Sarajevo 12/24
Savatage
Dead Winter Dead (1995)
I’m going to jump right in with day one and fill in the impetus for this along the way in the upcoming three and a half-ish weeks.
I’ve got a lot of love for rock and metal and progressive/melodic rock. As such, I was a fan of Savatage for quite a few years before their rock opera Dead Winter Dead was released in 1995.
The story of the album takes place amidst the Bosian War which was ongoing at the time the album was released. It tells the story of a Serb boy and a Muslim girl on opposite sides of the conflict, all from the point of view of a gargoyle on a belfry of a medieval church in the town of Sarajevo.
One of the through lines of the album is that there is an old man who sit in the square in front of the church and plays his cello. On one fateful night, December 24th, he’s in the square playing Christmas music…
I won’t say more about the fate of the boy, the girl or the cellist, but this song represents that moment in time, with war raging around them.
This song, and this part of the story crossed-over into Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s first album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories.
This was the first hit for the band and most people’s first introduction into the music of TSO. I thought that it was a fitting beginning to my little experiment in sharing 25+ songs from a band that I’ve enjoyed for more than twenty years.
To hear the full Twenty-Five Days of TSO Playlist on Google Play Music, click the link below.