You see, large legacy artists today are releasing these kind of albums as part of their anniversary editions. Whitesnake comes to mind with their excellent box sets. But Dream Theater, well, they were doing it as part of their Official Bootleg series.
Released in 2003 on Ytse Jam Records, what you hear on this double CD “Making Of Scenes From A Memory” are alternate takes, partial jam sections that are a bit different, random noises and improvisations, plus alternate mixes.
Some of the stuff on CD1 is not that interesting. For die-hard fans like me, it’s okay to listen once and then it goes to the collection.
But there is also some great stuff here.
“Regression” is an alternate vocal take. The guitar progression that JP wrote became the central theme tying the album together. It appears in “Through My Words”, “Finally Free” and is the foundation for the excellent, “The Spirit Carries On”.
“Through Her Eyes” has James LaBrie trying a few different vocal melodies but the piece d’resistance is the sax solo on the outro which was left off the final mix.
The booklet notes from Portnoy mentions the following for “Through Her Eyes”;
“Originally we wrote 2 different versions of this song.
The working title was “Titanic” so there was the “Short Titanic” (this arrangement that ended up making the final CD) and the “Long Titanic” (which was more of a traditional rock arrangement, with drums and some additional chord progressions).
Because of time restraints, the “Long Titanic” is not included on this CD, but it can be found on the closing credits of “Metropolis 2000 – Scenes From New York” DVD.
John Petrucci’s vocal demo guide for ‘The Spirit Carries On’, is warts and all auto-tune free and pretty funny to listen to.
And then we come to CD2, which are the original mixes for the album.
This was the first album that had John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy producing. David Bottrill was hired to mix the album because of his work with King Crimson, Peter Gabriel and Tool. It was a weird mix, because Dream Theater in sound is more heavy metal and hard rock with progressive elements. The bands that Bottrill worked with are not hard rock and heavy metal. They have unique soundscapes special to them.
Bottrill mixed the album in 10 days with the band members giving him “expert advice” to make the drums louder, more guitars, more keys, higher vocals and higher bass.
While the mixing process was happening, the band members were giving it their tick of approval, however after the mixes were complete and sitting with the mixes for a few days, the band expressed concerns at the sonic intensity of the mixed songs. It was a bitter pill to swallow as they all had large inputs into how it should be mixed.
Petrucci reached out to Kevin Shirley. Shirley had some time to do a few mixes, so they gave him three tracks to start off with in “Home”, “The Spirit Carries On” and “Through Her Eyes”. Shirley did the mixes (on his own, without any band input) and sent them back. The band compared the mixes to the three songs mixed by Bottrill and they were happy with the sonics this time around.
All was not lost as some of Dave Bottrill mixes survived to the final cut in “Regression”, “The Dance Of Eternity”, “One Last Time” and “Finally Free”.
The weird part is you have this low profile official bootleg release, where the fans get the original mix for the album, when nowadays these kind of tracks are the “in thing” for anniversary editions or special remixed editions.
And so far, this release has not been re-released as part of the “Lost Not Forgotten” series via Inside Out Music.
This original Ytse Jam bootleg has not been re-released as a “Lost Not Forgotten Archive” yet.
This was recorded on the “Falling Into Infinity” tour. The band was James Labrie on vocals, John Petrucci on guitars, John Myung on bass, Mike Portnoy on drums and Derek Sherinian on keyboards.
The mighty Bruce Dickinson guests on vocals for the songs “Perfect Strangers” from Deep Purple and the Iron Maiden songs “The Trooper”, “Where Eagles Dare” and “Killers”. And yes that is him on the cover as well, making it look like he was the frontman instead of James LaBrie.
Ray Alder from Fates Warning also guests on “Pull Me Under”.
This was recorded live at the House Of Blues in Los Angeles on May 18, 1998. There are no touch ups here folks, just a soundboard recording which was then mastered. So you get it all, warts and all.
