Dream Theater came to Columbus and performed at The Newport on July 2^nd. My last experience with them was in 2007, and a missed opportunity in 2008 at Cleveland’s Tower City Amphitheater (oh yeah let’s put a stage right by the lake where it is really freaking cold during the spring!)

So when Dream Theater announced they be doing some one off shows this summer I was quite thrilled. The Newport is the old fashion college theater hall here in Columbus right on OSU campus. While you wonder if you would survive if a fire broke out, you can appreciate the nostalgic feel. You also have to arrive early to get a spot on the upper balcony and never, ever go to the bathroom or risk losing that precious view.

So I imagined this show was going to be a couple of things; extremely close and personal and extremely crowded and full of energy. But alas I pondered, would the acoustics be good? Would LeBrie’s voice sound as full and rich as I remembered? Would the set list be something listenable or recognizable?

But when Dream Theater hit the stage they proved once again, they not only can reproduce their sound exactly as you remember it, but they just give you a very fun experience all around. You could tell that even though they were in a small venue, the amount of love shown back was ten-fold compared to what they must be getting on the Iron Maiden portion of the tour. The band really appreciated the crowd.

LeBrie was in top form, not only belting out the songs extremely well and very strong but also just having a ton of fun on stage. As usual, Portnoy, Petrucci, Rudess and Myung were kickass and produced an amazing amount of energy and sound coming from the stage. This drove home a two-hour whopping powerhouse of a show. Highlights included some amazing jamming for Rudess with Petrucci, and Portnoy changing his growl lyrics on ‘Nightmare to Remember’ to ‘C is for cookie which is good enough for me.’

Even in a small venue Dream Theater can deliver an amazing performance with everyone head banging their heads and rocking out. This goes to show that you don’t need every lighting trick in the book to produce a show that individuals from multiple generations will go see and enjoy.

I recently had the pleasure to help an amazing band update their website. Go check out www.gravity-store.com and check out an amazing band! If you get a chance, go check out Gravity when they play in Cleveland, Columbus or Pittsburg!

Holy cow, is this a load of fun! I was recently turned on to this group featuring Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater and oh my, once again Progressive Rock at its finest! Transatlantic’s latest album is a wonderful journey from start to finish. I love albums that flow from one song to the next and this is one solid piece of music from beginning to end!

It’s amazing Mike Portnoy who’s know for hard hitting progressive metal stuff would be found doing some lighter Progressive rock, but this rock really does rock the house without bleeding the ears. As one may find Progressive music sometimes hard to get into, this album I found very easy to grasp. The music is very melodic and just plain fun, so grab the extra special edition when you get a few. You’ll love playing this at work.

So I’ve been pondering, if I could perform a setlist of my favorite songs, my own concert per say, what would that be? If I had a chance, maybe one time, maybe multiple times, the ability to create the ultimate concert what would be my setlist for that experience?

This was difficult to create, first off you have to stay within two and a half hours for a setlist. Not easy to do. Second, I figured if I ever wanted to do something that people could easily get into, it had to be a collection of songs that everyone knew. So there goes my 20 minute ‘Close to the Edge’ suite. Also I didn’t want to necessarily do the most FAMOUS hit a band, but maybe their 3rd famous hit (for example I choose Subdivisions instead of Limelight by Rush because I like this song more and Limelight is way too over-used).

There’s the occasional love song for the bathroom break/people get more beer of course, and  there had to be a logical and musical flow so people wouldn’t get bored at any one point. I also limited the songs to just my favorite bands and what I could picture myself ever capable of singing (love Journey but could never attempt that stuff.)

I also threw in some long epics, either based on the fact that it would be a great opener or that my Mom would like it.

So after many many weeks of listening on my iPhone and many many different iterations, here is my ULTIMATE setlist!

