Oh wise and powerful Magic 8-Ball, answer me this: after six years, 5,000 petition signatures and three websites, has OzProg made the possibility of an Australian Dream Theater tour any closer to a reality?

It's not difficult to understand why Dream Theater have never ventured to this great southern land, despite a career spanning three decades with multi-platinum-selling success. We're too far away, too expensive, too large, too sparsely populated, our seasons are ass-backwards and CD sales for the most successful acts are measured in thousands, not millions. But despite every tour seeming to be "the one", this time it really does seem like it's our time to see DT - there are signs everywhere that 2008 will bring what every Aussie DT fan has wanted for years.

The first sign is that they've moved to a label, namely Roadrunner Records, who are traditionally very supportive of less mainstream acts, especially when it comes to touring less traditional markets. Opeth, a band whose CD sales would be comprehensively dwarfed by DT's in every market except maybe Sweden, undertook an Australian tour in support of their latest release - which, unsurprisingly, was on Roadrunner - and appear to have made good money, because Australia continues to be included in their tour plans.

CD sales have been a very important element in the DT debate over the years. In our discussions with promoter Michael Chugg we learned that he uses Australian CD sales as one of the major factors with which he judges the feasibility of any tour he plans to take on. The problem with that thinking in DT's case is that until Systematic Chaos was released, it was rare to find an Australian pressing of any DT album on the nominated release date. More often you would find import copies that Warner Music had allowed to take the place of actual Australian pressings of the album, and it sometimes took months until an Australian version made its way into stores.

And of course by that stage all the hardcore fans had bought their import copy, leaving the local release to sit around gathering dust, and there would be zero "Australian" sales for the album, thereby affecting the possibility of a tour.

If I was a promoter and saw that Dream Theater sold so few albums in this country (without knowing that it was based on flawed logic), I wouldn't put up the money to organise a tour either.

But a label like Roadrunner can remedy this situation, because they ensure that local versions of all their major releases are available in Australia on the local release date. These sales are then counted as "Australian sales", and a promoter like Michael Chugg can get an accurate reading of the number of people who have actually bought an album in this country, and he can see that DT do actually have a large number of fans in this country.

Another good illustration of DT's popularity in this country - and another sign that a tour is imminent - was the incredible success of John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy's inclusion on the first ever Australian G3 tour, and the clinics and appearances they held while in the country.

In Melbourne, where I live, John held a guitar clinic in a tiny suburb an hour out of the city, without Portnoy, and with no promotion or advertisement other than word of mouth and a few little news items on some music websites. No TV ads, no radio ads, no street press ads, no music magazine ads, no flyers in music stores, no flyer-bombing at related concerts... nothing. And the clinic still filled the venue to capacity, and attracted hundreds of people waiting hours before the doors opened hoping to get a good seat.

The clinic mostly focused on John's solo material, but when one cheeky attendee tricked him into playing a short section of "Home", the crowd went absolutely nuts.

There must not have been any promoters in the building on that day, because if there was a Dream Theater tour would have been booked immediately.

But perhaps the most telling sign that a Dream Theater tour is closer to becoming a reality is that the band are actually talking about it publicly like it's going to happen. Mike Portnoy has mentioned in passing on his message board that Australia are figuring in their tour plans, and of course we had the greatest news of all when James LaBrie said "with almost 100% certainty" that this was the time in an interview with our own Andrew Saltmarsh.

That interview made it's way through every prog-related website on the internet, even Blabbermouth, and has started a frenzy of excited discussion all over. This diagram should illustrate what such an interview will do to the traffic on a website like ours:

When a band member is confident enough to say something like what James said, only a catastrophic failure on the part of either Roadrunner or the promoter could possibly stop the tour from happening.

So will Australia be on the itinerary for 2008? All signs point to yes.