Lines In The Sand
The opener, from the “Falling Into Infinity” album.
Live they pushed the 11 minute run time to about 14 minutes. On the studio recording the soulful voice of Doug Pinnick appears in the Chorus, however live, that job fell to Mike Portnoy.
Petrucci delivers his emotive solo as expected and LaBrie acknowledges it by telling the audience “that is John Petrucci on guitar” after the solo finishes.
Burning My Soul
This song is a groove metal behemoth. It’s also from the “Falling Into Infinity” album.
The only thing you could do is press play and bang your head to it because the “pressure keeps burning my soul.”
Take The Time
They have fun with this classic from the “Images And Words” album.
It moves between metal, rock, jazz fusion, funk rock and progressive rock.
Live they also chuck in a lot of cover solos in the outro like “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd and “Hot For Teacher” by Van Halen and “Moby Dick” by Led Zeppelin and the intro of “YYZ” by Rush.
Anna Lee
From the “Falling Into Infinity” album, it’s a piano ballad that does nothing for me, so it’s a skip for me here.
Speak To Me
This one was written for the “Falling Into Infinity” double album, but when the label said they only want one album, it was left off the list. I still don’t know how “Anna Lee” made it over this one.
Press play and enjoy.
It’s Dream Theater’s take on how 1980’s U2 would sound through the DT blender. And its performed brilliantly.
A Crack On The Mirror / Puppies On Acid
It’s an instrumental, combining various ideas.
It starts off with Derek Sherinian doodling on the keys, before he starts to play a riff which gets Portnoy to join and eventually the band. They play some sections from “The Mirror”, forming their own medley from the song.
I would rather have heard the song “The Mirror”.
Just Let Me Breathe
Not my favourite song from “Falling Into Infinity” so I would have preferred to hear something else.
Sequencing in live gigs is important, and apart from “Speak To Me”, the other songs like “Anna Lee”, “A Crack In The Mirror” and “Just Let Me Breathe” lose my interest.
Lie
This is DT putting the groove metal from Pantera into their blender.
Is Progressive Groove Rock a genre?
If it is, this song stands tall.
LaBrie is a bit hard to handle here vocally, but hey, if you want the studio recording, press play on the CD. I would rather take a ticket to the show instead.
Peruvian Skies
They set a standard with this song.
Every time they play it, they play parts of the songs that inspired and influenced the song, so you will hear excerpts of “Have A Cigar” by Pink Floyd and “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. Not a lot of artists would mash up Pink Floyd and Metallica but Dream Theater did and it’s called “Peruvian Skies”.
Then again, not of a lot of artists would show which song influenced them, in case they get a writ.
Press play to hear how they mash it all up.
John Petrucci Guitar Solo
I don’t like guitar solos on their own like this.
I really like how Petrucci started to incorporate his solo moment into a song, by extending the normal solo section of the song, like how he did with “Hollow Years” from “Live At Budokan”.
Pull Me Under
Ray Adler from Fates Warning guests on vocals here.
This is the song that made me a fan.
From a song writing point of view, the band takes the initial intro riff and they keep tweaking it throughout. It’s a great study in how to write different iterations of the same riff and same chordal sequence.
But they don’t do the clean tone intro here, they go straight into the riff that comes about a minute into the song.
Scarred
It’s an 11 minute prog rocker, with a lot of vocal highs. And it doesn’t help LaBrie that the song is sped up a little bit, which is a curse of performing live.
Musically some of the riffs that sounded a bit buried in the studio mix are high in the mix here and I like it.
A Change of Seasons IV: The Darkest Of Winters
A small 3 minute diversion into the mammoth “A Change Of Seasons”.
Ytse Jam
Ahh yes the instrumental that defined Majesty, the name of the band before Dream Theater.
Mike Portnoy Drum Solo
Like the John Petrucci guitar solo moment, I’m not a fan of individual drum solo’s as well. I would rather hear a song with some kick ass fills in between bars than to hear just the drums on their own.
