasn't a particularly nice one either. I was glad to be returning, but drawing into Bournemouth and seeing the sign outside Asda, the one Shanna took a picture of, made me feel almost as bad as entering London. The rest of the time was kind of peaceful, though equally depressing. I spent most of it staring at the clouds, which were unusually beautiful. Mum met us at Travel Interchange and dropped Graham and I back at the flat before taking Connor on home. Not long after that was when Rachel came online and told me of Shanna's incredible accusations, so that is the hole I left in that entry entirely filled.
It was a great show and I'm glad we saw it, though I did question for a while whether it was worth all the effort involved. It cost a lot of money and took a lot of time to travel to and stay in London, for only a few hours of music... but I think that once in a while, it's definately worth doing. I was also being a little unfair in my judgement, because most of the negative feelings I had were realted to Shanna, not the trip itself - if she hadn't gone insane and run away, and the three of us had gone together as planned, I probably would have enjoyed all of it a lot more.
Graham and I are already talking about seeing Counting Crows or The Wallflowers live, although to do that we know we will have to go to America. We're willing to do it though, and since Rachel has said we're welcome to go and stay with her, if we see they're playing in that area I think we'll take the opportunity and go. Rediculously expensive just for a gig, but got to just live sometimes, eh?