Day Dream Believers

Long Island. Where local uninhabited restaurants offer you ‘a second free for $5 if you have a main course’ (makes no sense to me either). Where they hang up abstruse canvasses by anonymous ‘noted artists’ at grossly reduced prices in diners. Where the waiters don’t understand a simple request for aspirins.

Long Island. Where the streets are inflamed with dull thunder, and most of the brain cells have long since checked out on the fast ferry to Imbecilica. Not a place to find a Rock band blessed with a sensitive intelligence. Not a place to find a group unashamedly forging a unique path down the Progressive spiral. Not a place to find Dream Theater. But if you enter a certain hairdressing salon most evenings of the week and tread carefully over abandoned locks and belligerent blowdryers, you’ll come across Dream Theater in rehearsal. Strung out in a room about the size of the RAW office, the five members of DT spend hour-layered-upon-hour carefully configurating their music, revitalising the imagery of the Progressive Gods, long since cast down into the pit by the newly hewn idols of music industry disdain for anything musical!

Dream Theater. Charlie Dominici (lead vocals), John Petrucci (guitars – a lousy darts player), Kevin Moore (keyboards – not much better at darts), John Myung (bass) and Mike Portnoy (drums/percussion). Five men with the dedicated gleam of inspired craftsmen, carefully constructing a sound and a style that dares to be different. The name says so much. Elements of fantasy and imagination combined by surefooted showmanship. The art of Progressive Rock – and that’s a term DT aren’t afraid to be associated with.

“Yes, I guess we do fit in to this category,” readily admits Petrucci. “Sure, it’s hard to state this publically, because of the preconceptions about this form of music, but that’s part of where we come from. But there is another side to us. We are also a very heavy band. To us, it’s a combination of these two elements that makes up the Dream Theater sound. Heavy acts like Metallica have never gotten into the Progressive side of things, whilst Progressive bands like Yes never really got heavy. We fit both categories.”

Influences in this band range across the entire spectrum of music. The Progressive icons such as Yes (there’s a ‘Close To The Edge’ poster adorning one wall of their rehearsal room, its green glow unencumbered by the wares of age), Genesis, Rush and King Crimson nestling alongside the heavies such as Ozzy and Black Sabbath. And then there’s David Lee Roth, Joe Satriani, U2, REM, Peter Gabriel...and Bartok. This is a group who draw from everyone and everything.

“The way we look at it,” says Moore, “is that every type of music has something to offer. Nothing should be dismissed without being heard.”

Maybe that’s got something to do with their own musical backgrounds. At the time this act was formed under the name of Majesty (December 1985), three members of the group (Petrucci, Portnoy and Myung) were studying at the prestigious Berklee School Of Music in Boston. Moore, meantime, was at the Fredonia School Of Music. The keyboardsman had actually gone to High School with both Petrucci and Myung. This combination of circumstances led to the foursome teaming up at the backhand end of ‘85 in Long Island.

By March ‘86 vocalist Chris Collins had been recruited and a four-track demo was cut, selling out its 1000-copy pressing very quickly. But Majesty hit problems when vocalist Collins was found to lack that extra spark the rest of the group had. So he left in November ‘86. It was to be virtually a year – and nearly 100 auditions before Charlie Dominici added his not-inconsiderable throaty weight to the line-up.

“We actually recorded a six-track instrumental demo at one point,” explains Petrucci. “And there seemed so little prospect of finding the right sort of vocalist that we did talk about staying as an instrumental group. But we always truly knew that Majesty needed a vocalist to complete the sound.”

By the Autumn of ‘87 Dominici was in, and within a few months (thanks to Chuck Lenihan, guitarist with fellow Long Island band The Crumbsuckers – an old friend of DT) the band had been brought to the attention of the newly-formed Mechanic Records label. The entire staff, so legend has it, trooped down to a Majesty rehearsal and after one song knew they wanted the band. The contracts were subsequently inked and the LP recorded, under the production guidance of Terry Date. Titled When Dream And Day Unite. it is (as I indicated in my review last issue) a magnificent exposition of individual bravura. If Metallica had grown up on Styx and Kansas, this is what they might have sounded like. Progressive music for the ‘90s.

Surprisingly, there seems to be a feeling of slight dissatisfaction with the LP in the Dream Theater camp.

“Terry was Mechanic’s choice,” says Petrucci. “He’s the kinda guy who can take a band with a limited budget and time, yet still get them to kick ass. We went along with their suggestion...what else could we do? We had no other choice! Not that I’m disappointed with what he did for us. As far as the basic recording is concerned Terry was fine, but when it came to the mix-down he was burnt out and consequently the final sound is a little lacking in places. Terry Brown, who because of his work with Rush is a hero to us, was brought in to re-mix our current single. ‘State Of Confusion’, and we’d have loved him to mix the entire record, but I guess budgetary considerations precluded that.” (Although Brown has now remixed a second track from the album, ‘Afterlife’, which will be released as a CD picture single in the US).

To me this is the sentiment of a perfectionist. When Dream... is an astonishing record that will surely open up a whole new vista on the Rock front: DT have determinedly shunned current trends and practises and gone out seeking a new audience, one with a modicum of intelligence and musical appreciation as well as a desire to munch on Metallic fondue.

“To be honest, I don’t know what sort of audience we’ll attract,” admits Moore. “We have no idea who’ll get into this band. But I think we are looking for an audience who are prepared to accept a more adventurous approach to Rock music. I regard us as being rather akin to Jane’s Addiction in that we don’t follow trends...”

“...Once we get out on tour then we’ll find out if there is an audience for our style,” adds Petrucci. “I teach guitar and most of my students are heavily into what we’re doing, so obviously Dream Theater is going to appeal somewhat to the more musically demanding. But we find that a lot of HM fans are only too ready to accept us, at least judging by the fan mail we get. We’re not a band who will have big hit singles, because we have no desire to write that sort of song. We’ll find out soon enough just where we stand.”

And so to the confusion some of you might be feeling over the name. As I stated earlier, the band started out as Majesty. They’re now called Dream Theater. Where did the change happen?

“Well, we discovered that there’s a band in Las Vegas called Majesty who’ve been going for about 11 years,” says Moore. “They’ve never had any product out or anything, but have trademarked the name. And even though we offered to buy the trademark, they refused.”

“We spent ages trying to come up with another handle,” continues Petrucci. “At first we changed to Glasser, which was inspired by our lawyer’s surname, then we tried out Magus and M1 amongst others. Finally, after going through about six alternatives we hit on Dream Theater, which comes from a cinema in California. Actually, I think the band in Las Vegas did us some sort of favour in the end because there is something pompous about the name ‘Majesty.’”

And whilst Pomp is very much in the DT blood, there’s nothing pompous about ‘em. And if Mechanic really do have the financial power base to make Dream Theater into their flagship, and if they can project onstage as I saw them in their own small rehearsal room, then this will be a band to savour in ‘89.

My one concern is Charlie. His voice is magnificent, but his persona is too enclosed. Not the tallest of persons, Dominici actually accentuate his lack of height through his stage moves. This is their Achilles heel. And whilst it should be the music that matters, nonetheless image can make or break a band in the late Eighties. Dream Theater have the capacity and (in four cases at least} the look to break big. But Dominici is there upfront and I hope his own image problem doesn’t turn the dream into a nightmare. I can’t help recalling another superb Long Island band called Zebra, who were eventually held back by a lack of personality.

Pray this doesn’t occur with DT.

—Malcolm Dome