Rock on... Dream Theater raise a curtain in Dubai on 25th anniversary tour
Prog rockers Dream Theater are set to make their Middle East debut at Dubai Sports City’s Dome on October 6, 28 years and 13 albums after their debut When Dream and Day Unite landed on shelves in 1989, back in the days when albums were actually purchased from shelves.
The group originally formed in 1985, under the name of Majesty, after founding band members John Petrucci (guitar) John Myung (bass) and Mike Portnoy (drums) met at Berklee College of Music in Boston. The trio would remain the core of the band, alongside vocalist James LaBrie, who joined what became Dream Theater in 1991, and until Portnoy’s departure in 2010.
Although the founders quit their Berklee education to capitalise on the band’s growing success, their shared background as classically trained musicians has been crucial to Dream Theater’s success and longevity – their technical proficiency is legendary in rock circles. Petrucci was named as the second-best metal guitarist ever in Joel McIver’s book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists; Portnoy has won 26 awards from Modern Drummer Magazine and is a member of the Drummer Hall of Fame, while his replacement Mike Mangini, another Berklee alumni, is a five-time holder of the World’s Fastest Drummer record. Myung, meanwhile, was voted Greatest Bassist of All Time in a 2010 poll by website MusicRadar.
The Grammy-nominated outfit’s greatest commercial success came with 1992’s Images and Words, which sold 600,000 copies and remains the only Dream Theater album to be certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. It reached number 61 in the Billboard charts, while the album’s lead single Pull Me Under remains the band’s only Billboard top 10 hit; it reached number 10 on its initial release in 1992, and received a renewed lease of life when it was featured as the end credits track on the 2008 video game Guitar Hero World Tour.
In true prog rock fashion, promoters Mainstage Events and Musolicious promise that the band will be playing for at least two hours when they touch down in Dubai as one of the final gigs on the Images, Words & Beyond 25th Anniversary Tour, which has already taken in gigs across North America, Europe and Asia.
Fans will be pleased to hear that of the 43 setlists from the tour featured on setlist.fm so far, the band have played an average of 23 songs at each gig, including a whopping seven-track, 23-minute, encore of all seven parts of A Change of Seasons, the opening track from the band’s 1992 EP of the same name.
Dream Theater play The Dome, Dubai Sports City, on October 6. Tickets will go on sale on www. platinumlist.net