Soulmate!

Somebody once asked me the question “How will you know your future spouse when you meet her?” My response was “She’ll be wearing a Dream Theater shirt.”

Last night I was walking out of the Institute classroom and in the foyer I saw a girl wearing this shirt …



I rushed over to her, told her I love her shirt, introduced myself, and started chatting. It took a few seconds for me to notice the handful of people in the hallway all saying my name to get my attention. Apparently I blew right past the institute instructor who was trying to shake everybody’s hand as they left the classroom.

This was the most natural ice-breaking conversation I’ve ever had with a person I don’t know. Heck, this was easier than talking to some of my friends! She was also wearing a wristband with the Dream Theater logo. She’s about 20ish, from Utah, and she’s here for a week visiting a friend – some other young girl I’ve never seen before last week.

Let me try to explain how bizarre this is:
- While Dream Theater is the biggest band in the Prog world, they are completely unknown to the mainstream. So their fanbase is relatively small in America when compared to just about any other band you might hear on the radio or MTV or VH1.

- Because we are few and far between, you are unlikely to bump into another DT fan outside of your own circle of friends. You are even less likely to bump into one on the day they happen to be wearing a DT shirt (unless they wear one every day).

- You are much less likely to bump into a female fan. For some reason the overwhelming majority of Prog-heads are men.

- Even less likely for the other Prog-head to be LDS.

So you see, many stars had to align for this to happen. (I crunched some numbers and I estimate the total number of American female LDS YSA Dream Theater fans to be about 25.*)

She also likes Porcupine Tree, Nightwish, and Rush. She comes from a whole family of Dream Theater fans. Their recent family vacation was to go from Utah to Denver to see Dream Theater in concert, opening for Iron Maiden.

As we departed, she did so in the manner customary to my people. She gave me the horn gesture and said “Rock on!” It almost brought tears of joy to my eyes.

Of course I’m just joking about marrying this girl. I’m not in love with her; I’m just in love with this experience.

Besides, it would never work out between us. … She pronounces it “Dream Thee-YAY-ter.”

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*Estimated 50,000 Dream Theater fans in the U.S. based on recent record sales.
-Estimated 5% of serious fans are female based on observations of DT concert attendance and the mikeportnoy.com forum.
- Approximately 2% of the U.S. population is LDS based on U.S. Census and Church records.
- Guesstimated 50% of those fans are single and “young.”

Special Delivery!

Look what arrived over the weekend!



In August Big Rig, Jeep, Princess Flip Flop and I will be going to see Dream Theater's Progressive Nation 2009 Tour in Minneapolis.

Featured bands:
Dream Theater (YAAAAAY!!!!)
Zappa Plays Zappa (Not my cup of tea.)
Pain of Salvation (YAAAY!!)
Beardfish (A modern prog band that sounds like older prog. I'm not too familiar with them. At least the opening act is not Into Eternity. YAAY!)

Something New Hidden In Something Old.

One of my all-time favorite songs is The Great Debate by Dream Theater (Disc 1, Track #4 from their 2002 album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence.) It’s 13.75 minutes of Grade A 100% pure concentrated AWESOME!

I’ve had this CD for 6 years and I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times. I eventually gave up studying each individual part, trying to figure out the timing to its complex polyrhythms and changing time signatures, and I learned to just sit back and enjoy it as a whole. But last night in the car without even trying I discovered something I’ve never heard before, and that makes me extremely excited.

It’s nothing huge. At 9:58 during the transition from the keyboard solo to the guitar solo, the drummer clicks his sticks together a few times. (Quarter notes in 6/8 I believe, but then it switches (again) to 4/4 for the guitar solo. The real prog geeks out there can correct me if I’m wrong, and I know they will. They are prog geeks after all.)

That’s it. In a complex blizzard of notes I found about 8 clicks that I had never noticed before and that made me giggle like a little girl and rewind the CD to hear it again about 3 times. That’s just how I am.

In other news: Dream Theater entered the studio this week to begin writing/recording their 10th album.

Air Show

I went with Jeep & Princess Flip-Flop to the air show this weekend at the Air Force base. I had fun, saw some cool planes, took a tour through a few of them, got a little sunburned, saw some pretty awesome aerial acrobatics, and even bumped into Big Rig. But the highlight of my day came when we were walking through the crowd and saw a guy wearing a Dream Theater shirt. I gave him a double horned salute - \m/oo\m/ - and went about my day with a smile on my face, knowing that I had a prog-brother out there somewhere.

