LIVE SCENES FROM NEW YORK

What to say? How I can understand, it should be the best DT album ever ( only it has average 5 stars there). Ok , I heard "Awake" before, so I can more or less imagine , what the music of DT is.

Now a little bit about myself, may be it will help you understand better my opinion. I started my love to music around 30 yrs ago, with just first stereo in our home. I was hypnotised with stereo sound and liked to listen everything what had good stereo effects. In few years I found rock music, starting with Slades,Deep Purple and Rainbow again. Next step was Styx and Kansas. After I got first Rush album, I understood, that I like art-rock. ( It doesn't mean that it was only music I liked: punk, new-vawe, new romantics, heavy metal, etc. all was in my collection). Traveling through time, I found jazz-rock, later avant-rock and jazz as well. Later return back to blues and southern rock roots.

So, for today, I like plenty of styles, and know many things from musical history. Sometimes it's good, sometimes - maybe not too much.

So, I came to DT music from the backdoor : Liquid Tension Experiment, than Petrucci collaborations, than - Portnoy. At least the day has come and I decided to listen their mother-group, Dream Theater.

What did I found? Quite professional, full of energy, with some melodies prog-metal. Even more: good quality recording in that live album, long compositions (OK , 3 CD format is too long for any concert), nice guitar and keys solos. In general, not bad at all.

Was I impressed? Not too much. All that I heard hundred times during last twenty years, and quite often in more original versions. So, is it enough in the beginning of XXI -st century just to be a highly trained musician, to know how to play long solos/compositions with multi- textured sound, to learn some heavy metal clishes from eighties - and you are heavy-prog star?

Please, understand me right - the music is good enough for me. Not too many competitors can play it at the same level right now. But - where is new experiments, ideas, where IS PROGRESIVE THERE?

What PROGRESIVE is in playing of 20-th years old musical schemes, even at high technical level? How many ORIGINAL songs/compositions of this three CD set you can remember and name after total listening?

Can anyone number me new sounds, ideas, something new (progresive) this group bring to prog-rock? If no, so why do we name it PROGRESIVE? I absolutely agree, that with that music could be a prog-star in early eighties ( when Rush turned off to more synth-sound). But now? OK, it's a pleasant listening, good collection of old refreshed tricks and at high level of musical technique. And?

Some can think I don't like heavy music. No! I can find plenty of real progressivity in newest Metallica, Opeth or Mars Volta albums. But Dream Theatre - vintage?

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