Anyway, so when I heard, or rather read in Life! that Dream Theater were coming to Singapore this year, my heart galloped faster than the girls on those nasty Osim iGallop ads they have on tv now. ugh. But anyway, and after pinching myself countless times to make sure I didn't read wrongly 1) The place of the concert, 2) the date of the concert, 3) the people performing at the concert I decided that, hell I've got to be there man. Finally some people whom I'd actually look forward to watch. This is the real deal man.
Fast foward to fri 27th jan 06, and after finally securing my tix on wed( thanks to certain people procrastinating to pay for their tix and eventually cancelling.hmph!) I was as ready as hell to go rock out. Oh oh the past few days were spend just listening solely to DT, because although I pretty know all their lyrics by heart, I, ya know didn't wanna malu. Heh. And Darren and I could sorta feel the excitement gathering on the train home from .16 lunch at Ghim Moh while listening to Endless Sacrifice. Yum!(no not the lunch). And it was the same kinda excitement that you feel before SYF, so yeah I was pumped.
Five hours later ( and I knew it was five hours because I was counting down the time with Elsa..haha) I met Wen Long and John at the North Entrace, Singapore Indoor Stadium. Ohh and Kristen too, thanks so much for trying to get us the 120 bucks tix btw! It was like 8.30 when I went in, and although the concert didn't start till 9, the atmosphere, was hella good for around 4000 people. Oh and yesh I know that 4k sucks for an Indoor Stadium concert, and I bet the Backstreet Boys, Black Eyed Peas et al had far greater turnouts. But I don't care, because Singapore is a cesspool for good music anyway...Like I've always said, if you can't find it on 98.7, you probably won't find it being known in Singapore.
Without digressing further to the narrow minded musical tastes of modern yoof, I was uber disappointed as I was walking pass the merch section at the entrance of the stadium because all the Dream Theater shirts were sold out by 5pm!!!! Arrrghhhh. And what was left of were only a couple of real nice Bootlegs of previous DT performances. Without stopping to cry for long over the T shirts that never were, I quickly bought the Dream Theater Live In Tokyo bootleg and went to my seat. The three of us bought 90 bucks tix, but John's sis apparantly had found us 120 tix space, so we sat there after intermission. But first, my heart went aflutter at seeing the two bass drums emblazoned with the DT logo at the front of the stage, and the calming pendulums of the "Octavarium" logo. And when the lights dimmed I knew I was in for one helluva show.
Mike Portnoy's Drum Set Amongst The Masses:
The show opened with The Root Of All Evil and Panic Attack, from Octavarium, and the unfortunate thing was that, within the first twenty minutes, there were kids in front of me SITTING DOWN. wth man. You know the type that wouldn't look outta place at a class outing, with the oversized Dream Theater shirt that only his kiasu ass could have gotten him. Hmph. And the crowd, or part of the crowd around me was quite sedate. Mostly made up of 40 year old mats with their wives, a few groups of teenage mats, but quite tame, and a few groups of middle aged/twenty something europeans/americans. No one was really rocking out, except for a couple of groups, and well me. hehe. Ohh but there was this European guy in front of me, with long hair, whom I managed to get a pic of, too bad I didn't manage to get any hair swinging antics on film. haha
Oh and don't mind the empty seats at the front, apparantly all the lucky 150 buck tix people crowded the front of the stage. :)
Back to the set. AH WAIT. Crap how could I have forgotten to first introduce the members of Dream Theater. From left :Jordan Rudess, John Myung, James LaBrie, John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy!!! *faints*
Bleah that was so groupie. Anyway after a couple of songs from Octavarium, LaBrie greeted the audience with the most magnificant "Hello Singaporeeeee!" I've heard. And I'm biased.Haha He said that finally Dream Theater has managed to come to Singapore, and *cue cheers* we would be in for one fun night. So this was their 20th anniversary tour, thus the sets included songs from all their 8 albums. Crap la I can't remember the first set really well, except that there was a couple of songs from When Dream and Day Unite" I think. Under A Glass Moon from Images and Words was also excellent. But one of the highlights of the first set, and to me of the night was "Peruvian Skies". Omg. This was one of the very first DT songs I've listened to, and to hear it again live was just awesome. The rousing keyboards of Rudess totally enhanced the mood, and btw I think he really outdid himself that night.
Under peruvian skies
Vanessa regretfully waits
ahem. And soon after that, was "Fatal Tragedy.", another one of my absolute favourites, from the Scenes from A Memory album. Everything, every solo, every key and time signature change was spot on. I was gushing. And rocking. It was amazing..
And I thought they couldn't out do themselves, but the 2nd set was just as, if not more brillant ( no it wasn't because we changed to 120 dollar tix) haha.
And i think ill give the details of the 2nd set in the next post, this one's hella long ;)
