Chaos In Buffalo

I'm exhausted. Last night Wassy and myself went out to the University of Buffalo to see Dream Theater live. This was my 5th Dream Theater concert and her first concert ever, so there was much anticipation.

 We left from my place at around 1:30 and started the 3 hour drive out to Buffalo. The plan was for me to drive out there and for her to drive back after the show. It turned out to be pretty easy to get to the venue, but we had some problems finding the on campus burger king we were going to grab some dinner at before the show. The GPS we were using didn't have it in it's database and we got stuck on some kind of a little traffic loop thingy. We got there eventually…the campus is huge. They have their own parkways running through it!

Anyway, we ate and headed back over to the venue. The first thing we saw was an RV in the parking lot with a banner that said "Rule 15" on it. This would be the people from the mikeportnoy.com forums. The banner joke is really funny…you're just going to have to take my word for it if you don't frequent the MP.com forums.

We checked with the box office to make sure our tickets would be OK considering the little accident they had…They said everything was fine, and it turned out to be correct, as we got in with no problems. After a brief stop at the merchandise stand where I picked up a tour book and my friend picked up a t-shirt for herself, we headed into the theaterOur seats were really, really nice. We were right in front of the sound board which meant awesome sound (for Dream Theater at least, Redemption was kinda muddy sounding) and we could see everything perfectly.

As soon as we saw where our seats were though, we  fled the area because the first opening band, Into Eternity was going to be playing soon. Just before the set started an older usher type guy came out and yelled "The program is starting soon! 5 minutes until the program starts!" which I thought was funny. Program really isn't an appropriate word for this…

As soon as we heard Into Eternity's set start, we knew we made the right decision. They were…not my cup of tea to put it mildly. No melody at all, all shrieking and death metal grunts… Ugh.

We took refuge in the lobby where they had a bunch of chairs set up and trying to ignore the horrible sounds coming from the theater. It soon became apparent that we weren't the only ones that had this idea. There were an awful lot of people hanging out in the lobby, just waiting for the crappy death metal to go away.

Finally, that finished and we went into the theater for the real show. Redemption was pretty good, although their sound was kinda blah. Ray Alder's vocals were really nice though, even though he had a cold. The crowd took a while to get into them, but by the end of their set there were a lot of people standing up. A lot of that was probably due to the fact that it was Ray Alder's birthday and Mike Portnoy and some of the other members of DT and Into Eternity came out with a cake that ended up being thrown around the stage. That was pretty cool.

After Redemption, the main event began to take shape. The stage hands started to clear the sage of Redemption's gear, DT's equipment came out and the ant was placed at the front of the stage. I wasn't able to take any more pictures at this point because the venue employees were swarming all over the area I was in…oh well.

The show itself was incredible. Easily the best show I've ever been to at this point. The setlist was awesome and hit almost all the songs I was hoping they would play. Strange Deja Vu, Surrounded, specifically were my two hopes. Other highlights included I Walk Beside You, and The Dark Eternal Night, and the Medley in the encore. TDEN was really a surprise hit with me. The song is sooo much better live than it is on the album, especially with the animation they had running in the background. The light show was also really awesome. It doesn't compare to say, Trans-siberian orchestra, but…what does really? They've really dialed in their stage show over the past few tours.

Much like the Score review I did, James LaBrie deserves his own paragraph here. James was ON FIRE. He sounded the best that I've ever heard him sound live and he nailed practically everything. He had to go a little lower on some points in Surrounded, but I can't really blame him… I'm just really happy he was having a really good night last night because my friend really wanted to see him to hit the high notes in some of the older stuff, and he didn't disappoint. I was really glad she enjoyed the show too.

Another high note about the show was they the band member's kids were seated on stage, off to the right hand side near the monitor board. Mike's kids also came up on stage and played some percussion during the Trial of Tears intro which was really, really cool and made the show pretty special to see the guys and their families spending time together like that.

After the show we started to head back home, with my friend driving. We stopped at the first rest stop on the Thruway to get some gas and some food because we were both pretty hungry. It was hugely entertaining for me to see all the people with Dream Theater shirts walk in. The people at Tim Hortons (the only food place open at the time) must have been very confused as to why there were so many people coming in at 11:30pm on a Monday night.

We made it home safely (although I slept for probably an hour in case I needed to take over the driving if she got too tired) We arrived back at my place at around 2am and she crashed on my couch until the morning since she wasn't in any condition to be driving home alone.

Ok, I think I've said quite enough on the subject. It was definitely an awesome show and we're going to try very, very hard to go again when they come back to the US in the spring.

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