(no subject)
So, good times.
This weekend was such a mind-numbingly awesome experience that my brain had to crawl out of my ear for a smoke break earlier today, just to recover from the paroxysms of rapture I've been experiencing, flashbacks to the event itself.
It all began Saturday.
I had tickets to the Dream Theater concert at the amphitheater; this was, in and of itself, enough to make my weekend an unqualified success even if I got shot in the testicles on Sunday, because Dream Theater is my favorite band and they are somehow much, much better live than they are in the studio (and they're outstanding in the studio).
But this was not all. I scored second-row seats to this concert, and backstage passes for myself and my friend Jake, who came along with me on my adventurous trip TO the amphitheater.
But I get ahead of myself.
I grabbed Jake and we went downtown; I ended up parking across the street from the amphitheater at... it must have been the CNE, since it was a giant carnival in the middle of the street by the soccer field. Anyway, I had no idea that there was a carnival, so that was a pleasant surprise. More pleasant was when I flashed my ticket and only had to pay a parking charge and not admission; the glaze-eyed apathy of the attendant was outstanding, since I didn't even show her anything other than what might have been a ticket and she waved me through. It simply didn't matter enough to check, since I put forth the effort of pretending to have something. In reality, I suspect that since I had admission to the concert, I had admission to the Ex, since Ontario Place was connected and blah blah, it's just that she was so lazy and simply didn't care enough to confirm the details that made it amusing.
So we parked by the Tilt-and-Whirl and made our way through the carnival, went on a food-finding odyssey and made it back in time to sort through a crazy ticket scandal and then get into the concert. We watched Into Eternity's first song, then realized we needed to be backstage and vanished around back to the boat, where we met Dream Theater. This was awesome.
We got some pictures taken with them, a whack of autographs, got to talk to them... I even learned that they're cutting a new disc from some old jams left off of Liquid Tension Experiment 1 and 2 (from 10 years ago); those discs were freaking AWESOME... No Petrucci, just Tony Levin, Mike Portnoy and Jordan Rudess, but it should still be sweet. There's even talk of a potential Liquid Tension Experiment 3 with the whole group, potentially when Rudess' contract with Magna "We suck crap" Carta is finished; Tony Levin experessed interest in doing another one not long ago, which is awesome.
After the signings and stuff, we came back to see the entirety of Redemption's set.
Oytamarind was right; it was REALLY difficult to hear their songs because the sound guy shat his brain and the drummer was going on a whacked out acid trip with his double-bass routines. I could barely here the bassist and he looked like he was doing some crazy ass riffs, pulling out the mad tapping action and everything. They had a rhythm guitarist and a lead guitarist; the rhythm guitarist actually busted out some solos in most of the songs and was better than the lead guy, who mostly just wailed away with boring hammer-on/pull-off solos along the high E string in the same key for each song. Still, despite the various things that went wrong, they were entertaining enough for me to go out and buy their two latest CDs on Amazon.ca when I purchased Dream Theater's new disc, Systematic Chaos. I wanna hear Redemption with proper mixing. Their singer was kinda crappy; he was nice enough as a front man in terms of giving some love to his bandmates and not forgetting the city's name and stuff (lol) but he wasn't the greatest singer. Still, the rhythm guitar and bass should be enough to keep them entertaining.
Also, they pulled out the opening riff from Rush's 'YYZ' in the middle of one of their songs, to the sheer glee of the crowd. That alone was sufficient to make them a hit. I wonder if they were hand-picked by DT to join them? Probably.
So Dream Theater comes on and completely dominates.
Constant Motion - They opened with one of the songs from Systematic Chaos, their new disc. As Oy noted, Portnoy's backing lyrics were better than previously, certainly better than on the studio version. It was a good opener.
Never Enough - Off of Octavarium, this was pretty good. I don't remember them playing it at Massey Hall or when they came for Gigantour, so it was kind of neat.
Blind Faith - Off of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, this continued the trend of Dream Theater playing more recent stuff. Rudess had a nutty, extra-long solo that was a real treat.
Surrounded - This one's from Images and Words, so they jumped several albums back into their past to pull this one out. They changed it though and messed around with some really sweet guitar stuff that Petrucci played beautifully. He spent most of the concert owning every other guitarist I've ever seen live with his performance.
After this, Jordan Rudess decided to go absolutely insane; he pulled out the crazy solo action on his Continuum pad and all his other gear and then he busts out this keyboard-guitar thing and goes absolutely batty, rolling up and down the stage with this "Fuckin' HELL, I'm good!" grin all over his face as he blazes away the dirtiest keytar solo; so good... That must be a gigantic pain in the arse to play and he wasn't even looking down, he was just going at it like a pro.
Dark Eternal Night - Not a big fan of the studio version of this song but somehow, it was good live; DT does that to me a lot. Maybe it was the roaring crowd, James LaBrie exhorting the crowd, Portnoy getting everyone into with clapping and stuff, or the fact that Rudess and Petrucci are even more ridiculous live than in the studio if that's possible, I couldn't pin it down.