Once the drum solo is done they go back into “Ytse Jam” for about 10 seconds before they start “New Millenium”.
New Millenium
It’s actually the opening track on the album, however it is played as the last song of the set before the encores begin.
Press play and enjoy it.
The first encore begins with Bruce Dickinson lending a hand on “Perfect Strangers”, “The Trooper”, “Where Eagles Dare” and “Killers’.
Perfect Strangers (Deep Purple cover)
How cool it would have been to get Bruce Dickinson up on stage.
You need to remember this is Bruce Dickinson in 1998. His return to Maiden and the “Brave New World” era wasn’t yet done.
It took a verse for the mixer dude to put up his microphone.
The Trooper (Iron Maiden cover)
How iconic is “you take my life and I’ll take yours too”.
Where Eagles Dare (Iron Maiden cover)
They started it and then they stopped after a few verses, as Bruce said, “fucked if I know, it’s been years since I’ve sung it”.
Killers (Iron Maiden cover)
And they go straight into this classic. I never saw it as a progressive track, but hearing it today, it’s definitely got a progressive attitude.
They did a couple of verses before they stopped it as well. And Bruce walked off with a laugh.
It’s a fun little encore section, almost jam like in its nature.
The second Encore begins they don’t play the full songs, just a medley.
Metropolis
From “Images And Words”, the song is a classic. But they don’t play the full song. So I’m not a massive fan of this medley.
Learning To Live
My favourite track from “Images And Words” but they only play sections.
Why write long songs of your just going to cherry pick certain sections of them to do a medley.
A Change Of Seasons VII: The Crimson Sunset
A fitting finale.
To get a re-release, they would need to get Bruce Dickinson’s approval to do so or they remove the songs that he sang and tried to sing.
The above is the cover from the 2003 release. The only place to buy these official bootleg albums was via the Ytse Jam website or at Dream Theater live shows.
While Official Bootlegs are all the rage these last few years with acts like Kiss, Aerosmith and Cheap Trick jumping on, Dream Theater were one of the first few to do an Official Bootleg series. Mike Portnoy was the brains behind this and was inspired by the work his favourite band Marillion did for the fans via the fan club (which Portnoy was also a member of).
But Portnoy had to get John Petrucci’s approval to proceed and once he got it, Ytse Jam Records was formed.
In 2003, three Bootlegs dropped and they kept on dropping while Portnoy was in the band.
But.
Once Portnoy was out, Ytse Jam records ceased to exist.
However the Petrucci led version of the band signed an agreement a few years ago with current record label InsideOut Music.
The purpose of the “Lost Not Forgotten Archives” is to re-release and reissue the entire Ytsejam Records catalogue and the fan club CDs, alongside some new unreleased material. All of the new re-releases will be sold on CD and vinyl, as well as being made available for digital streaming with all new artwork.
Like the terrible one below they did for “The Majesty Demos” re-release”.
“The Majesty Demos 1985-86” covers the initial formation period of Dream Theater, with the songs recorded on a 4 track tape recorder. It was released in 2003 by Ytse Jam records and re-released in 2022 via the Lost Not Forgotten Archives.
In September of 1985, John Petrucci and John Myung met up with Mike Portnoy at the Berklee College Of Music in Boston.
Within the first month of school, the two John’s saw Mike jamming in the practice room and introduced themselves. Besides having a common home base, they had similar tastes in music. They liked progressive, complex music like Rush, Yes, The Dixie Dregs, Frank Zappa and also loved heavy music like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Metallica and Queensryche.
It was just three college kids jamming and having fun. And it is captured on these recordings.
As Portnoy wrote in the CD booklet;
“the music on this very 1st Edition is the very first music we ever created together.
It is very raw (and sometimes even very embarrassing). The audio quality is usually fair at best. We had very limited recording resources available to us at the time.
