Dream Theater - A Mind Beside Itself

Erotomania - Voices - The Silent Man


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Dream Theater's Christmas Gift

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 25th, 2013 – 6:00AM EST
HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM DREAM THEATER

TO OUR FANS ALL OVER THE WORLD!
It is because of all of you that “A Dramatic Tour Of Events” was such a success. We enjoyed playing to you all each and every night on the road!

As a special “Thank You” we are releasing a compilation of live tracks that were not included on “Live At Luna Park.” With these now being available, you have a complete documentation of all the songs that were played during the tour (with the exception of cover songs.)
Happy Holidays, and we look forward to having you “Along For The Ride” in 2014.
~Dream Theater

CD1:
01 Under A Glass Moon (Phoenix, AZ 12/4/11)
02 Forsaken (London, UK 7/24/11)
03 Peruvian Skies (London, UK 7/24/11)
04 Endless Sacrifice (Austin, TX 10/26/11)
05 Drum Solo (Austin, TX 10/26/11)
06 YtseJam (Austin, TX 10/26/11)
07 The Great Debate (London, UK 7/24/11)
CD2:
08 Another Day (Austin, TX 7/7/12)
09 Through My Words/Fatal Tragedy (Montreal, QB 10/7/11)
10 To Live Forever (Huntington, NY 7/19/12)
11 Learning To Live (Tel Aviv, Israel 7/19/11)
12 The Count of Tuscany (London, UK 7/24/11)
13 As I Am (Shibuya, Japan 4/24/12)


Download the torrent: HERE

Unfamilar with BitTorrent : http://www.utorrent.com/

Information and software for decoding FLAC files : https://xiph.org/flac/

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Brand New Dream Theater

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It's finally here! Click the image above to go listen.. What I've heard so far is absolutely amazing!

Brand New Dream Theater!

"The Enemy Inside" - Dream Theater

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Full album is set for release on September 24, 2013!

Dream Theater - "Raise the Knife" (LIVE)

~from Score, originally Falling Into Infinity


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For Some Reason, It's Never Enough

"Never Enough" - Dream Theater

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This song is pretty personal to me. It means a lot of different things at a lot of different times. Besides all the meanings, it's just a really incredible song.

"O Baterista" - Rush (Neil Peart)

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And yes - I saw this live. Nominated for a Grammy. The most amazing drum solo I've ever seen.

Brand New Queensryche! "Redemption"

Not Geoff Tate and friends, but rather the Todd LaTorre and Queensryche version:


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Here's a cool Hubpages article, by FatFreddysCat: Meet the New QUEENSRYCHE - Both of Them!

OK, ok..

If you insist I post a new release from Geoff Tate and friends, I shall.. But only for the sake of comparison: "Cold"


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Rush - Cygnus X-1 Books I & II

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"Book I: The Voyage" --- the last track on 1977's A Farewell to Kings (10:15).
"Book II: Hemispheres" --- the opening track of 1978's Hemispheres (18:08).
• I. Prelude - (10:15)
• II. Apollo (Bringer of Wisdom) – (14:43)
• III. Dionysus (Bringer of Love) – (17:13)
• IV. Armageddon (The Battle of Heart and Mind) – (19:19)
• V. Cygnus (Bringer of Balance) - (22:14)
• VI. The Sphere (A Kind of Dream) – (27:15)

Pink Floyd - Us and Them

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Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side’: 40 Years Later

40 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Mad Classic ~ A Yahoo Music article by Chris Willman | Stop The Presses!

Sure, like everybody else, you’ve listened to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon so many times that you can recite not just every line but every heartbeat, clock tick, and cash register ring by heart. But how much do you really know about the landmark prog classic, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this month?

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To celebrate the 40 years we’ve been listening to what is arguably the preeminent rock album of the 1970s, here are 40 things you ought to know about Dark Side. Because lunacy breeds albums about lunacy, and albums about lunacy breed lunatic obsessions with album trivia. Let’s start with that iconic cover art, shall we?

