Transcending Chemistry, Dream Theater Is Magic

The goal of every musician is to make the music transcend the natural world, to bring it to a point where the trappings of technique and equipment fall away and the pure artistic expression shines through. This is the magic.

The way to this magic, as any alchemist will attest, is a matter of chemistry, like a well-oiled, high-performance machine, where the separate components work well in unison, and where each part anticipates what the other will do and compensate if one should momentarily falter.

It’s this gentle push-pull dance that characterize the great performing groups, a characterization that befits a band called Dream Theater.

Only just being introduced to the mainstream audience, Dream Theater, out of Long Island, N.Y., has been fighting an uphill battle, but looks to be winning the war.

“It’s definitely weird,” said the band’s drummer and occasional lyricist, Mike Portnoy. “When we were at Berklee (School of Music in Boston) there were people from all over the world there and the fact that we met each other right off the bat and we love the same kinds of music and we wanted to write in a similar direction and on top of it all, happen to live 40 minutes from each other back at home – it was truly like a gift from God. The chemistry was perfect and it was just like it was meant to be.”

That chemistry has brought the band to its third album release, Awake, a 75-minute collection of progressive rock. That’s right, progressive rock, as in early 1970s ELP-Tull-Yes, with songs that routinely top the 10-minute mark

Proof that there is an audience hungry for this most uncommon form of rock is the success the band has been enjoying of late, beginning with the release of its second album, Images And Words, which has chalked up some 450,000 in sales in this country so far and has seen the band play to sold-out houses.

“The success of the last album was shocking to all of us,” Portnoy explained. “We were expecting a slow, gradual build and figured we would have to grind it out on tour for years and years and years and slowly build up a following, but then all of a sudden, the album just blew into this next level.”

But life wasn’t always this rosy for the band. Formed in 1985 under the moniker Majesty, the band managed to ink a deal and release a debut album in 1989 called When Dream And Day Unite, with former singer Charlie Dominici. The disc was an underground hit with fellow musicians, but remained largely obscure to the general public.

When after a few gigs Dominici proved not to be working out, the lineup – John Petrucci on guitar, John Myung on bass, Kevin Moore on keys, and Portnoy on skins – chose to send the singer on his way and began what turned out to be a two-year quest for a replacement. That was James LaBrie, whose operatic voice is a perfect complement to the high-tech, jaw-dropping technique of the band.

The latest snag has been the departure of longtime keyboardist, Kevin Moore, over the ever-common musical differences. The band has settled on a hired gun, Derek Sherinian, to finish out the tour.

To simply describe the band as a progressive rock band in the early 1970s sense is too simplistic for they are not a retro act and incorporate many other elements. There is an aggressive tract running through much of the disc that echoes some of the heaviest music out there, especially Texas thrashers, Pantera. And then there are the more poppy bits that could be described as Rush meets Journey, and jazzy fusion excursions that recall the best of the Dixie Dregs or Al Di Meola. There are touches of classical music, as well. All of it is tightly woven and seamlessly arranged. The bombastic excess that this music was sometimes hammered for does not apply here. This is a lean, mean, progressive rock for the 1990s.

“I think music like this can definitely be mainstream, but only to a certain level,” Portnoy mused. “It’s very untrendy, so I don’t think we’ll ever, no matter how big we get, be on the cover of Rolling Stone.... We’ll never be flavor of the month. It’s just not that kind of music.”

“I do think there is an audience there that can give us longevity. I’d like to think there are a lot of open-minded people out there who appreciate music with a little thought and substance and obviously there are.”