Biography
Liquid Trio Experiment 2 is a band formed of Tony Levin, Mike Portnoy, and John Petrucci. They were basically a one time jam band that formed during a live concert of Liquid Tension Experiment in Chicago. Keyboardist Jordan Rudess' keyboard broke down right at the start of the show. Fortunately for the crowd and all of us listeners the rest of the band decided to Jam their hearts out creating some great tunes. In the one album that hosts this band, Jordan Rudess gets in on the action by playing lead guitar.
The second incarnation of Liquid Trio Experiment happened unexpectedly while playing a concert in Chicago, IL on June 25, 2008. In the beginning of their set, Jordan Rudess' keyboard started playing half steps every fourth key. At the end of playing Universal Mind, he went off stage to talk to the tech crew to see if it could be fixed. In the meantime, the other three musicians on stage continued to play, improvising for what turned out to be the rest of the concert. Rudess was on the phone with Roland for most of the time, and finally realized the keyboard was unfixable in that time, so he came onstage and took Petrucci's guitar to jam with the band. Petrucci took Levin's bass, and Levin joined in on chapman stick. Toward the end of the show, Charlie Benante from the band Anthrax came and played drums while Portnoy played bass. This entire improvised concert was released in 2009 as When the Keyboard Breaks: Live in Chicago. (it's shame that Last FM haven't it.)
About recordings
The When the Keyboard Breaks: Live in Chicago. album was made by YtseJam Records.
YtseJam Records is a semi-independent record label set up by Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy in 2003. It is responsible for the distribution of Dream Theater-related material that would not normally be a candidate for general release, such as demos and 'official' live bootlegs.
YtseJam Records is operated through its website, with their releases being available only through it. It is semi-independent in that it has the financial backing of Dream Theater's old home label Elektra Records, but Portnoy has complete control over the contents and presentation of any material released. Elektra has also put limits on the scope of YtseJam, most notably restricting the number of pressings for each album produced.
Mike Portnoy has an astonishingly extensive archive of Dream Theater-related recordings. It contains almost everything from the band's history, such as their first recorded performances in their teenage years, outtakes from Dream Theater album sessions, and every single live performance Dream Theater has ever done. Mike captures each gig they perform with a DAT recorder, and stores the tapes in the basement of his home along with a lot of other Dream Theater-related memorabilia.
Dream Theater fans have long discussed these archives, and lauded them as a gold-mine for any hardcore collector of the band's music. Community pressure to release some of the more important moments in the band's history led to Mike forming YtseJam Records, much to the delight of said collectors.
The word "YtseJam", pronounced 'yit-say-jam,' is the word "Majesty" spelled backwards. Dream Theater was originally named Majesty, but was forced to rename the band after learning of another Majesty operating in the United States. On Dream Theater's debut album When Dream and Day Unite there is an instrumental entitled "Ytse Jam", which was written before the band changed their name and is a reference to the now-defunct moniker.
The word "YtseJam" has a strong place in the hearts of Dream Theater fans (who sometimes refer to themselves as "YtseJammers"), with numerous websites, magazines and the like being named after the instrumental. The most notable of these is the YtseJam Mailing List, which has been in operation since the early 1990s and was for a long time the main channel of online communication between Dream Theater fans.
YtseJams, Inc. is also the alias used by the band in publishing their music.
In keeping with this extensive use of the word "YtseJam" in Dream Theater-related ventures, Mike Portnoy named his label YtseJam Records.
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