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Once in a LIVEtime
Cover art by Storm Thorgerson
Live album by Dream Theater
Released	October 27, 1998
Recorded	June 25, 1998
Venue	Le Bataclan (Paris, France)
Genre	Progressive metal progressive rock
Length	154:09
Label	EastWest
Producer	Kevin Shirley
Dream Theater chronology
Falling into Infinity (1997) Once in a LIVEtime (1998) Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory (1999)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal	7/10

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 (although the font can be seen on the spine of Dream Theater).

Track listing

All music is composed by Dream Theater, except where noted

Actual setlist

The actual setlist of this concert was: (as taken from Portnoy's concert database) (a / means "segueing into")

• A Clockwork Orange (Intro Tape) (not released)
• The Crimson Sunrise
• Innocence
• Puppies on Acid
• Just Let Me Breathe
• Burning My Soul (only released on 5 Years in a Livetime VHS/DVD)
• Voices
• Under a Glass Moon (not released)
• Piano Solo
• Lines in the Sand
• The Way It Used to Be (not released)
• Scarred
• The Darkest of Winters
• Ytse Jam (w/ Drum Solo)
• Take The Time/Freebird (Lynyrd Skynyrd cover)
• Anna Lee (not released)
• Hollow Years
• Speak to Me (not released)
• Hey You (Pink Floyd cover) (not released)
• Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John cover) (not released)
• Cover My Eyes (not released)
• Take Away My Pain
• Trial of Tears
• Caught in a Web
• Lie
• Peruvian Skies (w/ "Have a Cigar" (Pink Floyd) & "Enter Sandman" (Metallica))
• Guitar Solo (w/ Paradigm Shift & Flight of the Bumblebee)
• 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 (a progressive rock supergroup to which Sherinian and John Myung were members).
• 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" (a progressive rock supergroup of which Portnoy and Petrucci are members), his own song Gemini which he would eventually release in his second solo album Terminal Velocity and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee".

Personnel

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

References

1. Prato, Greg (2011). "Once in a LIVEtime - Dream Theater | AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved August 3, 2011.
2. Popoff, Martin (2007). The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal: Volume 3: The Nineties. Burlington, Ontario, Canada: Collector's Guide Publishing. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-894959-62-9.
3. "Once in a LIVEtime".
4. http://mikeportnoy.com/dates/MPTourography/ShowInfo.aspx?showId=439
5. "Dutchcharts.nl – Dream Theater – Once In A Livetime" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved November 30, 2021.
6. "Offiziellecharts.de – Dream Theater – Once In A Livetime" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved November 30, 2021.
7. "Dream Theater Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved November 30, 2021.

• Albums with cover art by Storm Thorgerson
• Dream Theater live albums
• 1998 live albums
• East West Records live albums