LIVE: DREAM THEATER IN PITTSBURGH

There are very few bands these days that hold the live power like that of Dream Theater. Over the last 30 years or so they have built up a legion of diehard fans. Those fans are super excited because the band is playing the entire Images and Words album, along with a set of their greatest hits. In total they play nearly 3 hours of live music broken into 3 separate Acts. Act I is filled with a plethora of the band greatest hits from over the years. Such as “The Dark Eternal Night”, “Hell’s Kitchen” and “As I Am”, Which featured “Enter Sandman” by Metallica and the massive hit “Breaking All Illusions”. Every song sounded better than the last as the band tore through song after song. That brings Act I to a close. Act II is Images and Words in its entirety. James LaBrie was absolutely majestic in his performance and was quite comical when he stopped to talk to the crowd. All the musicians got a solo during the show, but the two that really stuck with you were John Petrucci’s out of this world guitar solo during “Take the Time” and drummer Mike Mangini’s mind boggling solo during “Metropolis Pt. 1-The Miracle and the Sleeper”. You’d think that would be enough, but the band had a sort of Act III ready with their epic “A Change of Seasons”, all 7 pieces of it. That was it, it was over, but the bands day started a very long time ago when they were meeting with crazed fans and posing for pictures. Now all that was left was to load the busses and trucks and take the show to another town where they’ll do it all over again.