Dream Theater Concerts Setlist

Dream Theater, formerly known as Majesty, is an American progressive metal band. They were formed in 1985 in Boston, Massachusetts. The founding members were guitarist John Petrucci (born in 1967 in King Park, New York), bassist John Myung (1967, Chicago, Illinois), and drummer Mike Portnoy (1967, Long Beach, New York).

The three founders all attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. They decided to form a band, originally a Dream Theater concert consisted of covering songs by the Canadian rock band Rush and the American heavy metal band Iron Maiden under their old name “Majesty”. They soon recruited keyboardist Kevin Moore and lead vocalist Chris Collins. As the band started to take off, all 5 of them dropped out of college to focus on their music career.

Majesty started doing live shows in the New York area. In 1986, they recorded a demo tape with some covers and some original compositions. The demo became popular in the New York underground prog metal scene, and the 1,000 copies originally produced were quickly sold. However, the band still wasn’t satisfied with their original lead singer’s performance. Collins was fired and replaced by Charlie Dominici. One other major change came their way: a Las Vegas-based band also called Majesty was threatening legal action for copyright infringement. Thus, the band was forced to change their name: it was originally renamed “Glasser”, which was received poorly by the fans. So, they went with “Dream Theater”, after an actual theater in Monterey, California.

Their debut album came out under that name in March 1989, with the title “When Dream and Day Unite”. It was published by MCA Records. However, sales were minimal. Part of the reason was that MCA Records did not fulfill their promises in terms of promotion budget. Also, the band decided to replace their lead singer again - James LaBrie joined Dream Theater in 1991 and he’s still with them today. There was some discussion among the group to boot him too around 2002, but he was eventually spared.

Their second album, “Images and Words” from July 1992 was their first one to break into the Billboard 200 chart, peaking at the #61 spot. It was released through a new label, Atco Records. Since then, Dream Theater has released 13 more studio albums, thus they have 15 in total. The best selling one remained 1992’s “Images and Words” which sold 600,000 copies in the US alone. Meanwhile, their latest new Dream Theater album came out in October 2021, with the title “A View from the Top of the World”.

Dream Theater’s biggest hits to date are “Another Day” (1992), “The Dance of Eternity” (1999), and “Wither” (2009). Co-founder Portnoy left the band in 2010. Their current line-up consists of two of the three co-founders, Petrucci on the lead guitar and backing vocals and Myung on the bass, as well as LaBrie on lead vocals, Jordan Rudess on the keyboard, and Mike Mangini on the drums. Check for the nearest venue you can see a Dream Theater concert on the page above.