The cartoon was beautiful; this fucked up web-weaving werewolf thing with zombies (all done like the Octavarium cartoon) starts pwning people and DT rolls in with the N.A.D.S. mobile and starts busting out crazy solos; Rudess goes Mr. Fantastic and uses knife-fingers to snip threads while LaBrie screams these web-things away and Petrucci burns the bastard with a flame-slinging guitar of doom. It was so dope! And yes, Portnoy's drum kit was a car, it was great.
Lines in the Sand - Didn't expect this one, loved every second of it. I love the opening and they jazzed it up from the studio version, with MP going banannas. Petrucci's solo was wicked.
Scarred - I never expected this one at all; they haven't been partial to playing stuff from Awake and Images and Words lately because they're on this metal kick as they get harder and all that (see the progression from I+W to Scenes to Six Degrees to Train of Thought) but this is a great song. 10 min long as a studio song, they lengthened it and filled in some crazy intro soloing from Petrucci and just made it this bad-ass progressive tune that was basically worth the price of admission by itself.
In the Presence of Enemies - Boom, the longest song of the time, 26-minutes of insanity. I don't even know what to say about this, it was just crazy. This WAS worth the price of admission.
Random Medley Thing - Oy lists the following songs as part of this medly:
Trial of Tears, Finally Free, Learning to Live, In the Name of God, Octavarium
This one meshed into itself so much that I barely remember it; I recognized passages and such but I was too caught up in the moment to really piece together each and every song that made a cameo. Petrucci did a bunch of guitar-switching here; he had done it throughout the night but it was especially noticeable in this song for some reason. Possibly because my seats had me basically at his feet the entire night and he kept going back to the right corner and getting the roadie to help him out.
The concert was awesome; my favorite band ripping it up in peak form after I got to chill with them a bit and get some autographs and photos and what-not, it was just perfect.
==
Sunday
==
Sunday morning, I hauled it down to my grandma's and we went down to the U of T Faculty of Music to see a production of the Barber of Seville.
I remember pieces of this from parodies done both on Bugs Bunny and by my father but I didn't know it was a comedy and I never knew anymore than "FigarofigarofigaroFIIIIIIIGARO!!" and so forth.
The singers could act pretty well and had AMAZING voices; the orchestra was spectacular. It was a really good time, I was laughing and chortling and smirking the entire time, completely wrapped up in the performance.
So then I went up to Aurora to chill with my buddy, played some baseball and then saw 'The Last Legion,' which was the only disappointment of the whole weekend but because the concert and opera were so wicked, even the movie (which did have some really cool parts and Aishwarya Rai) couldn't bring it down.
Good times!
This weekend was such a mind-numbingly awesome experience that my brain had to crawl out of my ear for a smoke break earlier today, just to recover from the paroxysms of rapture I've been experiencing, flashbacks to the event itself.
It all began Saturday.
I had tickets to the Dream Theater concert at the amphitheater; this was, in and of itself, enough to make my weekend an unqualified success even if I got shot in the testicles on Sunday, because Dream Theater is my favorite band and they are somehow much, much better live than they are in the studio (and they're outstanding in the studio).
But this was not all. I scored second-row seats to this concert, and backstage passes for myself and my friend Jake, who came along with me on my adventurous trip TO the amphitheater.
But I get ahead of myself.
I grabbed Jake and we went downtown; I ended up parking across the street from the amphitheater at... it must have been the CNE, since it was a giant carnival in the middle of the street by the soccer field. Anyway, I had no idea that there was a carnival, so that was a pleasant surprise. More pleasant was when I flashed my ticket and only had to pay a parking charge and not admission; the glaze-eyed apathy of the attendant was outstanding, since I didn't even show her anything other than what might have been a ticket and she waved me through. It simply didn't matter enough to check, since I put forth the effort of pretending to have something. In reality, I suspect that since I had admission to the concert, I had admission to the Ex, since Ontario Place was connected and blah blah, it's just that she was so lazy and simply didn't care enough to confirm the details that made it amusing.
So we parked by the Tilt-and-Whirl and made our way through the carnival, went on a food-finding odyssey and made it back in time to sort through a crazy ticket scandal and then get into the concert. We watched Into Eternity's first song, then realized we needed to be backstage and vanished around back to the boat, where we met Dream Theater. This was awesome.
We got some pictures taken with them, a whack of autographs, got to talk to them... I even learned that they're cutting a new disc from some old jams left off of Liquid Tension Experiment 1 and 2 (from 10 years ago); those discs were freaking AWESOME... No Petrucci, just Tony Levin, Mike Portnoy and Jordan Rudess, but it should still be sweet. There's even talk of a potential Liquid Tension Experiment 3 with the whole group, potentially when Rudess' contract with Magna "We suck crap" Carta is finished; Tony Levin experessed interest in doing another one not long ago, which is awesome.
After the signings and stuff, we came back to see the entirety of Redemption's set.
