NEW YORK CITY 3/4/93

'New York City 03/04/93', released in 2007, is the fifth album in the live series of Dream Theater's official bootlegs. With only two albums under their belts, this is an interesting look at the band in their early days, especially as there are some who consider the Kevin Moore years their best.

Featuring most of the songs from their first two releases, 'When Dream and Day Unite' and one of my all-time favourite albums, 'Images and Words', the set list is incredibly strong, despite the limited material they had on hand. The performances are (mostly) impeccable (hey, it's Dream Theater!), and the sound quality is really good, considering this is a 'bootleg' lifted directly from the soundboard. The band all sound clear, and the audience is audible enough without sounding fake.

With the likes of 'Pull Me Under', 'Metropolis', 'Take the Time', 'A Fortune in Lies', 'Learning to Live' and 'The Killing Hand', it's evident that even after only two albums, Dream Theater had a wealth of solid material to choose. Also included is a work-in-progress of 'A Change of Seasons', the 23-minute epic that'd end up getting its own EP release. It's for this alone that most die-hard fans will be interested in hearing this album, especially as the version played here is quite different from the finished product.

However, since I've always preferred studio albums to live ones, I can only look at what I get out of this release, and in that case, it's the things that I've learned:

1. Even Dream Theater make mistakes! (Yep, it's true, there're quite a few bum notes in there!!!)

2. Even in his younger days, vocalist James LaBrie struggled replicating all the recorded vocals live. Bless 'im for trying, though.

3. Dream Theater's early shows had intermissions. Weird.

Strange things to take out of this, I know, but there we go. 'New York City 03/04/93' is a nice little nugget of joy for fans of Dream Theater, but as far as live albums go, it'll take a lot to improve upon 'Live at Budokan', 'Score' or 'Live Scenes from New York'.