In fact, we had only one resource at all; my trusty old Tascam 244 analog 4 track recorder that I received as a high school graduation present from my grandmother”.
None of these songs have even appeared on a proper studio album.
The CD booklet explains the tracks a little bit more.
Particle E. Motion
At 1.38, a small instrumental that shows Petrucci playing arpeggios over a Myung bass groove.
The title alludes to the key of the song. The CD booklet mentions how it is the first thing they ever recorded on Portnoy’s 4 track, to break it in and figure out how to use the damn thing.
Another Won
This is the instrumental version of the song, with Portnoy, Petrucci and Myung, as Kevin Moore was not in the band at this point in time.
“This is where it all began” states the CD booklet. The first song the power trio wrote together.
Musically, it you like the first Queensryche album, early Maiden and Fates Warning, then you will like this song. The bass of Myung is boss here, with a dominant Steve Harris like sound.
Press play at 3.29 to hear the riff and how Petrucci builds it into a solo.
At 5 minutes in length, it’s a standard heavy metal cut, heavily influenced by Queensryche.
The Saurus
An 80 second instrumental which has Petrucci playing this jazz like chords. It’s almost lounge rock when the lead kicks in. It’s very Al DiMeola like.
Cry for Freedom
This song has not had an official release on any studio album. Musically this is Petrucci, Myung and Portnoy (let’s call em “PMP”) living in their Queensryche meets Rush world. And I like it. It’s very accessible.
It’s also the second song the Berklee boys wrote. The CD booklet mentions how much of a lead instrument the bass was when it was just the three of them.
The School Song
Song number three for the Berklee boys. A song that got left behind, and it has never been played live.
A major key riff kicks off the song, something which Petrucci likes to do a lot and its similar to some of the riffs he has written on studio songs like “Our New World” from “The Astonishing” album and “The Bigger Picture” from their self-titled album.
At 2.31, it has this minor key section which screams Iron Maiden. The CD booklet states the same.
The last few chords to end the song is how “Ytse Jam” starts.
YYZ
A Rush cover. It’s how all acts start out. Playing the songs from our heroes.
Portnoy even plays the keys on this.
It’s perfect and it shows how precise they are.
The CD booklet does state how they would jam, “La Villa Strangiatio”, “The Spirit Of Radio” and this one.
The Farandole
A Talas cover which is classical in nature. Who would have thought that almost 30 years later, Portnoy would be in a power trio combo with Billy Sheehan.
The CD booklet mentions that Talas was Portnoy’s and Myung’s favourite band during this period especially their “Live Speed On Ice” album.
I love reading stuff like this.
Two Far
Original song number 4.
This is the instrumental version.
Musically its Dream Theater’s version of RushMaidenRyche.
Anti-Procrastination Song
A S.O.D. cover at 13 seconds long. Pointless, but hey, what else can you are young and have a 4 track recorder.
Your Majesty
They are still living in their Queensryche meets Rush world with a bit of Malmsteen chucked in. This is the instrumental version of the song.
It’s more of a straight forward type of song, maybe even commercial sounding.
This track was resurrected and played live in Paris in 2002 as a tribute to all of the French Fan Club members which goes by the Majesty name. A perfect way to honour their dedication to the band.
Tracks 11 to 17 are all little snippets no longer than 20 seconds as they play around with multi-tracking on the 4 track recorder.
The tracks in question are “Solar System Race Song”, “I’m About to Faint Song”, “Mosquitos in Harmony Song”, “John Thinks He’s Randy Song”, “Mike Thinks He’s Dee Dee Ramone Introducing a Song Song”, “John Thinks He’s Yngwie Song” and “Gnos Sdrawkcab”.
Each song starts off with Portnoy yelling the title and then you hear 4 tracks of Petrucci harmonizing. Portnoy makes mention in the CD booklet, “it’s amazing how incredibly tight John can double track his guitar leads and still is a master of that today”.
Now we get to the good bit.
