The summer of 2001 I went on a music buying binge. During the days around the birth of our younger daughter, Miriam, I saw a CD from a band that included Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. Being a huge fan, I bought it because of him, and the fact they did a cover of a Procol Harum song, "In Held (Twas In I)".
The day Miriam came home from the hospital, I sat in our living room, with Moriah on one side, and a tiny Miriam on the other, and headphones on, listening to Transatlantic's SMPTe. The first song, "All Of The Above", is not exactly for the faint of heart. Thirty minutes long, it had better deliver something to keep one from hitting the "next" button. I sat and rocked my two daughters to sleep with that song in my ears, and was transfixed.
The band was a multiple side-project. Portnoy and Spock's Beard-founder Neal Morse (multi-instrumentalist and lead singer/songwriter) had asked bassist Pete Trewavas from the venerable British band Marillion and long-time Swedish prog-rocker Roine Stolt from The Flower Kings to gather together and put together some music. In the early 2000's, Morse became a born-again Christian and left both his own band and Transatlantic. But, it seems time has done its work, and they got together and released some new music last summer (The Whirlwind) and, now, are touring. Tomorrow night, they are playing the Park West theater in Chicago, and I will be there.
That funny looking guy with the long hair on stage in the last video is Daniel Gildenlow, leader of Sweden's Pain Of Salvation, hired as a side-man.
