Fates Warning Concert, A Waste of Money

I like Jim Matheos for his great work in OSI with Kevin Moore. Both of them are ex-Dream TheaterBlack musicians which by default is a great credit for them. Mike Portnoy, the drummer is still playing in Dream Theatre though (he left OSI after recoding their second album "Free"). The music of OSI is mostly based on Jim and Kevin Moore’s creativity. Some say OSI is the hard rock/heavy metal version of Kevin’s own solo band Chroma Key because of his dominant programming in all OSI songs over all the instruments.

Jim Matheos plays great in OSI. Beautiful minimalist music with great riffs. OSI has worked with many good musicians like Steven Wilson (No-Man/Porcupine Tree), Gavin Harrison (King Crimson/Porcupine Tree), Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth), Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), Sean Malone (Cynic) and Tim Bowness (No-Man) but the main members are still Jim and Kevin. Unfortunately, OSI like Chroma key doesn’t look like a real band but more of an experimental project. It seems like both members are so involved in their own work that don’t bother promoting their albums seriously or put some shows here and there.

When I heard Jim Matheos’ band Fates Warning was going to play at Avalon, Hollywood, I thought I gave it a shot. At least I could see Jim Matheos work.

Less than half of the theatre was empty. Mostly lousy bands played for about two hours before they came up. It was a total boredom. The singer, Ray Alder tried to give some energy to the crowd. Poor guy tried his best but it seemed like the rest of the band were trying to work against him. All of them were standing right in their positions not moving at all. Jim Matheos only played three solos in the whole show. He looked like he just woke up from a deep sleep and was dragged into the show. After a while even those enthusiastic fans in front of the stage stopped cheering. In the end, people applauded like they were forced to have them come up again and play a couple of more songs. What a shame. This time, they tried to give some energy to the crowd like they knew they bored everyone and wanted to make up for it!

Four people standing on stage playing with their least interest is not called a show. If you can’t or not willing to be responsive to the people who came to see you, you better don’t put any shows at all. Both Avalon's sound system and their sound engineer were awful too.

I’m going to see Cold next week. Let’s see what those guys do.