Where Everybody Knows Your Name the perfect theme song for their upcoming NBC sitcom, "Cheers". Upon learning that "People Like Us" was legally bound to the musical Preppies, the Charles Brothers asked Portnoy and Hart Angelo to take a shot at composing a theme specifically for "Cheers". The song that resulted, "My Kind of People", was somewhat of a reworked version of "People Like Us". It was subsequently rejected. Portnoy and Hart Angelo then wrote and submitted two more potential themes for "Cheers". One of them, entitled "Another Day", contained a lyric line "There are times when it's fun to take the long way home"
Mike Portnoy sessions for the Dream Theater albums "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence", "Train of Thought", "Octavarium" and the Transatlantic release "Bridge Across Forever". He has released bootlegs of his tribute bands Hammer of the Gods (a Led Zeppelin tribute), Yellow Matter Custard (The Beatles), Cygnus and the Sea Monsters (Rush), and Amazing Journey (The Who). On September 18, 2006 within his website's forum Portnoy cagily stated that he had finally met one of his drummer heroes from youth from the band Rush; drummer Neil Peart (one of the few heroes from his youth Portnoy had never met, owing to Peart's legendary