The band members spent three minutes deciding on the front cover. Designer Storm Thorgerson brought seven designs into the Abbey Road studio where they were still recording. “The band trooped in, swept their gaze across the designs, looked at each other, nodded, and said ‘That one,’ pointing at the prism. Took all of three minutes,” Thorgerson recalled in liner notes for the 2011 deluxe box. In an 2003 interview, the designer elaborated, “No amount of cajoling would get them to consider any other contender, nor endure further explanation of the prism, or how exactly it might look. ‘That’s it,’ they said in unison, ‘we’ve got to get back to real work,’ and returned forthwith to the studio upstairs.”

One of the rejected designs involved a then-popular Marvel comic book superhero. Imagine how differently we’d think of the album if the Floyd members had expressed any interest in one of Thorgersen’s alternative ideas, to have the cover feature… the Silver Surfer!

The band had always hated having their photos in the artwork. “When Storm showed us all the ideas, with that one, there was no doubt,” guitarist David Gilmour told Rolling Stone in 2003. “It was, ‘That is it.’ It's a brilliant cover. One can look at it after that first moment of brilliance and think, ‘Well, it's a very commercial idea: It's very stark and simple; it'll look great in shop windows.’ It wasn't a vague picture of four lads bouncing in the countryside. That fact wasn't lost on us.”

It was keyboardist Rick Wright who was insistent that the cover not feature any photography at all, even conceptual photos. The Hipgnosis design team was famous for elaborately staged and photographed covers, like Wish You Were Here, which came out two years later. But in this instance, as Thorgerson remembers it, Wright “said, ‘Storm, let’s have a cool graphic, not one of your tatty [figurative] pictures…’ I protested. ‘Rick,’ I said, ‘I do images, I don’t do cool graphics.’… Whereupon Rick said, ‘Why don’t you try to see it as a challenge.’”

The prism design was partly inspired by Floyd’s extravagant live light shows. “The refracting glass prism referred to Floyd light shows–consummate use of light in the concert setting,” Thorgerson said in an interview for the album’s 30th anniversary. “Its outline is triangular and triangles are symbols of ambition, and are redolent of pyramids, both cosmic and mad in equal measure, all these ideas touching on themes in the lyrics. The joining of the spectrum extending round the back cover and across the gatefold inside was seamless like the segueing tracks on the album, whilst the opening heartbeat was represented by a repeating blip in one of the colors.”

Click here to continue to the rest of the list!

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More info on the great album here, at its Wikipedia page..

John Petrucci Solo - LIVE in Tokyo

~ one of his best ever in my opinion.


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BONUS:   Here is Mike Portnoy's take on the writing of "The Best of Times". (Source)

A Short DT Set from "Awake"

The Mirror & Lie:

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Along with "Voices", probably the stuff that got me hooked to DT.

Space Dye Vest

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Liquid Tension Experiment - Acid Rain (LIVE)

in LA, 2008


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This is just another example that proves my feeling that John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy were BORN to play together. So tight. I love it. And you know what? Replace Tony Levin with John Myung, and you have Dream Theater without their singer. Not that you didn't know this. How beautiful is this?

Dream Theater - Instrumedley (LIVE at Budokan)

..And in 4-way split-screen (2004)


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Queensryche - Roads to Madness (live)

Source - Thanks Carlton!

Dream Theater - Octavarium (LIVE in Seoul, 2006)

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A few interesting little factoids: The first track of the album Octavarium starts in the key of F-major, and the following seven tracks each ascend one key, ending with the eighth track (the 24:00-long title track "Octavarium") back in the key of F-major -- hence the name of the album & song.

There were also sound effects placed between songs to connect them: for example, "The Root of All Evil", written in F, and the following track, "The Answer Lies Within", written in G, were connected by a sound effect in the key of F#.

