Dream And Dregs Show Off Their Riffs

The spirit of old-school progressive rock was reincarnated at the Roxy Sunday with Dream Theater and the Dixie Dregs, an odd pairing that actually made sense. The Dregs, a Southern-fried fusion band on its first tour in six years, and Dream Theater, a progressive metal group in the vein of Rush and Queensrÿche, share virtuoso musical chops, a manager (Natick-based Frank Solomon), and fervent fans. The Roxy was sold out two weeks in advance.

But it was Dream Theater fans (many sporting that band’s T-shirts and pumping their fists) who really packed the house, lured in part by another prog-rock staple: the concept album. For the first three-quarters of its two-hour headlining slot, Dream Theater played its new CD, Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From A Memory, in its entirety, following a tradition laid down by the Who, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Queensrÿche, and many others.

Dream Theater got an A for effort and execution, tastefully supplementing the bombastic precision of its music with abstract images and catch-phrase lyrics on large screens flanking the stage. James LaBrie’s high-scaling vocals lent their own projection, though only die-hard fans were likely to follow the album’s tale of a man who realizes through hypnosis that he was a woman in a past life – one who was murdered in 1928.

However, while Dream Theater tempered its head-banging tendencies (until an encore of oldies capped by ‘Take The Time’), it was often mechanical and monochromatic in its delivery, or just derivative. The opening ‘Regression’ and the reincarnation revelation ‘The Spirit Carries On’ had a veiled acoustic tone straight out of Floyd’s The Wall. And during more muscular passages, monster drummer Mike Portnoy’s staccato, strobe-lit fills and the interlocked riffs of six-string bassist John Myung and guitarist John Petrucci (whose fluid leads put speed just a step ahead of melody in a style recalling Metallica’s Kirk Hammett) were technically impressive but repetitive.

There were some more interesting moments, like a shifting ‘Home’ (with a sitar-like synth lead by new keyboardist Jordan Rudess, who later proved his mettle with a facile piano soliloquy) and instrumental ‘The Dance Of Eternity’. Rock concept albums, by nature, tend to be over the top, and Dream Theater’s show took that route naturally, pulling and hammering heartstrings along the way.

The Dregs (themselves a Dream Theater influence) deserved a better showcase than 55 minutes in a packed Roxy, where sightlines disappear. But guitarist Steve Morse stood out, with accelerating, sustain-spiked flights, harmonizing at times with ex-Mahavishnu violinist Jerry Goodman. Andy West was back for the first time since the early ‘80s, playing rhythm guitar and bass – joining newer bassist Dave LaRue for extra backbone to ‘Odyssey’ and ‘Cruise Missile’. And while the instrumental band (rounded out by drummer Rod Morgenstein and keyboardist T Lavitz) seemed to need more space in its interlocking lines, the old Dregs energy flowed, from the funky ‘Kat Food’ to the dreamy ‘Hereafter’.