Once in a LIVEtime


Once in a LIVEtime is the second live album by American progressive metal band Dream Theater, released in 1998. It is their second live release. It was produced and recorded by Kevin Shirley during the European leg of the Touring into Infinity world tour, at the Bataclan theater in Paris.
Jay Beckenstein of Spyro Gyra plays alto saxophone on "Take Away My Pain". Beckenstein had previously played on the song "Another Day" on the album Images and Words.
The album cover, one of two designed by Storm Thorgerson for the band, shows an overhead view of the ancient Roman theatre in Orange, France set into a head of a monk. Like Falling into Infinity it does not feature the band's traditional logo due to Thorgerson's distaste in working with existing band logo designs. When Dream and Day Unite and Dream Theater are the only other albums without the classic font.

Track listing

Actual setlist

The actual setlist of this concert was:
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • The Crimson Sunrise
  • Innocence
  • Puppies on Acid
  • Just Let Me Breathe
  • Burning My Soul
  • Voices
  • Under a Glass Moon
  • Piano Solo
  • Lines in the Sand
  • The Way It Used to Be
  • Scarred
  • The Darkest of Winters
  • The Ytse Jam
  • Take The Time/Freebird
  • Anna Lee
  • Hollow Years
  • Speak to Me
  • Hey You
  • Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
  • Cover My Eyes
  • Take Away My Pain
  • Trial of Tears
  • Caught in a Web
  • Lie
  • Peruvian Skies & "Enter Sandman" )
  • Guitar Solo
  • Pull Me Under
  • Encore: Metropolis Pt.1
  • Learning to Live
  • The Crimson Sunset

    Covers and tributes

Throughout the album, parts of songs originally recorded by other artists are played by the band.
  • The segue from "Burning My Soul" into "Voices" features John Petrucci playing the first half of John Williams' "Force Theme" from Star Wars.
  • The ending of "Take the Time" contains the solo from Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" and the main riff from Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick".
  • "Derek Sherinian Piano Solo" contains themes that would later be used in the track "Platt Opus" by Platypus.
  • Before the beginning of "Trial of Tears", and at the end of the song, Petrucci plays the famous five tone motif from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The opening of the same song contains portions of the Rush songs "Xanadu" and "The Trees" played by Mike Portnoy.
  • "Peruvian Skies" contains portions of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" and Metallica's "Enter Sandman".
  • "John Petrucci Guitar Solo" contains portions of Liquid Tension Experiment's "Paradigm Shift", Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee", and themes that would later be used in "Gemini", which appeared on Petrucci's 2020 solo album Terminal Velocity.

    Personnel

  • James LaBrie – lead vocals, percussion
  • John Myung – bass
  • John Petrucci – guitars, backing vocals
  • Mike Portnoy – drums, percussion, backing vocals
  • Derek Sherinian – keyboards

    Additional personnel

  • Jay Beckenstein – alto saxophone on "Take Away My Pain"

    Technical personnel

  • Kevin Shirley - engineering, production
  • Alex Goodison - assistant engineer
  • Ian Dyckoff - assistant engineer
  • Rich Alvy - assistant engineer
  • Leon Zervos - mastering at Absolute Audio, New York City

    Charts