Dream Theater - Live at Budokan

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DVD details

Actor: Dream Theater
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Japanese (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Live, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 180 minutes
Published: 2004
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-05
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Strat. Mkt.

DVD Reviews of Dream Theater - Live at Budokan

DVD Review: Dream Theater at its best!
Summary: 5 Stars

This DVD is an extraordinary production, where you can listen and see these phenomenal musicians at their peak. You will have the opportunity to appreciate their technique, style, and even their personality. Dream Theater is the ultimate representation of progressive rock with fusion of rock, metal, jazz and classical. You will hear the influence of Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, Queen, Metallica, and Return to Forever. At times you may hear some Kansas.

DVD Review: Spotty, inspiring and extremely Brilliant
Summary: 4 Stars

Live at Budokan is a fantastic concert by any means. By DT standards, in it's entirety, it is a brilliant effort, although a bit unrefined in parts. The brightest spot in this concert is a version of "Beyond this Life" which tops virtually any live performance by any band from the past or the present in virtually every category or performance. Absolutely flawless! Especially by guitarist John Petrucci and Bassist John Myung. Myung rarely receives attention for his absolute brilliance as a bass guitarist, possibly due to his laid back style. He is one of, if not the premier bass players in the world. Petrucci is just downright ridiculous in his creativity, speed and mastery of his instrument. Only a few present day guitarists even come close, and virtually nobody from past eras could hold a candle to this guitar genius. Overall, DT's "Score" concert is better; but "Budokan" is worth the price just for the "Beyond this Life" performance; the rest is icing on the cake!

DVD Review: Most bands can't lick these guys taints...
Summary: 4 Stars

The editorial review above pretty much sums it all up. Very talented musicians. Well done DVD. Even if you're not sure if you like these guys, this is worth seeing. Buy it.

DVD Review: Budokan show is a DREAM
Summary: 5 Stars

What an amazing group of musicians - and what a great concert DVD. Sounds great in 5.1 and DT blew me away with how tight they are live.

DVD Review: A must-have!
Summary: 5 Stars

This was actually the first concert DVD I ever owned, so I was really blown away from how awesome these guys looked on screen.

O.K., I'll try to make this short (though I'll probably fail at this). This takes place during the "Train of Thought" world tour and it's at, of course, the very famous Budokan. That being said, the band plays most of the 7 songs off the album ("Train of Thought" as I previously mentioned). In fact, they play all but two of the songs off the album. Incidentally, you get to hear those two songs on their next live DVD, "Score". Other than that, they play mostly from the album before that, "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" and some from their earlier albums, hitting at least one song from each album except "A Change of Seasons".

The band is very excellent here with the exception of James, who sucks on a bunch of songs. However, he is good or at least decent on some, usually the less challenging ones, such as "As I Am" and "Only a Matter of Time". I'd like to take this opportunity now to say that James does a good job singing the songs Charlie used to sing in the sense that he still makes it sound like a Dream Theater song and doesn't make it sound weird with "an old song sung by a new singer". However, on other songs, especially "Beyond This Life" (Having bad tone and pitch is one thing but why add a "w" sound to everything during the first word of each stanza of the chorus???), he sounds flat, nasally and generally off/unpleasant. I've definitely seen better. His stage behavior here has taken a turn for the worse too. Apparently the worse his voice is the more he feels he has to move around and try to be dramatic, which to me just comes across as silly and very unnecessary. He would have been find appearance-wise if he just for the most part kept still. Don't worry though. As proof my assertion is correct, he is much more relaxed and laid back in "Score" where is voice is tons better -- TONS.

Oh, I've spent all this time picking on poor James. On with the other guys. We have a lot of people pissing and moaning about the band not "getting into the music". Evidently unless musicians are grinning like a Cheshire cat, headbanging, jumping, dancing or generally speaking moving around in non-musical ways (ways that aren't related to playing their instrument) they're not into it. I disagree. The band appears to be enjoying themselves very much with some moderate smiling, save Myung who is like a stone, both on and off the stage. (Has anyone ever seen him smile or laugh to date? If he does do this at all he must do it in private.) Besides, they have to concentrate a lot of the time on what they're doing. Mike is always amusing with his smiling and little quirks and gestures and this is no exception. Still twirls those sticks like a pro!

The musicianship is quite excellent as well. They do a great job reproducing the songs live as on the CD and even the solos usually stay the same. Not a whole lot of improv BUT they do add some goodies here. First you get an extended version of "Beyond This Life" where they do a very long jam in the middle, which includes a keyboard and drum duel (very cool). Next you get "Instrumedley" which is a medley of their various instrumentals, INCLUDING a bit from Liquid Tension Experiment! After that you get a keyboard solo from Jordan, which, honestly, in my opinion was pretty good but could have been better. He did the whole thing with the pitch wheel and distortion and it made it sound more like a guitar thing for half the time and that's just not that interesting to me. The second part was pretty cool though.

So, yes, if you're expecting a great concert from the band, you won't be disappointed, despite the flaws I mentioned. It'll fill you up with energy and make you want to throw the nearest emo out a window or pick up an instrument and futily try to play like the band!

As a bonus, you get to see the Japanese audience, which in case you don't know are the coolest audiences out there. They are VERY respectful and many if not most even stand the whole concert without moving save the occassional applause. You even see some wearing suits like they just got off from work! Not an emotion on their face. Very little headbanging or going wild. Many of you may think it's lame but I think it's cool because it shows lots of restraint and composure and they do enjoy the concerts very much by show of applause at the end of their songs and the concert. Better than a bunch of drunken boors screaming so loud as if they were trying to drown out the music.

You also get a cool documentary that shows them arriving in Japan and getting ready for the tour, complete with interviews. It does portray the male Japanese fans as complete nerds though.

There's also an added drum solo from Mike where he takes a couple audience members on stage and has them jam with him. He's very good at this though and appears to be having fun with this the entire time, even grooving the lucky audience members in with his playing.

There's the multi-angle bonus of instrumedley but I for some reason it just looks like the same footage you get on the first disc. Maybe I'm missing something....

So, anyway, get this DVD if you're a fan or even if you're just starting to get into the band. It's great. Nothing more to say.

Well, I was SUPPOSED to make this short, but, oh, well. I tried....

Description of Dream Theater - Live at Budokan

A treasure-trove for Dream Theater fans, Live at Budokan presents an entire three-hour performance at Tokyo's famed Budokan arena on April 26, 2004, along with a bonus disc rich in supplementary material. Disc 1 finds the metallic progressive-rock quintet at its awe-inspiring best, plowing through its catalog of dramatic epics and jack-hammer instrumentals, including five of the seven songs from 2003's Train of Thought. Disc 2 features an extended drum solo from percussionist extraordinaire Mike Portnoy; gear tours from guitarist John Petrucci and keyboardist Jordan Rudess (fascinating for lay people and downright revelatory for musicians); and a half-hour documentary on DT's 2004 stint in Japan punctuated by tantalizing snippets of band rehearsals. The shooting and editing for the concert are a music lover's dream, with lengthy shots that linger on the performances of individual band members. Disc 2 takes this even further with a multi-angle sequence of the 12-minute "Instrumedley."

Production values are extremely high: it's a widescreen presentation shot on high-def video and nicely mixed for multichannel Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound (with a thinner, collapsed version of the same for Dolby 2.0). It must be noted, however, that the center, subwoofer, and surround channels get jumbled right at 1:35:30 on disc 1. The front left/right channels remain in place, but the signals for the other four speakers play non-musical chairs. People listening in 2.0 will experience a brief dropout at that point. --Michael Mikesell

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