LIVE AT THE MARQUEE

While's there not really much in here in terms of material (just 6 songs), it's a nice opportunity to listen to James LaBrie's dynamic falsetto before his "food illness" that seemingly made listening to songs from Images & Words in later shows irreprehensible and almost impossible to listen to, as he had to lower the octaves each time.

The record starts off with "Metropolis / A Fortune In Lies", with the latter being a very good song with LaBrie on the mike in comparison to the former, Charlie Dominici. Then you get to "Bombay Vindaloo", the highlight of the entire disc. This is a pure jam, something extremely rare in the world of prog and even rarer in the world of metal.

When you take a band like The Grateful Dead and Phish, whom usually base their songs on very simple rhythms and patterns (the former moreso than then latter), it's easy to just jam and mess around for another 10 minutes or so. Once you take that philosophy to a progressive, technical, demanding metal group like Dream Theater, the window for improvisation is a bit narrower, which is what makes "Bombay Vindaloo". John Myung starts it off with a simple pattern and a few notes, which sets the key. After some weird guy randomly screams in the background, John Petrucci adds an atmospheric touch, while Mike Portnoy (drum god) adds the windchimes, wood blocks, etc. That begins the building blocks for the jam, to which Portnoy adds the drumset, the music gets progressively louder, Kevin Moore's keyboards comes in, and then Petrucci proceeds to melt some faces.

That, my friends, is the true majesty of this legendary band.

Of course, this jam shouldn't take away from the rest of the show. This record contains a very good recording of "Surrounded", as well as "The Killing Hand" and a decent, though not the best version, of their big hit "Pull Me Under".

All in all, at a cheap price (or even better, free), you need to pick this record up. It's not an essential DT live show, but if you're a big fan of the band as I am, you should not be disappointed in retrieving this disc.

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