1. The Roof is Leaking – Rock Version (Phil Collins)
2. Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes)
3. Changes (Yes)
4. Trail of Tears (Dream Theater)
5. No Son of Mine (Genesis)
6. Don’t Look Back (Boston)
7. Subdivisions (Rush)
8. Don’t Lose My Number (Phil Collins)
9. Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel)
10. And You And I (Yes)
11. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight – Extended Version (Genesis)
12. Head of the Moment (Asia)
13. More Than A Feeling (Boston)
14. Invisible Touch (Genesis)
15. Tom Sawyer (Rush)
16. All I Need Is a Miracle (Mike + The Mechanics)
17. ENCORES
18. Pull Me Under (Dream Theater)
19. Starship Trooper (Yes)

For craps and giggles I’ve included a version of Solsbury Hill I did one night. Probably the best performance I ever gave.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Dream Theater’s latest album is a very fine work of art!

Revisiting their last album Systematic Chaos I ended up enjoying a couple of tracks. These were the concert staples that were the only good bits of their last live album/DVD ‘Chaos in Motion’. The live DVD proved to be excruciating terrible in both production quality and performance quality minus a few nice gems. As such I didn’t expect much from the upcoming the album.

However after giving this particular album a little more time to ferment, I have to say that 90% of this album is really well done. There are two versions, the regular version and the extended version. The extended version includes a whole CD of rock covers which are done exceptionally well.

On Disc 1 the new material is pretty much rock solid. You get the typical Dream Theater story epics, some great radio friendly rock metal songs, and of course the epic Dream Theater power endings. ‘A Nightmare to Remember’, ‘A Rite of Passage’, and ‘Wither’ are a great opening trio of songs that open the album. Hard driven, great vocals and musically well done. ‘The Shattered Fortress’ and ‘Best of Times’ are okay, not great but not bad either. ‘The Count of Tuscany’ nicely wraps up the album with an interesting story with once again amazing musicianship. The smooth interlude that harkens back to Pink Floyd will have you fully relaxed before the climatic ending.

The only faults I can find from this album are the occasional vocals from either John Petrucci or Mike Portnoy. Throwing in the occasional yelling or special effect voice over James LeBrie’s sweet voice just doesn’t work. It sounds like a heavy metal parody when they do this. Beyond that I can’t find anything wrong with Disc 1.

Disc 2 of the expanded edition has numerous covers from various other rock and metal influences. Once again these are some amazing covers with James LeBrie hitting some amazing high notes in places. He makes Queen actually sounds good for a change! Some great instrumental work as well they could have made this a whole separate album. Either way the trip from the beginning of disc 1 to the end of disc 2 is a wonderful trip of musical exploration and harmonic brilliance.

Disc 3 of the expanded edition (yes there is a disc 3) is the instrumentals from disc 1, so if you ever wanted to sing karaoke to Dream Theater now’s your chance. While I can say it’s a nice to have this there are some noticeable differences between the instrumental versions. Beyond that this is as close as we’re going to get to Liquid Tension Experiment Album #3.

Hopefully LaBrie’s vocals will perform admirably this time around on tour, beyond that Dream Theater continues to amaze me both in Production and their ability to keep pushing Progressive Metal forward.

Green Day’s latest album is an attempt to please both the hard core punk fans they generated back in the 90′s, and the newly found progressive fans of the modern era. However you can tell the boys are trying to pick up where American Idiot left off. Sadly the album which may be the first ‘concept’ album we’ve had in a long time. The album falls short of expectations and I felt as if there was a lot of polishing that was still needed to be done. The attempt to mix in old fashion radio sounds and background noises has been done before (cough Pink Floyd cough) and listening to the whole album there seems to be only two real singles that are available for radio play. One which is ’21 guns’ is used in the latest Transformers movie which makes no sense giving the content of the lyrics. The rest of the album is a hodgepodge of different style songs with nothing memorable or anything singable that one can hold on to. The title track even sounds more like a Phil Collins tune than anything punk-ish. All in all a bit dissapointing.

I don’t usually pay myself on the back, but this one was so freaking cool I just have to shout it everywhere I can “I interviewed Stan Bush! I interviewed Stan Bush!” You know the guy from the theme song in the 1986 Transformers Animated movie! Anyhow check out the interview I did last year for the TFormers.com Podcast. It’s amazing he would pretty much answer anything and was an extremely cool guy!

Click here to listen to the interview.

How do top the largest album in your career?

