Sunday, August 5, 2007

Dream Theater Concert!

Ugh. PBS is menstruating ...er....fundraising again. It seems to happen about once a month regularly for about a week an a half during which all my favourite shows are canceled and the PMS just sucks. I only get about six channels, two of which aren't in English, so there really isn't that much more to watch.
Right now I am watching "Shit Music of the Sixties" during which people in shoulderpadded suits and big hair sing saccharine sub-doo-wop songs about their "babies." Every fifteen minutes or so, they interrupt the slow torturous death of music to beg the viewer for money so they can continue to bring "Great Programming like 'My Music' to the viewers!"
At least it's not "A Tribute to Elvis" like last time. I think they canceled Antiques Roadshow to bring us "Balding Middle-Aged Corporate Motivational Speaker" again.
I'd give them money to knock this crap off and put the regular programming back on for the love of Jesus, but I'm afraid they'd take that as encouragement to show more of this cat-barf in the future.
I shudder to think that when I'm old, affluent, eating bonbons and throwing cash at PBS, they're going to cancel my favourite shows to air live concerts of Vanilla Ice and Billy Rae Cyrus. (urp.)
I'd better flush out that horrible thought by thinking about how hard Dream Theater rocks. RAWWWWKKKS. I've taken the liberty of putting up a few blurry pictures I took with my cell phone. I know I won't be sued because you can't tell what they are. Except that there's a glaring hot white light of screaming untouchable metal.
I saw them live in concert this past weekend, and I knew the concert was going to kick a huge amount of ass when the opening act was a group called Into Eternity.
They were loud, hard, and seemingly incapable of playing any two instruments in the same key. They were however adept at synchronized headbanging and looking badass. The lead singer vacilated between screaming hitherto undiscovered notes in a glass-shattering falsetto and the usual death-metal growl.
They were hilarious. And friggin' awesome in their bad goodness.
Next came a group called Redemption, which was pretty cool. In retrospect, they really don't stand out in my mind, but they were good musicians and rocked pretty hard.
And then...the candy. Dream Theater was simply the best, most rawking concert I've ever seen. Better than Delerium, ( and I was *this* close to throwing my undergarments on stage at THAT concert). They played In The Presence of Enemies--the first and last songs on their new album Systematic Chaos back to back and pulled the transition off beautifully. They also played Panic Attack and Blind Faith with its delicious, creamy, fluffy keyboard Solo. At one point, Jordan Rudess came out on stage with a keytar and guitar dueled with Petrucci. James LaBrie is going on my list (along with Maynard James Keenan of Tool and Cedric Bixler Zivala of Mars Volta) of rock singers with hottt voices.
In short, it was awesome.
The three rows of fifteen year old boys in front of me (and the whole segment of them in back of me) certainly thought so as well. Throughout the whole concert, they sat transfixed, headbanging along in their seats, frequently throwing up devil horns.
I joined them in headbanging and devil horns. I felt like a fifteen year old boy again.
Oh wait. I wasn't ever a fifteen year old boy.
Nevermind.

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