The rare “Majesty” demo with Chris Collins on vocals. He might have yelled, “Scream For Me Long Beach” while they played live and his stage presence and delivery might have been strained, but he does a pretty good job here to give the songs a unique Tate/Midnight vocal vibe.
The CD booklet mentions how the DT guys had a tape of Chris singing “Queen Of The Ryche” and they were in AWE of how perfectly he could hit those Tate notes (which Portnoy further elaborated, “unfortunately, it turned out that was about all he could do”.)
A friend from Berklee called James Hull also had a Tascam 246 and when they put the two four tracks together, they had a whopping 8 tracks to do a real demo.
They also wrote 3 new songs, the heavy and progressive “March of The Tyrant” and 2 more ballade-esque songs in Vital Star and the 11 minute epic power ballad “A Vision” which Portnoy mentions, has some really beautiful moments, not to mention an AMAZING guitar solo.
Portnoy, Petrucci and Myung recorded their tracks at Berklee. When school finished in May, they joined up with Kevin Moore and Chris Collins back on Long Island and added them to the tracks. Portnoy’s grandmother again came to the rescue and funded the band money to press 1000 cassettes.
And Portnoy mailed em and gave em to people who mattered.
Another Won
The delivery and recording of this is way superior to the instrumental version. The addition of the keys makes each section different.
But my favourite section (like the instrumental) starts around 3.37, when Petrucci starts the riff and then leads into the solo. The solo is even better than what he put down on the instrumental. His fast alternate picked lines are perfect this time around.
Your Majesty
Myung’s bass sets the groove for everyone to follow. The addition of vocals is welcomed and Collins does a fantastic job.
The Chorus is very arena rock like and some of the vocal highs are ball squeezing.
The outro solo is perfect from Petrucci. Simple, melodic and a perfect way to end the song.
A Vision
My favourite track. A 11 minute metal tour de force. I would have loved to hear this with a proper studio release.
An Em(add9) arpeggio chord starts it all off. It builds until the whole band crashes in and Collins is doing all ohhs and woohs. Collins moves between a Dickinson meets Tate vibe here vocally. He sounds fresh.
The Petrucci solo which starts around the 6.30 mark is essential listening. The way he builds it with all the different techniques he employs is a wow moment. At the 8 minute mark it gets a bit more frantic and Petrucci is wailing, while the band is building with him.
The solo finally ends at 8.49 and I wasn’t bored not a second while it played.
But he wasn’t done. He produces another guitar hero solo to end the song. The chops at the age of 19/20 goes to show how competitive the 80’s era was for guitarists.
Two Far
A Neal Peart inspired drum groove starts off the song, and then it goes into a Malmsteen like riff.
The verses are very busy musically so it is difficult to put a vocal melody over it and while the guys tried, they didn’t really pull it off.
However the Chorus is catchy.
The solo section and the unison lines between the guitars and keys is a sign of things to come.
Vital Star
My next favourite.
Collins does a good job in bringing this song to life vocally with his Tate like influences.
Musically, it is living in that Queensryche debut album sound except for the solo section which shows some of the progressiveness to come. And the outro solo from Petrucci is another great listen.
March of the Tyrant
The song is a mix of so many styles from the early 80’s. It has that exotic sounding Middle Eastern riff.
It definitely has that Rush element and how Alex Lifeson plays a power chord with the ringing E and B strings (DT does it more aggressively and distorted here), plus a lot more. There are musical elements of early Fates Warning, Megadeth, Metallica, Yngwie Malmsteen, Marillion, Yes and Iron Maiden.
The solo section is very Holdsworth/Morse like over an Iron Maiden like rhythm section. And I like it.
I’ll end the post with how Portnoy ended his opening in the CD booklet; “I hope you can look past the occasional audio distraction and enjoy a glimpse of where we were at, what we were doing and where we were going.”
Back in 2003, this snapshot back in time was perfect. And I wanted more. Which I got. But that is for another post.
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