I have been extremely busy lately due to baseball games and my birthday :) So Dream Theater is one of my favorite bands in the world. Mike Portnoy (the recently departed drummer of 25 years) has been a huge influence on me. That being said I do have a story behind Under a Glass Moon
from the Images and Words album. Many fans consider this their best album but I respectfully disagree but that is a who another discussion. When I was in college back in the early nineties, I was in a math class with this really long-haired guy (his name escapes me). Over the course of the semester we starting talking and I found out he was a death metal drummer for a local band. Once he took me to one of his band practices and I was blown away at what he could do. On the way to the practice he put in a tape of IAW and played me Under a Glass Moon. For those of you who are not drummers, the drum beat for this song is one of his more well known creations. I was immediately impressed. The double bass patterns in that song are cool as hell. Only later would I full grasp the technicality of the song in terms of the huge amount of odd time that is in the song as well. Several years later I bought IAW and liked it but I did not like the vocalist at first. Obviously I have changed my tune on him and now Jame LaBrie is one of my favorite. I guess he just had to grow on me (a lot of people say that about Geddy Lee from Rush as well).Now fast forward a few weeks and I had invited him over to my house to check out my set and jam a bit. It was a cold rainy November day and we drove in his car. We got off the freeway to avoid the congestion and head up National Avenue. While heading towards home, a car pulled out in front of us, hitting the rear quarter panel of the driver side. The car we were in started to swerve from the impact and the fishtailed back only to have the guy nail us in the passenger side rear quarter panel. The same guy hit us TWICE! It turns out the guy was in his 80's at least, and upon further review had alcohol on breath. Luckily no one was hurt, although the second impact did jolt me pretty good. We waited forever for the cops to get there. While we waited the guy was so scared and/or drunk that he actually told me that it did not look that bad. Both quarter panels were smashed in!!! I felt bad because I got picked up before the cops showed up. He never did get a chance to come over again. We laughed about the old guy but it sucked that his car was messed up. So whenever I hear Under a Glass Moon I think of that day and the accident.
Do you have any memories for this song? Please let me know.
