Seattle I am proud of you! You absolutely brough the house down, it was complete mayhem during the entire show. Young, old, male, female did a tremendous job of showing DT that we were glad they included Seattle on this tour.

 

I have seen some youtube vids of the LA and San Fran shows of the intro video and opening song, Bridges In the Sky, Seattle crowd was soooo friggin loud that we could hardly hear the Shaman trance, that song was very close to the highlight for me of the night, it plays very well live. And before I go further, we got the first setlist (or San Fran set) which did not include Breaking All Illusions. Here it is:

 

 

Build Me Up, Break Me Down was awesome, and getting to hear Endless Sacrifice was a treat for sure, crowd went nuts on that song.

 

Mike Mangini played very, very well. He hit everything spot on, I don't think he had any hiccups the whole night. His drum solo was actually entertaining. Most metal drum solos are a bore, generally just a bunch of tom rolls and dbl bass rolls and hitting cymbals with all their might.....no finesse playing at all. Mangini is definitely fast but it was good. You could tell he was having a great time, infectious smile the whole time, and at one point LaBrie "introduced" Mike Mangini and the crowd really gave him a rousing welcome, LaBrie had to give an extra few seconds as he could not go on till the crowd calmed down......That was good to see for Mike.

 

John Petrucci was on fire, as expected! What I saw though was his complete crowd approval and he appreciated the response we were giving him, many, many nods of crowd approval by him.

 

James LaBrie was in top form, vocally very good especially on the acoustic portion of the show. I will say one of the negatives was the soundmix guy was not good, many times during the show we could not hear James's singing, mic was too low, drowned out by guitar and also too much "boom-boom" from Mike's drums. But most of the time James sounded very good. He taunted the audience the whole show and again we responded with passion, all the sing alongs were hit spot on.......he was even comfortable enough to play with Petrucci's nipple, giving him a pinch (photo below).

 

Myung......a bass playing beast!! I just wish he would play more with his head up so we can see more expression from him, besides it was difficult for my wife to get pics of him...but she managed to get some.

 

Rudess was another one that was hard to hear a lot of the time due to the soundmix, shame as it would have been nice to hear him more, but what we did hear was normal great playing by him. He and Mangini fed off each other all night, but I also think part of it was Rudess making sure Mangini was playing in time with the rest, especially on Portnoy songs. I saw a lot of that during Endless Sacrifice and Under A Glass Moon.

 

The stage set was decent, it could have been better. The 3 cube screens was a nice touch but the actual live video feed was pretty amature'ish looking. Now I may be very biased here as for example the Rush Time Machine screen was basically a huge HD monitor and showed tremendous detail. These cube screens were fine but the feed resolution looked like a 1980's live feed, no color.

Mangini's drum kit is well....too big. Also seems like it is not ergonomically good for a drummer that will play for 2 hours. His octobans are above his head and a lot of his cymbals are very high up, making him have to reach a lot and I have to figure that after 2 hours his arms must completely be numb from the shoulders down......and to have to do this for a whole tour for 3 months? Ughhh....

 

The acoustic set was refreshing, nice add in. The Great Debate and Fatal Tragedy were also highlights for me and the crowd.

At the end you could see DT were pleased with the set, we actually saw Myung smile.....and Mangini was blown away by the crowd response, I don't think he realized how loud we were sitting behind his kit with the ear monitors in.

 

My wife did the normal and took a ton of pics, amazing job she did. She had one fan ask her for her contact info as he wants some of her pics....I guess she is becoming famous as my prog rock photographer!

 

Myself, my wife and two of my sons (12 and 16) had an amazing time. We were as close to the stage as we could get without having to buy VIP tickets, so we did good!

 

Here are some pics......Enjoy

 

 

 

Also I mis-understood her, I thought she said Trivium was ok......Last night she told me she did not like them, other than the bass player and drummer because they had nice smiles ......But she said she had no desire to pull out her ear plugs.

 

First off, the sound guy was really thrown off by the acoustics and adjusting from Trivium's obnoxious eq-job, their bassist was completely drowned out by the constant double bass mashing. I've always thought they were alright, and that's still my opinion about that, especially with their new lazy-metalcore sound.

Their set was a little strange and I wished they had played some more facemelters like stream of conciousness, since I know Mangini could have done it. 

I literally heard people in the crowd yell "Portnoy who???" The drum solo was unbelievable, and his overall performance was close to perfect with the exception to one song, I recall a mistake, that's right Mangini, you remember it too, you tried changing to the wrong verse and only recovered one measure later! 

Now, nobody has mentioned the big issue with Labrie, his voice is healed and sounds better than it has for years! If I counted how many times I cringed it would probably be twice! 

And as always, Myung was the ninja secretly running the show with the wizard at his side, melting my face with the famous keytar and the new full pivoting keyboard setup complete with the ipad and brain combusting continuum.

The crowd participation was great, for most of the show they were starting chants and Petrucci would step up his step ladder of shred and throw peace signs at subjects of the communion including myself. 

The guitar playing was also flawless needless to say, I especially enjoyed the solos during the jam break. 

Honestly if you haven't been to a DT show, you are missing out on a cataclysmic event that I sometimes theorize will bring upon time paradoxes and other dimensional chaos. Truly a great thing to witness.