WHEN DREAM AND DAY REUNITE [OFFICIAL BOOTLEG]

This is the live show of Dream Theater's 2004 show of playing the entire When Dream and Day Unite album, an album I have always felt is underrated by Dream Theater fans worldwide, because of Charlie Dominici's often "out of tune" vocals or just vocals that are not James Labrie. This is of course James Labrie here on vocals, live, which is another weak spot it seems and it does show in the course of the DVD.

THE LIVE SHOW

Of course the show is When Dream and Day Unite in its entirely and also features the non-Dream Theater album song, To Live Forever, a great little ballad it is and I feel like it needs to be on an official Dream Theater album (too late for that now). Guesting is of course Charlie Dominici, the vocalist that I think sounds much better than James Labrie on vocals, for this song at least. And he is also featured on the masterful song, Metropolis Part 1, a classic in the Dream Theater arsenal of over 100 songs and a tasteful unison section that I have always loved. On here, we have Derek Sherinian cascading down on the keyboards as usual and reunited with the band just for one song that kicked him out in favor of Jordan Rudess. No eccentricities here, just plain old Sherinian action.

Anyways, the live version of When Dream and Day Unite is played pretty much without much flaws except in the vocals. The band plays flawless versions of every song and I feel like James Labrie is not the right man for the job at least for some of the songs like A Fortune In Lies and Only a Matter of Time. These songs sound like Dream Theater needed Charlie Dominici on vocals. Maybe they should have made Charlie sing on all the songs. Metropolis is overall the highlight of this When Dream and Day Unite dvd with Derek, the band and Charlie all together, culminating in a great finale.

Pretty darn good DVD 4/5, except the production isn't quite a Live at Budokan and the drums are still too damn loud.

THE BONUS FEATURES

Here we have the Commentary by Dream Theater, a video of parts of the rehearsal and an old interview. The commentary track is interesting as always and Mr. Myung doesn't really talk as usual. This is comparable to the Images and Words in Tokyo/5 Years in a Lifetime commentary with mostly everyone commentating on the release and how the show was brought out. And the rehearsal video.... Very interesting indeed, I thought it was very cool that Sherinian was part of it all..

The old commentary is where the actual gold of this part is. You get to meet the band before they were popular and celebrated.

Overall, this section is interesting, but not as well produced as Budokan, of course, pretty decent.

This release overall is not a masterpiece of Progressive music because it is an "official" bootleg, but nevertheless recommended for Fans of Prog due to its "educational" piece.