Former Dream Theater and current Sons of Apollo drummer Mike Portnoy was asked on Neckbreaker podcast whether he would ever do “random basement” shows again, to which he responded (via Blabbermouth):
“No. I hate that stuff. [Laughs] There’s been a couple situations through the last few years where I was playing tiny little clubs — I did one with Metal Allegiance, and I did a bunch with Adrenaline Mob — and honestly, I was miserable. [Laughs].”
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During the interview he also talked about how Shattered Fortress picked Dream Theater songs for their setlist:
“First and foremost, I narrowed it down to songs I wrote the lyrics for. There are about twenty or thirty songs in the catalog that were my lyrics and my vocal melodies, so I began the narrowing-down process with that. Then from there, I kind of just looked at the catalog, and it felt like most of the stuff from ‘Scenes From A Memory’ would be fitting.
“I wanted a big opener, and I knew ‘Overture’ and ‘Strange Deja Vu’ would be a great opener, and I knew the last portion of ‘Scenes’ would be a great encore.
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“We did ‘Home’ and ‘Dance Of Eternity’ and ‘Finally Free’, which I thought was very, very fitting personally to end with, between ‘One Last Time’ and ‘Finally Free’ — those were both very fitting messages for me to have some closure with this. That right there was a big chunk of the set between the ‘Scenes From A Memory’ suite and the ’12-Step Suite’, and I knew I wanted to have ‘The Mirror’ in there as well as kind of a prelude to the ’12-Step Suite’. That kind of wrote itself.
“The only other thing I was thinking of possibly doing was ‘A Change Of Seasons’, and once I heard that Dream Theater is currently playing that, I decided I didn’t want to have to — you know — be doing what they’re doing at the same time.”
