If some days have a theme song, today’s has been 21st Century Schizoid Man.

This afternoon as I arrived at the Paramount Theater here in Huntington, Long Island, our house engineer was testing the hall with a recent tape of us doing Schizoid Man, and I couldn’t help remembering that when I last played here 5 years ago, opening for Dream Theater, we did a one time only encore with both bands… playing that same song.

Taking some photos around the venue also reminds me of my taking very similar ones then - in Summer of 2012.

(Here’s a link to that archived road diary page)

Not done with Schizoid yet, but here are some venue pictures from today.

This was, to me, one of those nights when every song finds a new voice - a really outstanding show. And when we finished the second set - with Schizoid Man - it felt to me like a new song… I enjoyed playing it more than I ever have.

And when it ended, in my excitement, I thought the show was over! So as we bowed I took out my camera and took photos of the audience.

Now, as everyone who comes to our concerts knows, and is reminded in many ways, photos aren’t allowed until “Tony picks up his camera”… after which the audience is invited to do the same. So what happened was the band left the stage after a quick bow, knowing we’d come back for an encore piece, (after which I’d pick up my camera). But I remained there taking pictures, expecting a longer bow. Okay, I caught on pretty soon, and left, but, oh oh… the audience and I knew that the ban on photos was over… the rest of the band did not know!

So as we came out to play “Easy Money”, the band, the crew, and security were all trying to get all those misbehaving photographers to stop and wait til the end, as I was swallowing a major oops!

But also kind of thrilled that a performance of a song could so discompose me. “Schiziod Man” had done it’s job.

Here are the illegitimate pictures from before the encore:

And, from the very end: (you can click on them for larger versions.)

A wild night - and great to close the diary with that last photo of Jeremy and Pat, two of my band buddies.

More soon.