“Don’t ask me”, says recording legend Anthony Anselmo. Who’s last album of mixes “No… Really” was considered his epic masterpiece. On the tailend of this great accomplish comes six years of work on his latest album “Going for the WhatNot”.

As before where Anthony would be mimicking a Phil Collins cover, this one mimics the famous Yes cover with Anthony himself providing what he calls his most ‘revealing album ever’.  The Answering Machine/Voice Mail saga that started with five comedy cd’s and morphed into now a trilogy of musical remixes Anthony says completes the story of his life for the past eight years.

“All of these songs were a work in continual progress for eight years, then finally I got tired of the space taking up on my hard drive and decided it was time to finish this.” Says Anselmo now renown for both his media achievements in both the Podcast and web art realm.

“Going for the WhatNot” is the latest in his musical mix achievement, with both music that is progressive, pop and the standard Anthony’s standard polticial song.

The CD itself starts where “No… Really” left off, with the opening of a door and the emergence of the sound coming out from the depths of probably his dark mysterious mind. The pounding bass of “Answering Machine Messiah” points directly to the core of what Anselmo is trying to accomplish. The political “Gay Marriage” follows pointing to the hypocrisy of the religious right. We are also featured to a full extended version of the songs from Anthony’s various podcasts and finally the epic 20 minutes “Awaken” bookends the whole saga nicely.

“Each song tells a story from about 2001 till now,” says Anselmo “It was a bitch to finish but we really spent extra time to make sure this one, (if the final one) would be the best.”

And produced this compliation is state of the art, as it included numerous new techniques to provide the latest and greatest sound to the listener. Anselmo has grown with his talents and both the production quality and content quality really shine here.

Where his former epics “No Case Required” and “No… Really” would sometimes stray from direction, there is defintely a coherant story being told here, and some may even consider this a ‘concept’ album harkening back to the days of old Progressive music that is rarely heard anymore.

With huge promotional plans in the works Anselmo is constantly busy producing and preparing. Working 60 hour work weeks is the normal as producing art in any form is his drive. GFTWN has already received huge critical acclaim from both fans and critics which surprised Anselmo himself.

“The last album was sort of considered the second album, and no one expects that to do well. By the time the third album comes along you really have to bring it all to the table and I’m glad that this one is being as well received as it is.”

Will this be the last of his musical mixing genius? Anselmo states that since this one was so hard to finish he would like to put this one to rest and continue with some other projects or other forms of music.

“This may be viewed as a closure to the series or a transition album. If I do do another one, that will be completely different from this. This is it… FiN (laughs)”

If this is the completion to a journey then it defintely has been a creative one…

Omlesna Ynohtna reporting for the Anselmo Press…

ALBUM TRACKS AVAILABLE HERE

Been wanting to write about this one for a while but just haven’t gotten around to it.

Figures that after a bit of turmoil of firing lead singer Steve Perry Journey actually produced probably their best album to date and something that could compete in this era of modern music. The last album with lead-singer Steve Augeri was probably their best with him to date, and sadly Steve was left go after having voice problems during their 2004 tour. (For more of this drama just visit the Journey Wikipedia, although note I hate wikipedia for several reasons, long story…).

Generations is purely classic Journey, and like Green Day’s American Idiot there isn’t a bad song on the album. What’s nice is the other members of Journey finally get to bust out their chops and take on a song or two. Drummer Deen Castronovo also provided some great songs, and some argue that he sounds more like Steve Perry than Augeri does. However Augeri really does shine on his album with both the opening track ‘Faith in the Heartland’ and ‘Beyond the Clouds’. Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain and Ross Valory all contribute on vocals making this probably the most enjoyable Journey album since Trail By Fire.

Once again Steve Augeri was let go due to voice problems which is sad because I think he could have recovered easily from this and from what I’ve seen new lead singer Arnel Pineda isn’t going to bring much to the table other than a pretty face. I think Neal Schon needs to either wrap it up, or make amends with Steve Perry. Yes, a reunited Journey tour might not sound AS good as the old days, but as we learned from Genesis and the Police if it’s possible to put on a semi-decent performance the fans will show up for the memories of the good old days.