夏日流水（6）: Progressive Rock音乐会 （上）

Dream Theater 是个Heavy Metal的乐队，D的favorite。他唠叨了无数次,一定要带我去看一次他们的现场音乐会。所以，当他得知这个乐队今年的巡回演出, 会在蒙城来一场的时候，真是欣喜万分。急不可待地等到五月开始公开售票的第一天，就上网定了两张。而且，从此，八月十二就成了大节日一样地让他期待，也不知道逢人就讲地提过多少回了。

转眼八月十二就到，他弟也临时从网上寻了张退票，从渥太华赶过来看。

音乐会开始得奇早，下午六点就开场。我们是准时到了场，发现场内至少有一半空位。当晚一共有四个乐队的表演，场内观众随着每一个乐队结束表演，新的一个开始表演，而增加，直到最后的满场。到那时候，我才知道，那些后来的人们是多么的明智。从六点坐到到十一点多，耳朵里被灌入四种风格迥然，而都喧闹激扬的音乐，对我来说，那可真不是件那么容易消受的事。所以，我说，下次我一定要等时间至少过半了才现身的。

言归正转。这上篇，先看看我们号称音乐迷的那位，“内行”看的门道吧；下篇再上我这个外行看的热闹。

Progressive nation 2009

It’s finally August 12th 2009, we went to see Dream Theater’s Montreal concert. The name of the tour is called: Progressive Nation 2009, and takes the bands all across the world this year. They called it Progressive Nation because of the genre of music Progressive Rock, these bands play.

British bands introduced progressive rock from the late 1960’s, such as:

King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Soft Machine, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, (to name a few) and reached its peak of popularity in the mid 1970’s.

This type of music is caracterized by long songs often more than 10minutes, complex arrangements often incorporating elements drawn from classical, jazz, and world music, lyrics that are sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based on fantasy.

4 bands played that night:

1)      Scale The Summit (Houston, Texas) a yougn band that played melodic progressive metal. They played incredible guitar solos. It sounded like Joe Satriani. It wa pretty good for a yougn band.

2)      Bigelf (Los Angeles, California): these guys were amazing, they played stoner rock/hard rock type of music. They were energetic and imaginative almost theatrical. The signer played electric organ and keyboard, it was like Deep Purple/Black Sabbath/Huriah Heep. A very nice discovery for me that night! Plus we met the band in person during the break. They were very friendly. Another surprise that night, was the drummer from headliner band Dream Theater Mike Portnoy, went on stage with Bigelf  to pay with them replacing their drummer for one song. He looked like he had a lot of fun.

3)      Zappa plays Zappa (Los Angeles, California) the son of the late great Frank Zappa. They played music like the title says from his father. The music was more rock/jazz/hard rock/blues. They were extreamly talented, we heard saxophone, flute, xylophone, keyboard, drums, persussions, bass guitar and of course electric guitar.

4)      Dream Theater (N.Y. N.Y.) being a big fan of the band, I will not sound very objective! They are very good! Musically trained at Berkley college of music, each of the members of this band totally masters its instrument, they played song from there incredible list of albums.(16) we heard impressive guitar solos, drum solos, keyboard solos, even a bass guitar solo. Melodic progressive heavy metal, was on the menu as well as some more smooth songs.

I must say I had a great time and I’m looking forward to seeing them again.