CLEANING OUT THE CLOSET

If you can get your hands on only one of Dream Theater's Christmas CDs this is definitely the one to get. The disc is complete in that it offers nine fully developed studio songs spanning the band's career (up till 1999 of course), comes complete with sleeve insert, home movie and even a hidden track that contains the sound effects of the Victoria murder sequence from Finally Free off Scenes From A Memory. And while that's all great, the strength of the '99 disc are the songs themselves. There's two classic DT songs (Raise The Knife and Speak To Me) and another handful of solid songs. Heck, this release is as good as several of DT's official releases and the band couldn't be faulted if they had in fact released it as an official "B-Sides" compilation.

I received this disc in February of 2000 and was still in the process of digesting Scenes From A Memory. Thus, I tended to listen to the Christmas disc in bits and pieces here and there. Still, two songs immediately captured my attention, the epic Raise the Knife and the disc's closer, Speak To Me. Raise The Knife is a 10-minute opus (actually 11:35) in the same vein as Learning To Live, Voices, Scarred and Lines In The Sand. Recorded in 1996 the song was part of the Falling Into Infinity sessions and it shows. While still an epic song, it doesn't suffer from the solo drudgery that scar some DT efforts. I'm surprised the song didn't make it to the final release as it contains all the elements of their great epic songs. The lyrics are vivid and insightful (far better than those found on their latest release Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence). The musicianship, as always, is outstanding but not overbearing and contains a great musical section that is powerful and melodic but not self-indulgent. All in all one of my favorite DT songs.

Speak To Me closes the disc (except for the hidden sound effects track) in perfect fashion. I love this song because it could aptly be labeled as "experimental" for DT. Gone are the pounding double-bass drums and fretboard histrionics. Instead we get a fairly straightforward SONG (now there's a thought) that's got all the great song elements: hooks, chorus, melody. The understated subtlety of this song makes me long for more such efforts from DT. It reminds me a little of Space-Dye Vest from Awake. Both close their respective discs and represent clear departures from the usual DT sound and both work perfectly. Again, I wish DT would explore this side a little more instead of re-creating Images & Words over and over again.

Other highlights include the haunting instrumental Eve, the poppish The Way It Used To Be and Cover My Eyes. The latter is cool cuz it's basically a short, 3-minute rocker (another song-type DT could perfect if they ever simplified things). While I prefer the acoustic version found on the 1998 Christmas CD this is still a rockin' song. Don't Look Past Me and Where Are You Now are fairly straightforward DT songs, with a nice mixture of progressive and pop elements. I could probably do without one version of To Live Forever; I could DEFINITELY do without two versions of the song.

Overall an excellent disc, especially for DT loyalists. The band essentially put together all their unreleased studio songs on one disc and the gave it away to die-hard fans. It's hard not to admire such fan appreciation.