The first single from Dream Theater's upcoming "Scenes From A Memory" CD is the track "HOME". It will be available to US rock radio for impact beginning on Monday October 11th 1999. If you'd like to hear it, call your local station and DEMAND it!!!!

CDnow is currently taking pre-orders for Dream Theater's upcoming masterpiece, which will be released on Tuesday, October 26th, 1999.

Click here to order the album

Energie, the label that recently released the Dream Theater Tribute "Voices", will be organizing a Dream Theater tribute night at "Thunder Road" in Pavia, Italy, on Wednesday, September 22nd, 1999.

The set will last more than three hours, and will feature three bands: CMKY, Empty Tremor and Evil Wings. The concert will end with a 40 minute jam session, with the various band members alternating on stage, forming various mixed line-ups. They will be playing covers of "classic tunes" from the 70's and 80's. The Final Jam Session will feature guests from Moon of Steel and Mesmerize.

Dream Theater's upcoming masterpiece was finished at 2am on August 26th, 1999. The final touches at mastering have been done, and the album was delivered to the record company the following morning. The album is now ready for production, and will be released on October 26th, 1999. Kevin Shirley has been mixing a lot of the songs as well, so the album will contain mixes from both Kevin Shirley and David Bottrill.

Hi all,
We are back from an incredibly exausting trip in & out of Korea for the live debut of "Dream Theater 2000"!
Well, the whole experience was nothing short of unusual....

For starters, this was the very 1st Rock festival EVER in the country of Korea.
(which also made it the "biggest" concert event as well..)
Given the inexperience of handling such an event, we went in expecting the worst of conditions....and we weren't too far off in expectations!!
It was like a war-zone!!!
And to make matters absolutely worse, there was a typhoon that hit on Friday and didn't stop the entire weekend.......EXCEPT for the hour we were on stage!
It was the most bizarre thing!

For the 24 hours leading up to our performance, it was nothing but a giant hurricane...
Most of the bands all throughout the day had to be cancelled...
It finally lets up for a moment, we hit the stage, and it stayed beautiful out the entire time!!! We definately got lucky....
After we finished, Deep Purple hit the stage but the luck ran out and they ended up getting completely poured on!!

Anyways, it was quite a first experience for Jordan and for the fans in Korea!
(I won't even get into that we were plagued with technical problems throughout our set as a result of this chaos...)
There was around 30,000 crazy, screaming Korean fans who loved every minute of the experience regardless of the weather, so I think it was worthwhile...

The set list - for those of you who keep track - was:

Metropolis
Puppies on Acid
Just Let Me Breathe
Hollow Years
Voices
Caught in a Web
Peruvian Skies
Another Day
Pull Me Under

That's right, no new material..... You'll have to keep waiting in suspense!

That's all....it's time for a much-deserved vacation with my family!

Mike Portnoy

PS - Oh yeah....we finally finished up that new album of ours last week! : )

We are 95% finished with the recording process...
(Just a few vocal, guitar & percussion overdubs that still need to go to tape...)

We are scheduled to begin mixing July 15th with David Bottrill (Tool, King Crimson, Peter Gabriel) at Electric Ladyland studios in NYC.

We seem to still be on track for an October-ish release with an extensive World Tour to follow......

Unfortunately, that is all I am prepared to give out just yet....but in the coming weeks (or months) more info will begin to surface....

In other news:

Tomorrow recording begins at Millbrook Studios (home of LTE & Platypus) for my latest side-project with Neal Morse (Spock's Beard), Pete Trewavas (Marillion) and Roine Stolt (Flower Kings).
We are going to try and knock out the writing and basic tracks within this one week as we are booked through to July 6th....

I will keep you guys up to date with the details on this project as they are not "Top Secret" like the new DT!!! : )

Carpe Diem,
Mike Portnoy

For the fifth year in a row, Mike Portnoy has won the "Progressive Rock" category of the Modern Drummer Magazine Reader's Poll! This places him on the magazine's Honor Roll. Mike also placed two albums in the "Performance of the Year" category with "Once In A LIVEtime" and "Liquid Tension Experiment". According to Modern Drummer, this is the first time in the history of the magazine that anyone has ever had two albums in this category.

In previous polls, Mike won the "Recorded Performance" category for "Falling Into Infinity", "Awake" and "A Change Of Seasons" and "Up & Coming Drummer" in 1993 for "Images And Words".

hi to everybody,

here is Italian Dreamers Staff, just recovering from a sunny week end on the beach of Rimini, these letter is going to all of you to announce following important message:

Italian Dreamers - Italian Official Fan Club of Dream Theater and CGD
East West Italia
are proud to announce:

"TONIGHT I'M AWAKE"
2nd Dream Theater Party and Annual Fans Covention
"Frontiera Club" Rome Saturday 29th of May 1999 21.00

Contests with DT gadgets and rare material
Live Concerts of ZEN (Rome) and EMPTY TREMOR (Ravenna)
and according with Magna Charta/EDEL Italia pre-listening session of LTE II

The party is a way to meet DT fans from south/centre Italy wich are interested to know personally Italian Dreamers Staff, Rome is a huge city with a rich underground of prog oriented bands, we also contacted newspaper and media like Metal Hammer, Flash, Metal Shock and Psycho to promote it, everyone had a positive attitude and they contacted us because they want to partecipate as guests of the party wich will have memory in summer issues.

