ONCE IN A LIVETIME

The live album was released in 1998, from the concert in Bataclan, France. At that time, the keyboardist is still Derek Sherinian, but shortly after this album was released, he was replaced by Jordan Rudess. Once again, a great concert with virtuosos from different instruments, but what a shame, James LaBrie did it again. In my opinion, he is a truly great singer in the studio which can he hear from the studio album, great vocal. However, in every concert I have heard, he sang quite-not-so-good and I don't know why. : )

Anyway, the coolest thing about the concert is there is a song A Change Of Season, but was divided into parts (the original parts) spread throughout the concert, without the third, fifth and seventh part, Carpe Diem, Another World and The Inevitable Summer respectively.

The concert started with recorded A Change Of Season I, The Crimson Sunrise. Mike Portnoy clarified in his website that it was recorded not because the issue of "not-able- to-play", but just to create an effect that will also help them entering the stage. Next, followed by heavy guitar riff and improvised keyboard line of The Crimson Sunrise. After that, Dream Theater played their songs from Images And Words, Awake, Falling Into Infinity and A Change Of Season. In the concert, there were three solos, guitar, drum and keyboard solo. Also, just like every other concert, John Myung never plays solo, don't know why. John Petrucci guitar solo is just amazing, truly a virtuoso, and at some parts, he played very nice tones which is very rare to played in a solo. Oh yeah! He also played Paradigm Shift from Liquid Tension Experiment, which is an irony, the made Derek Sherinian replaced.

Dream Theater often placed other musician's riff just like when they played Master Of Puppets and other Metallica's riff into a song in Train Of Thought. This time, they did it again, they put Metallica's Enter Sandman and Pink Floyd's Have A Cigar into Peruvian Skies, which is used to be a somewhat mellow song. Also, the end of the song Take The Time contains the outro solo from Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird and the guitar riff from Led Zeppelin's Moby Dick. The concert then was ended with A Change Of Season VII, The Crimson Sunrise, a very nice ending.

I give 4 stars because of the great concert (from what I heard from the CD!!), but again, James LaBrie was not consistent in his vocal performance throughout the concert.

Timur Imam Nugroho - Indonesia

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