| When the Keyboard Breaks: Live in Chicago | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Live album by | ||||
| Released | 2009 | |||
| Recorded | June 25, 2008 | |||
| Venue | Park West (Chicago, IL) | |||
| Genre | Progressive metal | |||
| Length | 58:50 | |||
| Label | Lazy Tomato | |||
| Producer | Liquid Trio Experiment 2 | |||
| Liquid Trio Experiment chronology | ||||
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When the Keyboard Breaks is a live album by one-off progressive metal supergroup Liquid Trio Experiment, recorded during a Liquid Tension Experiment live show at the Park West in Chicago, Illinois.
At the beginning of the track "Universal Mind", Jordan Rudess's Roland Fantom-G8 keyboard had a malfunction where the printed circuit board underneath the keys has slid slightly to the side, resulting in every key playing both the correct note, but also simultaneously a note half a step higher than the key. [1]
So I'm playing along, everything's fine, but all of a sudden I started hearing these half-steps. It was as if I was playing in C but somebody else was playing in C-sharp. I was looking at John Petrucci, like, 'What the hell are you doing?' But then I saw him stop for a second, and I looked down at my hands and thought, ‘What is that?' I realized that every time I played a C, the keyboard would also play a C-sharp; every time I played a G, it played a G-sharp, and so on. It was playing everything in the worst possible dissonant way.
While the rest of the band covered for him by briefly playing "Entrance of the Gladiators", Rudess left the stage to figure out a solution, since he didn't have his usual technician or a substitute keyboard with him. [1] To compensate, the other three musicians decided to improvise until Rudess came back. Rudess had to stay on the phone with Roland in Japan [1] for at least 20 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong. The other three just continued to jam with drummer Mike Portnoy giving updates every now and then (the determining point for the track splices). In the end, Rudess took John Petrucci's guitar and started jamming, then Petrucci took the bass, since Tony Levin was playing the Chapman Stick. [1] When that jam was over, Portnoy ended up taking Levin's bass and Charlie Benante ended up playing drums. The keyboard was never fixed that night.
The production of the album was not official, as it was taken from a live stereo recording from the mix off stage. Thus there was no way for it to be properly mixed so everything is how the audience heard it.
The name of the album alludes to the track "When the Water Breaks" from Liquid Tension Experiment 2 .
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Universal Mind (When the Keyboard Broke)" | 2:20 |
| 2. | "The Chicago Blues & Noodle Factory" | 7:03 |
| 3. | "Fade Away or Keep Going?" | 5:03 |
| 4. | "The Haunted Keyboard" | 9:34 |
| 5. | "Close Encounters of the Liquid Kind" | 15:13 |
| 6. | "Ten Minute Warning" | 5:55 |
| 7. | "That 'Ol Broken Down Keyboard Blues" | 6:34 |
| 8. | "Liquid Anthrax" (Contains an excerpt of "How Many More Times" by Led Zeppelin) | 4:55 |
| 9. | "That's All Folks!" | 2:12 |
Dream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 in Boston, Massachusetts. The band comprises John Petrucci (guitar), John Myung (bass), Mike Portnoy (drums), James LaBrie (vocals) and Jordan Rudess (keyboards).
Liquid Tension Experiment (LTE) is an American instrumental progressive metal supergroup founded by Mike Portnoy, in 1997. The band initially released two albums, between 1998 and 1999. An extension of their second regular album, with the absence of John Petrucci was released in 2007 under the name "Liquid Trio Experiment".
Anthony Frederick Levin is an American musician and composer specializing in electric bass guitars, Chapman Stick and upright bass. He also sings and plays synthesizer. Levin is best known for his work with King Crimson (1981–2021) and Peter Gabriel. He is also a member of Liquid Tension Experiment, Bruford Levin Upper Extremities (1998–2000) and HoBoLeMa (2008–2010). He has led his own band, Stick Men, since 2010.
Jordan Rudess is an American keyboardist, composer, and software developer best known as a member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater and the progressive metal supergroup Liquid Tension Experiment.
Michael Stephen Portnoy is an American musician who is primarily known as the drummer, backing vocalist, and co-founder of the progressive metal band Dream Theater.
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John Peter Petrucci is an American guitarist, best known as a founding member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. He produced or co-produced all of Dream Theater's albums from Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory (1999) to A View from the Top of the World (2021), and has been the sole producer of the band's albums released since A Dramatic Turn of Events (2011). Petrucci has also released two solo albums: Suspended Animation (2005) and Terminal Velocity (2020).
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Liquid Tension Experiment is the self-titled first studio album by the band Liquid Tension Experiment, released on March 10, 1998, through Magna Carta Records. The band featured guitarist John Petrucci and drummer Mike Portnoy, at the time both of Dream Theater; bassist Tony Levin; and keyboardist Jordan Rudess, who would go on to join Dream Theater in 1999.
Liquid Tension Experiment 2 is the second studio album by the band Liquid Tension Experiment, released on June 15, 1999 through Magna Carta Records. The album reached No. 8 on the Billboard Top Internet Albums chart and No. 40 on Billboard's Heatseekers. It would take the band another 22 years before they would release their third album.
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Prime Cuts is a compilation album by Jordan Rudess released in 2006.
"Octavarium" is a song by American progressive metal band Dream Theater, from the album of the same name.
Spontaneous Combustion is an album by progressive metal group Liquid Trio Experiment, and is the result of the studio improvisations of Liquid Tension Experiment which occurred during John Petrucci's hiatus, while he spent time with his wife while she was giving birth. The remaining trio of Mike Portnoy, Tony Levin and Jordan Rudess continued to make music during this period. It was released on October 23, 2007. A few songs from Liquid Tension Experiment 2 were spawned from these jam sessions including "914", "Chewbacca", and "Liquid Dreams". The song "Chris & Kevin's Bogus Journey" is not a reference to Portnoy and Petrucci's former Dream Theater bandmates Chris Collins and Kevin Moore, but rather to the track on Liquid Tension Experiment's first album entitled "Chris & Kevin's Excellent Adventure", which is itself a reference to the band's photographer's habit of calling Mike Portnoy and Tony Levin "Chris and Kevin", even after being corrected several times. It is also a reference to the 1991 film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, the sequel to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. The song "Jazz Odyssey" is a reference to the movie This Is Spinal Tap, in which Spinal Tap experiments with an improvisational song of the same name.
"Space-Dye Vest" is the eleventh and final song from American progressive metal band Dream Theater's 1994 album, Awake. The song was written entirely by the keyboardist Kevin Moore, and its demo featured Moore on vocals. It is structured around a dark, brooding duet between Moore playing the piano and vocalist James LaBrie. The rest of the band kick in for a dramatic outro, fading out until Moore ends the song with the piano passage that opened the song. The song is interspersed with samples from A Room with a View, The Fifth Estate, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Trouble With Evan and a news commentary by Jim Hill during the O. J. Simpson freeway chase.
Levin Minnemann Rudess or LMR is a debut collaboration album from half of Liquid Tension Experiment; bassist Tony Levin and Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess with the addition of drummer Marco Minnemann. It was released on September 5, 2013, by Lazy Bones Recordings.
Liquid Tension Experiment 3 is the third studio album by the American instrumental progressive metal super group Liquid Tension Experiment. Released on April 16, 2021, it is their first studio effort since 1999's Liquid Tension Experiment 2.
