In Barcelone Spain, 19th Feb 2002 they played Metallica's Master Of Puppets. Bootlegs of this show (audience recorded) surfaced on the net not long after. I heard a few of these tracks but the quality gave little indication of how good it was. They could obviously play the tracks... v Today, Dream Theater have released an official bootlegs label, and the second round of releases from this label includes the whole Master Of Puppets set, recorded live from the soundboard.
The CD package is excellent. All Dream Theater official bootlegs have a similar layout, with a custom image in the centre of the cover. This album's cover is a bastardized cover of the original Master Of Puppets, with Metallica replaced with Dream Theater and Dream Theater logos added to the grave crosses. Included is an 8 page booklet with a two page explaination of the album and the band's love of Metallica and six pages of photos. The explaination stops at Cliff's death...
Metallica (on Master Of Puppets) is a four piece band, guitar and vocals (James), guitar (Kirk), drums (Lars) and bass (Cliff). James, Kirk and Cliff share solo duties. In recent years I've listened to MOP and realised many of the solos I thought were played by James are infact bass solos played by Cliff.
What I've never really realised until now is that Dream Theater are a five piece, one guitar, bass, keys, vocals and drums. Playing a two guitar album (often MOP has three or more guitar parts) in a band with only one guitar is the most obvious challenge.
In Dream Theater, guitar solo duties are often swapped between the guitarist and keyboards, so I was expecting that... although I went into this album assuming D.T. had two guitarists and was wondering what the keyboardist would be doing. Three songs into the album I was still assuming the keyboard parts I had been hearing were there simply to give the keyboardist something to do. I couldn't believe this could all be done with only one guitar. Guitarist John does an absolutely blistering job covering both rythmn and solo duties for most of the album. I'm blown away. Only in the solos does he make any obvious mistakes and they're covered fairly well. The gig almost never sounds empty due to the lack of second guitar.
Much of Cliff's excellent bass solo work is covered by the keyboards. In fact, bass is almost invisible on this recording, mixed quite low. Bass is mixed low on the original album, but Cliff's solos do stick out. I'm finding the lack of bass a bit distracting. Any time the keyboards replace a guitar part is also distracting but it's not too bad, and it's interesting to hear some differences to the original album. A direct exact cover wouldn't have been as fun to listen to.
I'm finding the mix overall to be good but not great. Sometimes a guitar solo is a little loud, drowning the rest of the band, often the keyboard is mixed far too low. The keyboard plays the rythmn plucking part in the middle of Master of Puppets and it's completely lost during the solos.
I assumed that vocally James LaBrie wouldn't be up to the Master Of Puppets task. His voice is quite high and thin, but on listening, so is James Hetfields at the time. It's actually not too bad a match. LaBrie can't growl like Hetfield but Puppets isn't that sort of album. For the moment he's getting away with it.
I should say, at no point while listening to this album do I think it's Metallica. Ignoring the jaring keyboard and vocals, it's just played too damn well. Any Metallica gig I've heard these songs played at has been very sloppy. Sometimes they'll nail it, but Dream Theater's drummer is much tighter than Lars... although he could be playing it all completely wrong. I wouldn't notice.
As far as the overall performance goes, it's brilliant. They make mistakes, mostly in solos. In Thing That Should Not Be they get a bit lost but recover. The keyboard player has a few problems with some of the solos, but the guitarist rarely does. Some of the guitar work in this album is very fast, and I suspect the Dream Theater guitarist added a few notes here and there to make it more interesting. The mixing is extreamly annoying in some songs, the bass solos in Orion are nearly lost, as are many of the keyboard parts, but it's not terrible.
I suspect the mixing issues are mostly caused by the recording being dumped to DAT tape onto one stereo track on the night and the band/label having little scope to remix it for the CD. There are a few points when it definitely sounds like they're mixing on the go (keyboards start quiet then are turned up, same with bass). If you look at it as what it is, an "official bootleg", it's a fantastic recording compared to audience recordings of the night. If you look at it as an official release, the mix is at times dissapointing.
Highly recommended CD for Dream Theater fans. Recommended for Metallica fans but I warn you may never want to hear Metallica played live again after this... I'm tempted to buy something from livemetallica.com to compare.
I should note, Metallica are fantastic for letting Dream Theater release this album. I'm sure they'll get a royalty from every copy sold, but they could easily have said "no Dream Theater, you may not make money from our songs". Not that Dream Theater are making money from this official bootleg label. I suspect it'll be an "at cost" project.
This album impressed on me that what I truely love about Dream Theater is their guitarist (and his interplay with the keyboard player). Pulling off most of Master Of Puppets pretty much solo just blew my mind. He has a "solo" project Liquid Tension Experiment which currently has two albums of instrumentals. I must get these.
Is the CD format dead [AustralianIT]? I don't think so, but these days it seems more of a storage medium than a final product. I'm starting to see music as the thing I want and am willing to pay money for, not the CD. This is weird.
Australian music's favourite commentator, Phil Tripp calls the price cuts (to 89 cents and/or 99 cents a song) by Detra and Telstra music online an "act of desperation". I don't know, a lot of studies have shown that people are happy to pay under a dollar for music, but get upset at any more than a $1. No matter the format. No matter the currency.
The real reason the music industry is stuffed by Banjo Bob (via IndieInitiative). Same old news.
Victorian's miss out on a public holiday for Anzac Day this year. A few people have said "it shouldn't be a holiday, the special day is Sunday". I don't want to sound like I don't care... but I don't care. I want my public holiday. When we become a republic will we cancel Queen's Birthday holiday and extend the mid year public holiday drought from Easter in April to Melbourne Cup in November? At least I don't live in the good old no-annual-leave-unless-we-feel-like-it USA. I'll hug my four weeks paid leave. Four days of which I use next week. Rock.