Two of the things I really, really love are music, and facts. The first one should come as no surprise, and neither should the second. Not only do I love lists of little, useless facts, but I also love to know everything about anything I am really interested in.
So a lushly designed, authorized biography with a companion CD of one of my favorite bands? Yes, please.
Unfortunately, the book isn’t perfect. The editor didn’t do a very good job with the en-GB to en-US conversion, punctuation and other tiny things that don’t really bother me, but while I like the book a lot, I would have loved a lot more detail here and there. While I appreciate that the author, Rich Wilson, went for a good story, the fact-loving part of me felt kinda let down. While the book does deliver sufficient detail on various issues I’ve read about in numerous interviews with the band, there wasn’t much what was completely new to me. If I were to make a list of things that were new to me, it would go like this:
- The band almost fired James LaBrie after the Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence tour,
- It’s very easy for Images and Words producer David Prater to come across as a total nutjob, and
- John Myung could make his bass say something about penguins and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
All in all, good book, which looks great and has my name in it.
- Rich Wilson — Lifting Shadows: The Authorized Biography of Dream Theater
The majestic surroundings couldn’t be more fitting.