Dream Theater

Live Nation is not even showing the Houston date. Guess it must be sold through the auditorium. Just have to click buy Presale tomorrow @10:00 on the soundrink website and see what happens.
 
Yea idk anything about pre sales for Denver. I'll just do the regular sale.
 
At 10:00 tried to buy tix through band website which links to Bands in town app which links to sound link but still said "presale coming soon" even after 10:00! So i did a quick google search and found Ticket Fly had a link to the show but it was a dead link. Then I tried Event Tickets and bought the two cheapest tix. They were $85 face value each but after the fees went up to $120 each! Ought to be a law against that many fees... At least I got tix and am finally seeing the first DT show in Houston in six years! Long wait until December...
 
During The Astonishing, Dream Theater played the Bell Centre in Montreal, a 17,500 person music venue. Now they are reduced to playing just the Sony Theatre in Toronto, which has a capacity of 3900. Wow, The Astonishing really cut their knees out from under them as a viable act, or something.
Last time they played Houston (six years ago) DT played a place that seats 3,500. Now this time they are playing a 70 year old college auditorium that only seats 1500. WTF?!
 
It seemed that it was Ron Thal who was a bit less in line than the others (the emotion probably)... that says a lot about the level of this band:
 
Yea he's mentioned that a few times. I have two problems with it:

1: John's 7 string work hasn't been that innovative since maybe Six Degrees. He could do more interesting things with chords, different tunings (and I don't mean just tuning everything down like on Illumination Theory), maybe changing the arrangement of the instruments around like having John Myung play in an upper register. But the way things are, it's going to make the DT sound muddier and make Myung even more useless in the band. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

2: I won't be able to learn the new DT album on guitar.
 
So a guy named Jr who says he works for Reserve One called me to say the Houston date of the upcoming DT tour, the last date of the tour, has been cancelled. I half expected this to happen when i saw it was the last date. Same thing happened on King Diamond's last tour.

Anyway he said it was decided that 2 shows in Texas was enough and that i could get a refund or they would mail me tix to 1 of the other Texas dates. I chose Dallas, which is now the last date of the tour. He immediately emailed me a receipt for the new tix.

Went to DT website and Houston is no longer listed.
 
Turns out this is going to be a much better deal. The Houston show was going to be in a 45 year old college auditorium on a Sunday night (a school night for my son when I would prefer he not be out late). Instead we will be seeing DT on a Saturday night in a brand new state of the art place surrounded by a new shopping and restaurant center:

 
This is really awesome. Way beyond my expectations. I'm getting some heavy newer-Symphony X vibes out of the vocals, too.

Considering Derek has been making "robot" comments about Jordan, these keyboards sound far too much like masturbating space monkeys.
 
"John found his cyborg soulmate in Jordan"

That's quite the dig at both Jordan and John (I'm assuming Petrucci, although Myung is literally a cyborg). But he's right - Jordan is far too technical and in my opinion loses the feel of the song when he goes off-tangent into those random interludes and tasteless solos.

Considering Derek has been making "robot" comments about Jordan, these keyboards sound far too much like masturbating space monkeys.

I disagree. There's a little bit, sure, but most of it is pretty tasteful. The keyboard lead-in to the (incredible) guitar solo is a fine example of playing with taste.
 
The instrumental stuff is awesome and I love Derek's keyboard tones.
 
Besides, Ron is really a nice person. I've had the pleasure of attending a masterclass of his in late 1998 in Guingamp (you know, where Neymar made his French debut on Sunday ;) ). It was when he was making the promotion of his album Hands. If you have the opportunity to do some YouTube surfing, research:
"Hands"
"Drunk"
"Freak"
"Guitars SUCK!!!"
"T-Jonez"
"Ronald's Coming Back Now"
"I Hate Me More Than I Love You"
"What I Knew"
"Ab-normal"
"Real"
"You're a Cactus"
...
and remember, although he mops the floor with about any guitarist out there, his solo music is rather seldom about shredding and has often a lot of humour to it. Example:
 
(...)Endless Sacrifice (apart from the solos) (...)

Since I recently tuned down to D Standard, I decided to take up Endless Sacrifice. Really nice song as the core of it is comprised of arpeggiated chords and heavy riffs that are fun to play. The rhythm wankery section isn't too long or difficult either and provides just the right amount of challenge. The solos are impossible though :D. I wouldn't mind that if I could play the rest of the song in its entirety but the unison after the solos is also quite fast and I can't seem to be able to build enough speed to play it.
I have realised that my playing speed in general has kind of come to a halt which is sad because I would like to be able to play some 'Trucci shred. I don't play as much daily as I used to so that may be the reason, and when I do play it's usually slower stuff. I guess there's a point where you really need to push yourself to develop more speed, as opposed to when you first start playing and get better and faster really quickly.
 
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