Mike Portnoy comments

E-mail from Mike on the band’s visit and show in Korea.

Hi all,

We are back from an Incredibly exhausting trip in & out of Korea at the Triport ‘99 Rock Festival in Seoul, Korea as special guests to Deep Purple on Saturday July 31, 1999), for the live debut of “Dream Theater 2000”! Well, the whole experience was nothing short of unusual....

For starters, this was the very 1st Rock festival EVER in the country of Korea. (Which also made it the “biggest” concert event as well!) Given the inexperience of handling such an event, we went in expecting the worst of conditions.... and we weren’t too far off in expectations!! It was like a warzone!!! And to make matters absolutely worse, there was a typhoon that hit on Friday and didn’t stop the entire weekend... EXCEPT for the hour we were on stage! It was the most bizarre thing!

For the 24 hours leading up to our performance, it was nothing but a giant hurricane... Most of the bands all throughout the day had to be cancelled... It finally lets up for a moment, we hit the stage, and it stayed beautiful out the entire time!!! We definitely got lucky.... After we finished, Deep Purple hit the stage but the luck ran out and they ended up getting completely poured on!!

Anyways, it was quite a first experience for Jordan and for the fans in Korea! (I won’t even get into that we were plagued with technical problems throughout our set as a result of this chaos...) There was around 30,000 crazy, screaming Korean fans who loved every minute of the experience regardless of the weather, so I think it was worthwhile...

The set list, for those of you who keep track, was: Metropolis, Puppies on Acid, Just Let Me Breathe, Hollow Years, Voices, Caught In a Web, Peruvian Skies, Another Day, Pull Me Under.

That’s right, no new material... You’ll have to keep waiting in suspense!

That’s all.... It’s time for a much-deserved vacation with my family!

Mike Portnoy

PS – Oh yeah.... we finally finished up that new album of ours last week!