When I first heard about it I was shocked. By ‘shocked’ I mean more something like ‘not understanding’ – it was like hearing that kind of thing you once stated you’ll never hear in your life, because you’re firmly convinced that such thing can never happen. Such as ‘water stopped boiling at 100°C: now it boils at -40°C.”. Then I read the press, his interview and the announcement on Dream Theater’s site and I got a lump in my throat. Of course regarded the five Dream Theater members as five specifical men with their own peculiar personality (such as Myung being a Silent Man), but to me they were just One. And if you take away a part of the One, the One is no more One but, you know, One minus something, 4/5. Portnoy was the leader and soul of the band (from both a metaphorical and a musical point of view). Without him, it simply makes no sense.
Dream Theater are the first metal band I’ve listened to in my life. More properly, their music was the first music I got to love. My brother bought Images & Words by accident – he wanted to buy some other band’s cd but was mistaken with the name and thus came home with I&W. I vaguely remember those times, cause I was like 5 or something like that, but I remember listening to Surrounded and appreciating it. Later, when I was around 10 I started listening to Images &Words and LOVING it (I always skipped Under A Glass Moon, but one day I just started to enjoy it, and that’s all). Then came the time of Falling Into Infinity. I used to listen to it on MC. Several hours a day. I loved to stroll by my town with my headphones on – and I laughed like an idiot every time the battery was low and LaBrie’s voice sounded monstrously distorted. Then came Scenes From a Memory. I translated all the lyrics into my language, I took ‘Victoria Page’ as a pen name, I spent hours and days on my bed listening to SFAM, and my books, blog, bags, were full of dreamtheaterness. I attended my first Dream Theater concert when I was not even 14. It was held right in my town. I was standing in the first row, right in front of John Myung. It was Petrucci’s birthday and someone was holding a flag on which they had written ‘Happy birthday, John’. It was SDOIT tour, and I remember LaBrie coming on the stage when About To Crash started. They played Surrounded and I kept weeping.
I attended six more Dream Theater concerts. In the meanwhile, my enthusiasm towards them kind of severely diminished when Octavarium came out. Up to that moment, I had Loved every single song they wrote. Now, how to deal with Octavarium? I love the title track, and there’s a few songs (Panick Attack – Never Enough – Sacrificed Sons) I enjoy listening to but The Answer Lies Within is the most DULL and USELESS thing I’ve ever heard, I Walk Beside You sounds like a song by U2 and The Root of All Evil is nice but, well, it’s totally Velvet Revolver. The fact is that the cd never really impressed me and, truth to be told, I even had to check the tracklist to write this post. And that would’ve never happened before. I overall preferred Systematic Chaos, though initially when listening to Constant Motion and The Dark Eternal Night I had the impression I was listening to Metallica (in the bad sense of it). But then I heard them played live and they kicked ass. The fact is, once again I wasn’t very convinced. The strike came with Black Clouds & Silver Linings. I won’t spend my time trying to say something appropriate about it. You just cannot say anything. Except: Oh my fucking God, how did this happen, where did rythm hide, this is pure nonsense, please save my ears from the first two tracks, please STOP, I said STOP for God’s sake! ((my actual reaction was far WORSE)).
But, on a lighter side, there were concerts. I mean, Concerts. The gigs never lasted less than 2 hours and were astonishingly great. The last concert I attended was in June 2009 – Dream Theater were headliners at Gods of Metal (a metal festival held annually in Italy). It was the BC&SL tour, but they played just two songs from that album, then made a huge Something and everyone there was clapping and jumping. There were thousands of people and I guess surely no more than the 60% was there for DT, but even those brutal metallers who are disguted by anything which is not growled, hissed and vomited, were clapping, even the Slipknot fans! I was at the top of the tiers and was seeing this huge tide of people and all their heads were looking towards the DT stage. So holy crap, what a terrific experience! They made the earth tremble! They made me weep as when I was 14, listening to Surrounded in my own city at my first concert in the front row! GEEZ..
Let me tell you once again: to me Mike Portnoy is the soul of Dream Theater, the solid basis without which the whole system would collapse. I truly hope that DT will find again their commitment and inspiration and that they will write another Scenes From A Memory (that is to say, a masterpiece). But actually, I just don’t believe it. And anyway, no more Portnoy equals to no more Dream Theater. It’s like when Savatage fans tell you Savatage ain’t the same stuff without Jon Oliva, or when Megadeth fans tell you Megadeth ain’t the same stuff without Marty Friedman. To me, Dream Theater ain’t the same stuff without Mike Portnoy. You don’t have to agree, and you don’t have to tell me I look like an adolescent, being sad about it. But I guess *this* is what music is all about: PASSION. Dream Theater’s words and music have been such an inspiration to me, I’ve loved them from the very innermost depths of me. Once two dearest friends of mine even made a birthday cake onto which they had placed a Dream Theater logo made of icing and chocolate. So DT were literally my food. I was so saddened by the decline I saw in their latest LPs, and now I won’t ever see again MP’s octopus-like drums being covered by a black cloth before DT shows and I won’t ever see anymore MP at the end of the gig wearing his awful bathrobe and, again, truth be told, I won’t probably ever see another DT show in my life. The Dream Theater collapsed. Fuck off.
[photo: Oct 25, 2007 Bologna, Italy - Land Rover Arena]
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Ho bisogno del vostro aiuto! Mi sono iscritta a un concorso fotografico intitolato “Naturaᶰ” con la fotografia qua sopra.
Thank you / Grazie / Dziękuję bardzo!
