Voicees in Carpe Diem - DT in Leeds Pt 1

On Friday (12th June) myself and Jen travelled up to Leeds to see Dream Theater play at the O2 Leeds Academy. We left our house around 12 pm for the approx 45 Minute journey to Leeds and the car park in "The Light". We had arranged to meet some fellow Voicees (Members of Voices UK, the Official English Speaking Fan club for Dream Theater). We found the car park with out too much trouble being helped along the way by Marge (Jen's nickname for the Sat Nav). Everyone was due to meet in the Carpe Diem bar in Leeds throughout the afternoon, this is a very fitting name for abar which Dream Theater fans are meeting in for reasons i'm not going to explain now.

Upon arrival i was pleasantly surprised by the cheapness of the beer and spotted Woodee around the corner in the Voices Uk reserved area. and before long we were joined by Moliver and then DT Makcem and crew (sorry can't remember names) who had brought a Union Flagfor everyone to sign at the 3 UK gigs. which we quickly realised the pen went through the flag onto the table, thankfully as a parent jen never goes far without some wipes which got it off and from there on in we put something behind it.

I must appologise if i miss anything out but as the afternoon wore on and beer was consumed i might have forgotten something. I'm sure there will be pictures somewhere though. Kerry, Rich and Greg were next to arrive i think but as i said i had drunk beer by this point. The afternoon wore on and was spent chatting to various members of the club in no particular order, NoBloodyName (NBN) & Matt, Beko, Liquid Drum Theater, Hutchy, Neil Watson, Ryuzza & Andy, Eagle Eye Al, Daniel Reid and others (sorry if i've missed anyone). we were joined by some friends of ours Rob, Rich & Father in law (sorry i'm useless with names).

The afore mentioned flag had a few pictures taken with everyone who was there and Carpe Diem supplied us with some free food, which i was quite impressed with considering we hadn't paid for it, Good work had been done by Andy (DT Makcem) to arrange the room and food.

We set off with some Voices UK promotional Postcards around 6:40pm to head the short walk to the venue and to distribute the post cards to the queue, i must add that the work handing them out was done by Jen, Beko and Ryuzza.

The Queue wasn't the best organised affair there was supposed to be a seperate one for people in the Balcony and at no time was this mentioned to us as we were joining the queue until about 10 minutes after the door opened, as we were standing this wasnt a big problem but at the back of the queue it came to a barrier and was starting to double back until some started waiting on the other side of the barrier so we ended up with 2 queue's which the 2nd then went around the block then started to double back again. It was mentioned that the British were supposed to be good at queuing but not in this case it seems.

Once the queue had started moving and those in the balcony had been re-directed it moved along fairly quickly until we got to thebox office where we had to wait for our aftershow passes and was let in through the side door.

The rest of the evening will be in Part 2 and i will try and add some photo's too.

Read Part two: News: Dream Theater at O2 Academy - DT in Leeds Part 2 - The New Hut