Daily Jam - Pull Me Under

“I bet we’re probably the only people here who even know who Dream Theater is. Well…except for maybe those guys.”

In 2010, I went to a small music festival in Houston, Texas…an outdoor festival…in Houston…in the dead of June…because we’re crazy in Texas. Anyway, while watching a set by stoner metal band Saviours, it became increasingly obvious that we were fastly becoming the “old people” at the rock concert. This has been a gradual realization over the last five or six years, but it is apparent nonetheless, especially on that day. I’m not really sure what the catalyst was for our dire and unnerving discovery, but we had been talking about the different metal bands we enjoyed and the ones that we had grown up with. The subject of Dream Theater came up. Looking around, we deduced that it was highly likely we were the only people at the festival who knew who Dream Theater was…a noted exception being the members and crew of Saviours of course.

I hope they felt our bond too.

Dream Theater probably don’t get the respect or credit they deserve, likely due to a penchant for prog rock guitar store wankery, but after a 35(!) year career and a slew of gold and platinum records, maybe it’s time for a reevaluation…

…A reevaluation I don’t actually have time to do here, so instead let’s focus our energy on “Pull Me Under,” a proggy metal jam from 1992’s Images and Words that despite all rhyme and reason remains one of my favorite songs ever. Maybe it’s that almost ethereal beginning guitar riff. Maybe it’s that I love my epic rock jams in multiple parts or sections. Maybe it’s that it came out during that magical period of my life from 1991 to 1995, my early adolescence, when I discovered so much of the music that molded and still matters to me. Yeah, that’s probably it. “Pull Me Under” is a teenage song for me, and thus, like so many other songs I played to death back then, now feels like this lovely mix of nostalgia and fun.

So, thank you for that Dream Theater. We may have parted ways a long time ago (though I still own a copy of 1994’s Awake), but we’ll always have “Pull Me Under.” And there will always be the silent nods of recognition and understanding with heavy metal dudes all over the world.