DT in KC

This is one I wrote last year.
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On Monday night (8/6/2007) I stood in the presence of Deity and basked in its awesome power, wisdom, and glory. “Did you have some kind of near-death experience?” you ask. No…I went to a Dream Theater concert!

I’ll admit, this is my first real concert; not counting local bands playing in the back room of a bowling alley that is now being plowed over to build a Wal-Mart. But what an amazing night! The Uptown Theater in Kansas City is beautiful. The old-fashion decorations, arches, moldings, and statues transport you to another era (apparently an era before air conditioning was invented. More on that later.)


The evening didn’t start so great. The first opening act, Into Eternity, absolutely sucked. They were just loud and screamy. Ridiculously, painfully loud. So loud that everything turned to mush in my ears except for the singer’s embarrassingly comical squealing. They actually sounded better with ear plugs half-way in to dull the noise. They sounded better yet with the ear plugs in completely.

The second act, Redemption, was much better. I might seek out one of there CDs. Into Eternity and Redemption both played for about 35 minutes each.

Our seats were terrible (Jeep, Princess Flip-Flop, and myself). We were about 23 rows back, on the aisle of the middle section, directly behind the soundboard. All I could see was the backsides of the sound techs, and instead of seeing what was on stage, I was distracted by the lights on their equipment and monitor screens. But then a miracle happened! This shows that modern-day miracles do occur, and proves my theory that God is a Dream Theater fan. When Into Eternity finished we stood up to stretch (and/or throw poo at the stage) and Jeep and Princess Flip Flop’s chairs both broke! The ancient seats just fell apart!

So we had to ask the young female event staffer for different seats. And she was cute. Really cute! Dare I say “angelic”, sent from on high to work mighty wonders. She directed us to the row in front of the soundboard, about 5 rows up from where we were, in the more expensive seating section; about the 18th row. I shuffled over to my new spot and sat down, grateful to now have an unobstructed view. I looked up to the stage, and behold, I was dead-center! PRAISE THE HEAVENS FOR BROKEN SEATS!!

Dream Theater hit the stage and the whole place jumped to their feet, which is where they would stay for the next two hours. They started by playing a bit of Strouss’ “Also Sprach Zaratustra” (think “2001: A Space Odyssey”; bumm … bummmm … Bummmmm … BA-DUMMMM!!”) then launched directly into Constant Motion.

Dream Theater was amazing! The sound was great without being absurdly loud (no ear plugs during Dream Theater of course)! The lighting did a great job of enhancing the music without distracting from it. The videos on the screen were good. I liked the cartoon that went with The Dark Eternal Night, in the same fashion as the one for Octavarium (sorry, I’m off in DT World now. I realize none of you know what I mean.)

For the first two DT songs I sat about seven feet from the drummer’s wife and kids until they appeared up in the VIP mini-balcony in the upper-right of the picture above.

It was HOT! And I don’t mean “hot” in the Paris Hilton “that’s hot” kind of way. I mean that place felt like a giant sauna. The singer for Redemption was sweating buckets and commenting on the heat. Princess Flip-Flop got dizzy and had to sit down for a while after DT had been on stage for about an hour and a half. Major kudos to DT for playing under the hot lights for two hours.

When it was over I was hot and stinky, my voice was nearly gone, and my shoulders were sore from pumping my fists in the air. I probably lost 3 pounds in two hours from sweating, bouncing up and down, and a little head banging (as much as can be done without any hair to move around and without causing my glasses to fly off. I am so metal!). Jeep and Flip-Flop headed for the car to start up the air conditioner and get some water, while I ran around front to get a picture of the marquee. As I ran against the stream of people a tired, sweaty concertgoer said, “Dude, how can you RUN after that?” I like to think that all of my cycling has acted as training for this night. If I weren’t already past him I might have said, “You mean after two hours of moderate aerobic activity in unbearable heat and humidity? That’s what I do for fun, Buddy!”

I managed to sneak my camera in and take a few pictures without being caught, unlike the guy in front of me who was taking pictures with his cell phone until security spoke to him; then I didn’t see him any more. Unfortunately all my pictures are blurry due to my poor photography skills and my inability to hold still while I’m rocking out.















I hope they come back this way on their next tour!

Kevineb