Liquid Tension Experiment 6/27/08 Downey, Ca

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   The Downey theater where we saw this was about 750 seats with 150 of them in a small balcony. The stage was good size and they had plenty of room to work with. I thought they had some manner of aesthetics in the stage set up deploying the guys with hair, Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci to the right and they guys with no hair, Jordan Rudess and Tony Levin to left. 

My only complaint about the entire show was that I sat just off center toward the right side of the stage in the front row. (Yeah so why am I bitching) The problem was Petrucci had a rig with two speaker boxes both miked to the PA and the band was wearing the ear plug monitors so my question is why was his rig up so high? Even when he was chording I could barley hear Jordan Rudess's keyboard solos through the PA. (Jordan was running straight through the PA) I suspect that people who had a better line to the PA a few rows back would have been fine. Minor complaint though. 

Let me state this I am not a huge Dream Theater fan. I have never seen Dream Theater and only have two of their albums but I have owned these two albums by LTE for a few years so I had an idea what to expect. Jim Harrel the promoter of the show asked how many musicians do we have in the audience tonight and about 80% raised their hands. The crowd was well behaved and pleasant. In fact I saw a lot people I knew from Calprog shows. Even with all of these people around it was special to have a buddy from Kansasfans there who also knew this music and Dream Theater as well and my son just back from a tour in Iraq who turned me on to Dream Theater. 

Portnoy and Levin were pretty much the center of the visual site line with Rudess and Petrucci comanding left and right. They played almost everything off their two albums and added a special treat Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. It was interesting how these guys took those romantic themes and "metalized' them but it worked well. Enough Improv to make the now 8-10 year old songs sound fresh with a few twists along the way that casued Mike Portnoy to exclaim "Why can't you put a little Pnatera into your Jazz Rock fusion"?

I had seen Jordan Rudess perform last year with Rod Morgenstein so I knew what he was all about, a brilliant keyboardist with chops galore, but the one who stole my breath was Petrucci. He is simply a stunning guitar player. At one point they played a softer ballad with just Rudess and Petrucci on the stage and it was beautiful . Almost like something from Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow era. 

I love Mike Portnoy's drumming that we discussed on the way home and came up with this combination Phil Collins (the good Phil not the bad Phil), Neal Pert and Bill Bruford. He pounds as hard as any rock drummer with still a great flare for fusion. Really a great drummer. 

Tony Levin what can you say. The guys is master of the Bass and Chapman stick filling all the holes and creating some new exciting flavors around Portnoy's great drumming. 

The great thing was no vocals.  I really think a vocalist would have ruined this and turned it into Dream Theater.  Without it these great musicans were allowed to express in formats that they would not do under the DT umbrella. 

This was the ten year anniversary of this group and the whole thing was videotaped by a professional crew so I would look for that one coming soon. 