Lastly, Octavarium begins "The Root of All Evil" with the final note of the band's previous album, Train of Thought with "In the Name of God". Train of Thought started "As I Am" with the last note from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence with the title track, which in turn started with the noise that ended Scenes from a Memory at the end of "Finally Free". Portnoy was inspired to do this thanks to the Van Halen album Women and Children First; the outro of the album's final song ended with a new riff being played which faded out. Portnoy recalled that he expected Van Halen's next album to start with that ending riff, but was disappointed when it did not. He later realized he had "dug a hole where we're expected to do it every time". He solved this problem on Octavarium, where the final track ends with the beginning of the first one. This made the album a cycle in itself, allowing the band to have a clean start with their next album. (Source)

A Transcend Double Shot

Carved In Stone


Reign Over Me

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Here is their website, and their Facebook page..

I like this new progressive hard rock/metal band. Dare I say they're very Dream theater -ish, but with slightly better vocals. I'm sorry for always trashing on James LaBrie, but hey.. it is what it is. His vocal chords are not aging well. Also the vocals are mixed a little bit too loud over everything else. Otherwise, this band is tremendous!

Incredible Cover of Dream Theater's "Instrumedley"

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Pretty sweet - I must say! It took me almost 2 minutes before I could tell it wasn't actual Dream Theater music. Then it took me another couple minutes before I realized there's a mirror in their studio, and it wasn't, in fact, 8 people playing.

Here's their cover of DT's Breaking All Illusions.

And here is one of their originals..

Daisuke Kurosawa Progressive Band is what Google translate tells me their name is.

Great job guys!

Dream Theater - San Antonio - 2012

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My wife had a private birthday party to go to on July 6th. I had already flirted with the possibility of going to see Dream Theater on their current tour - either in San Antonio, or the next night in Austin. I checked out the setlists that were being uploaded, and also made it known that I'd love to go.

Amazingly she surprised me with a ticket for my upcoming birthday. Since her party was two blocks away from the Majestic Theater in downtown San Antonio, it was a perfect opportunity.

So we met the birthday girl and her friend at Texas Land & Cattle for an awesome steak dinner before the festivities. My wife had a $25 gift certificate from about 2 years ago. So we had an amazing steak dinner for about $15.

They went on without me, and I walked over to the venue. The Majestic Theater is a super place to see a concert. They provide a full bar. They allow smokers to exit, and re-enter. There is really no bad seat when it comes to your view. It has pretty good acoustics, and it's a nice & tight intimate setting. I had a great seat in the lower mezzanine. This was my view:

The best one of only 7 pics I took..   Do click to enlarge!!


The set list was as follows:

Intro: Dream Is Collapsing (Hans Zimmer song)
1 - Bridges in the Sky
2 - 6:00
3 - The Dark Eternal Night
4 - This is the Life
5 - The Root of All Evil
6 - Lost Not Forgotten
7 - A Fortune in Lies
8 - Surrounded (preceded by Jordan Rudess Keyboard Solo)
9 - On the Backs of Angels
10 - War Inside My Head
11 - The Test that Stumped Them All
12 - The Spirit Carries On (Preceded by John Petrucci Guitar Solo)
13 - Breaking All Illusions
Encore:
14 - Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper

I thoroughly enjoyed myself (small $5 beers not included). This was my 7th time seeing Dream Theater. I so-o-o looked forward to "The Test That Stumped Them All," and it was absolutely incredible live, as I expected it would be.. even though it wasn't my drumming idol, Mike Portnoy behind the set. "The Spirit Carries On" blew my mind as well. It's been many years since I've heard them do this one live. John Petrucci has officially cemented himself in my mind as one of the top-3 guitarists AND musicians ever.

It was my first DT show post-Mike Portnoy. I must say that Mike Mangini is a super-talented drummer, but things just didn't seem the same without MP. I reflected on how sad I was when he decided to leave the band back in the summer of 2010.

• This guy was way in the back left, but he captured most of Petrucci's solo, and the sound quality is VERY good.

But here is a great video of the encore song, "Metropolis Part 1", captured by Gabriel Macias:



Then I was off to join my wife's party. It was a fun night!