Saturday, July 28, 2007

Dream Theater goes Platinum

I just got back from seeing Dream Theater at the Gibson Amphitheater in Universal City. For this event I bought the DT Platinum experience which included a meet and greet, a picture with the band and a great seat for the show, more on that later.

Being a Friday afternoon I ended up leaving work early in the event of a worst case scenario with traffic. Fortunately it wasn't that bad and only took about an hour to get to the venue. Once at the venue the DT fans began to congregate outside of the gates and then the Platinum pass holders ended up finding one another.

I picked up my backstage pass around 7pm and headed into the venue. The meet and greet was nothing special. They ended up having about 50 people backstage and just ran us through. First run through was to get a picture. No idea how mine turned out, the person taking the photo said the shots looked fun and I could tell Mike Portnoy was having fun in the pic so I'm hoping it will be a fun picture.

The second run through was to get an item signed. I brought a copy of their most recent cd and had the band sign their picture in the booklet. They also gave us a signed 8x10 of the band as we left the meet and greet. All in all I probably had 90 seconds with the band. If you are wondering if the Platinum pass is worth it, I would say no and stick with the gold ticket that will get you a seat in the first few rows. Maybe it was just LA... The one nice moment during the signing was when the guy in front of me asked Mike what was in the setlist tonight and I said don't tell him. Mike laughed and thanked me so he could tell the other guy he can't say because of me.

Outside of the meet and greet I went and purchased their newest official bootleg of Deep Purple's Made In Japan. I passed on the other merch and made it to my seat. The seat was second row dead center. Can't get much better than that. I caught the last half of the second opener Redemption, featuring Ray Alder from Fates Warning.

During the set break a guy sitting first row center said the subs were too loud and he was going to move back to the second row. I ended up swapping seats with him and ended up front row dead center. The best seat in the house. At this point the camera and I were ready for the show to start.

Once the band came out they had a very clean stage with giant ants hanging off amps, sitting on the ground and hanging on Jordan's keyboard rig. Pretty wild and tied into the theme of the new album cover. They ran through some of the new cd, avoided their hits, and picked some deep tracks from previous albums. A very creative setlist. Although the sound wasn't great due to the subwoofer problem, you could tell the band was spot on and were as tight as ever. At one point I saw Jordan give John Myung a sign of approval after John nailed the closing of a song on bass.

Highlights of the set for me were Surrounded, Lines In The Sand, The Spirit Carries On, and from the medley Learning To Live and Octavarium.

Dream Theater
July 27, 2007
Gibson Amphitheater
Los Angeles, CA

Intro Movie
Constant Motion
Panic Attack
Scarred
Surrounded
The Dark Eternal Night
Keyboard Solo
Lines In The Sand
Misunderstood
The Spirit Carries On
In The Presence Of Enemies

Encore
Medley
i. Trial Of Tears
ii. Finally Free
iii. Learning To Live
iv. In The Name Of God
v. Octavarium

Dream Theater July 27, 2007

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

David, Your review is 100% accurate!

It was cool to be back stage with you and next to you in the second row until you slipped up to the first row. lol

That backstage experience was a bit of a Systematic Cattle Prodding...I think it was the venue's fault though, as even Dream Theater seemed put off a bit by the mechanics of the speedy process.

The Subs interference with the mix was the worst part of the sound experience, as leaving my earplugs all the way in allowed for no upper frequencies to come through. Again, that's the venues fault. I only hope my ears didn't get damaged in anyway from that because a musician's ears are their most important instrument, and I know much of the audience were and will always be musicians.

Still with all that being said, it was the best visual experience a person could ever hope for at a Dream Theater show.

Great job on the pictures and the review blog you posted here. It is very professional.

Sincerely,
Aaron

Terry said...

David! Good review, and great pics. It's too bad that the Platinum experience didn't pan out, but reading your story makes me glad that I went with the Gold package for Dallas. Turns out there were approx. 90 platinum tickets for that show. Yep, NINETY. Yikes.
Our setlist was very different than yours, although Dallas and Austin were almost identical save for two songs. Any more I have to say about the shows I'll save for the next time we talk.
Terry

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