Oytamarind was right; it was REALLY difficult to hear their songs because the sound guy shat his brain and the drummer was going on a whacked out acid trip with his double-bass routines. I could barely here the bassist and he looked like he was doing some crazy ass riffs, pulling out the mad tapping action and everything. They had a rhythm guitarist and a lead guitarist; the rhythm guitarist actually busted out some solos in most of the songs and was better than the lead guy, who mostly just wailed away with boring hammer-on/pull-off solos along the high E string in the same key for each song. Still, despite the various things that went wrong, they were entertaining enough for me to go out and buy their two latest CDs on Amazon.ca when I purchased Dream Theater's new disc, Systematic Chaos. I wanna hear Redemption with proper mixing. Their singer was kinda crappy; he was nice enough as a front man in terms of giving some love to his bandmates and not forgetting the city's name and stuff (lol) but he wasn't the greatest singer. Still, the rhythm guitar and bass should be enough to keep them entertaining.
Also, they pulled out the opening riff from Rush's 'YYZ' in the middle of one of their songs, to the sheer glee of the crowd. That alone was sufficient to make them a hit. I wonder if they were hand-picked by DT to join them? Probably.
So Dream Theater comes on and completely dominates.
Constant Motion - They opened with one of the songs from Systematic Chaos, their new disc. As Oy noted, Portnoy's backing lyrics were better than previously, certainly better than on the studio version. It was a good opener.
Never Enough - Off of Octavarium, this was pretty good. I don't remember them playing it at Massey Hall or when they came for Gigantour, so it was kind of neat.
Blind Faith - Off of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, this continued the trend of Dream Theater playing more recent stuff. Rudess had a nutty, extra-long solo that was a real treat.
Surrounded - This one's from Images and Words, so they jumped several albums back into their past to pull this one out. They changed it though and messed around with some really sweet guitar stuff that Petrucci played beautifully. He spent most of the concert owning every other guitarist I've ever seen live with his performance.
After this, Jordan Rudess decided to go absolutely insane; he pulled out the crazy solo action on his Continuum pad and all his other gear and then he busts out this keyboard-guitar thing and goes absolutely batty, rolling up and down the stage with this "Fuckin' HELL, I'm good!" grin all over his face as he blazes away the dirtiest keytar solo; so good... That must be a gigantic pain in the arse to play and he wasn't even looking down, he was just going at it like a pro.
Dark Eternal Night - Not a big fan of the studio version of this song but somehow, it was good live; DT does that to me a lot. Maybe it was the roaring crowd, James LaBrie exhorting the crowd, Portnoy getting everyone into with clapping and stuff, or the fact that Rudess and Petrucci are even more ridiculous live than in the studio if that's possible, I couldn't pin it down.
The cartoon was beautiful; this fucked up web-weaving werewolf thing with zombies (all done like the Octavarium cartoon) starts pwning people and DT rolls in with the N.A.D.S. mobile and starts busting out crazy solos; Rudess goes Mr. Fantastic and uses knife-fingers to snip threads while LaBrie screams these web-things away and Petrucci burns the bastard with a flame-slinging guitar of doom. It was so dope! And yes, Portnoy's drum kit was a car, it was great.
Lines in the Sand - Didn't expect this one, loved every second of it. I love the opening and they jazzed it up from the studio version, with MP going banannas. Petrucci's solo was wicked.
Scarred - I never expected this one at all; they haven't been partial to playing stuff from Awake and Images and Words lately because they're on this metal kick as they get harder and all that (see the progression from I+W to Scenes to Six Degrees to Train of Thought) but this is a great song. 10 min long as a studio song, they lengthened it and filled in some crazy intro soloing from Petrucci and just made it this bad-ass progressive tune that was basically worth the price of admission by itself.
In the Presence of Enemies - Boom, the longest song of the time, 26-minutes of insanity. I don't even know what to say about this, it was just crazy. This WAS worth the price of admission.
Random Medley Thing - Oy lists the following songs as part of this medly:
Trial of Tears, Finally Free, Learning to Live, In the Name of God, Octavarium
This one meshed into itself so much that I barely remember it; I recognized passages and such but I was too caught up in the moment to really piece together each and every song that made a cameo. Petrucci did a bunch of guitar-switching here; he had done it throughout the night but it was especially noticeable in this song for some reason. Possibly because my seats had me basically at his feet the entire night and he kept going back to the right corner and getting the roadie to help him out.
The concert was awesome; my favorite band ripping it up in peak form after I got to chill with them a bit and get some autographs and photos and what-not, it was just perfect.
==
Sunday
==
Sunday morning, I hauled it down to my grandma's and we went down to the U of T Faculty of Music to see a production of the Barber of Seville.
I remember pieces of this from parodies done both on Bugs Bunny and by my father but I didn't know it was a comedy and I never knew anymore than "FigarofigarofigaroFIIIIIIIGARO!!" and so forth.
The singers could act pretty well and had AMAZING voices; the orchestra was spectacular. It was a really good time, I was laughing and chortling and smirking the entire time, completely wrapped up in the performance.
So then I went up to Aurora to chill with my buddy, played some baseball and then saw 'The Last Legion,' which was the only disappointment of the whole weekend but because the concert and opera were so wicked, even the movie (which did have some really cool parts and Aishwarya Rai) couldn't bring it down.
Good times!