We are working hard to make it possible, feel free to pass this meesage,

if it's possible we ask to pubblicate it on the related DT page.

Your Sincerely
Italian Dreamers Staff
Matteo, Marco and Simon

Mike Portnoy will be visiting Sabian's chatroom on Thursday, May 27th, 1999 at 9 - 10 pm EST. You will need to register as a "Zone" member, to be able to be at this chat. Once you get to Sabian's site, click on "Sabian Zone" in the top right corner. After you've entered, click on the "Non Members" link to register your nickname for the chat.

"MIKE PORTNOY - Up Close and In Person!
Tuesday, May 27 - 9 - 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

A 'drummers drummer' for the 90's and beyond, Mike Portnoy is one of the most popular, influential and important players in the world today. With riveting double kick drumming and rapid sticking he has powered progressive rockers Dream Theater into the upper echelons of the global music scene. Mike found real inspiration in the music of Rush, Genesis and Frank Zappa. Hit recordings with Dream Theater include Images and Words, Live at the Marquee, Awake, A Change of Seasons and Falling into Infinity. The disc Liquid Tension Experiment sees him in the role of leader, composer and player, driving an all-star lineup comprising bassist Tony Levin, keyboardist Jordan Rudess, and guitarist John Petrucci. Mike has also proven to be very popular in the Modern Drummer readers' polls, with chart-topping results like #1 Up & Coming Drummer (94); #1 Progressive Rock Drummer (95, 96, 97, 98, 99); #1 Recorded Performance (95 - Awake, 96 - A Change of Seasons, 98 - Falling into Infinity).

Don't forget to visit the chatroom in the Zone April 27th for David Garibaldi and May 27th for Mike Portnoy. You will need to be a Zone member, so register now! Chat with David and Mike while they are visiting the SABIAN factory."

Marlene & myself are proud to announce the birth of our second child and first son:

Max John Portnoy

Sunday March 7th, 1999 at 12:37pm
8 lbs, 13 oz in weight and 20 1/2" in length

Please excuse the delirious parents if they can't reply to phone calls or emails for about a week or so....we've got some re-adjusting to do!!!!

Mike Portnoy
3/7/99 SK - RIP

Jordan Rudess will be doing a chat session for the Artist Shop on Sunday, February 21st, 1999 at 3pm eastern/12 noon pacific:

We have a new chat on the schedule. Keyboard Wiz Jordan Rudess will be joining us on Sunday, February 21st at 3pm eastern/12 noon pacific. Jordan Rudess is one of the hottest new keyboardists on the progressive music scene today. It was made official in 1994 when the readers of Keyboard Magazine voted him best new talent. They made that honor all the more significant by giving him second place in the best overall keyboardist category right behind Keith Emerson! Jordan's tastes have proven very diverse as he has worked with the likes of Vinnie Moore, Jan Hammer, Tony Williams, the Paul Winter Consort, Rhonda Larson, the Dixie Dregs, Rod Morgenstein, Liquid Tension Experiment, Annie Haslam, and many more. And just last month he accepted a gig as the newest member of Dream Theater much to the absolute delight of DT fans everywhere!

Jordan will be discussing this new phase in his career, the recent LTE gigs and recordings for their next album, as well as taking questions from the fans. Again, information on joining the chat can be found at here.

Dream Theater will start working on the new studio album this coming week. Writing and recording will begin on Monday, February 8th, 1999, at Bear Tracks Studios in Suffern, New York. Doug Oberkircher will be the engineer. This means the new album will be recorded in the same studio with the same engineer as "Images And Words" and "A Change Of Seasons". "Live at the Marquee" was also mixed in this studio by Doug.

The album will be self-produced (mixer to be announced) and written and recorded spontaniously, much like "Liquid Tension Experiment". The big difference, of course, is that the band will have 2-3 months instead of 1-2 weeks.

Recording will probably last through to May. The band will take March off for the birth of Marlene and Mike Portnoy's son.

The band is very excited to begin the latest chapter of Dream Theater history, "the Jordan era". The album will contain all new and freshly written material.

Dream Theater hopes they will be able to incorporate Metropolis part II. But if they do, it will definately be different from the version they wrote with Derek, because they want to have a fresh start with Jordan.