Dream Theatre: Progressive Rock to Dream About

The rock band website www.soundgenerator.comdescribes the group Dream Theatre as a "...Pompous, overblown progressive hard rock/metal group...!"

True to form, progressive rock never gets a fair shake! But that's o-k, because in the absence of any new YES (www.yesmusic.com) music, (YES has been on hiatus since there 35^th Anniversary Tour in 2004) Dream Theatre can more than hold its own when it comes to long pieces of music that change rhythm, signature and mood more times than your average rock and roll band could even think about.

To be honest, I was never that big of a Dream Theatre fan. Marillion (www.marillion.com) was more my speed. But when Marillion went on hiatus for a few years between albums I was looking for a new prog-rock fix. I found it in Dream Theatre.

The story of Dream Theatre (www.dreamtheatre.net) is full of twists and turns, false starts and dead ends. The group came into being back in the fall of 1985 -- at the prestigious Berklee School of Music (www.berklee.edu)in Boston -- when fellow students John Petrucci (guitarist) and John Myung (bassist) happened upon drummer Mike Portnoy jamming in one of the practice rooms. The group sat down for lunch in the school cafeteria and found that they shared some serious appreciation for progressive rock. The seeds of a new group were born.

According to Petrucci, during breaks from school the trio jammed with keyboardist Kevin Moore and a vocalist named Chris Collins and debuted themselves as the prog-rock group Majesty. The timing was right; the group decided to roll the dice and leave the hallowed halls of Berkley in exchange for life on the road and a future rife with smoke-filled gigs played for little or no cash. In quick succession they recorded a four-track, six-song demo tape which was sold to local fans and shopped to major and minor record labels. Label execs took notice: Majesty had an edge reminiscent of early Rush with a little bit of Pink Floyd and YES thrown in for good measure.