It may take days, months, years, or even decades in order to "develop" the listening ear. That is, as a non-native English speaker, I am referring to the ability to listen to an English song and understanding the lyrics without actually looking at a written lyric.
In musical perspective, there's another dimension to this. It’s about the ability to differentiate between the different sounds that gets combined into a song to create the signature sound of a band or an artist. Previously, it was quite simple. Drums, lead guitar, bass guitar, vocals, and sometimes, rhythm guitar and keyboards. This is generally true for the music genre I mostly listened to--heavy metal and hard rock.
But things get complicated when more instruments, multiple singers are added to the mix.
I don't exactly recall when, but years back, I came across an audio cassette that was titled "Awake - Dream Theater".
Firstly, I thought Awake was the name of the band and Dream Theater being the album's name. The minute I played the borrowed cassette in my modest stereo cassette player/radio, some strange, captivating music filled the room.
I could understand that it was "rock", but it was not the kind of rock that I had been listening to till then (Scorpions, Metallica, Aerosmith, etc.).
I couldn't really understand the words much. But the first song strived around the theme of "6'O clock in a Christmas Morning". The song started with a "drum solo", followed by a mesmerizing lead guitar intro, and afterwards a number of other instruments started getting added with the mix to create a dramatic, unique intro.
The singer sang a few lines, and then again, some music, some pre-recorded voices, back to singing, it was as if the music was "progressing", and that's how my journey into the world of progressive rock started. The song appeared to have multiple portions, and each could actually be broken into separate sections including a very exciting one starting from 3:15 and continuing till another out of the world solo by the band's guitarist Petrucci at 3:53.
However, I am not ashamed at all to admit that this journey didn't allow many other bands to even come close to the 'train of thoughts'. I listened to bits of Rush, some Queensryche, some Todd Rundgren's Utopia, and I don't know really what else that qualifies as progressive rock.
But I've been a diligent listener of the band. I lost touch a bit since they went through a massive lineup change with one of the band's creative masterminds and founder drummer Mike Portnoy leaving the band. He was quickly replaced by another Mike, Mike Mangini.
With Mangini, Dream Theater managed to launch a series of successful albums. I stopped following the band for a while, but then got back to their music, and caught up with the backlog.
I found most of their newer albums to be "same of the old", e.g. these songs have their signature sound, compact composition and tight playing/singing. But something was missing.
Maybe because I am a big fan of Portnoy (partly because he has always said he was heavily influenced by Ringo Starr, The Beatles drummer), I couldn't really acclimatize myself with the concept of a Dream Theater sans Portnoy.
However, things changed when the band announced that Mike Portnoy was coming back! This was announced when Mangini was still with the band. But then the band and Mangini amicably parted. He was very "gentleman" about it. He even said something in the line of "I was only filling in while Portnoy was taking a break". Though I not sure about his exact words, but you get the essence. And let's take a second to show respect to this tremendously skilled workhorse, who kept the DT engine running for 13 years.
And then things changed even more when they announced the release of their newest album featuring Portnoy, "Parasomnia". Along with the album's name, came the first single, "Night Terror".
As soon as I started playing the new song, it brought me back years earlier. I got literal goosebumps. It felt as if I was listening to Dream Theater for the first time again. The new song is invigorating, it has the classic Dream Theater sound. Mike Portnoy is back, and the Dream Theater I’ve known for a long while is back, too.
Can’t wait for the full album to get released in February 2025. And the album cover is really nice, too.
