So...I'm not what you'd call a Kevin Moore fanboy. To me, OSI and Chroma Key are unlistenable. UNLISTENABLE.
However, I became a fan of Dream Theater in the summer of 1992, and literally listened to nothing but Dream Theater for the better part of the next year and a half.
I saw them 4 times on the I&W tour, and was trading bootlegs at the time. So I not only had I&W, but a number of concert recordings as well. In the Album Listening Thread, I posted that I will be going through the DT Live Eras over the next few months. I dedicated this week to the I&W Era.
Images And Words is the greatest album these ears have ever heard. It's pretty much perfect. And live, the band was the greatest live band I'd ever seen. Kevin Moore easily meshed with the vituostic talents of JP, MP, and JM...and JLB for that matter. Those early unisons with JP set the stage for the JR Era.
But there was an..elegance that he brought to Dream Theater. DT has made so much great music over their career, but I really don't think they ever achieved the magic that was created in '92-'93.
It's funny. I rank Awake very highly, but when it came out, it was kind of a head scratcher. I still remember my very first listen. It wasn't until I got to the last song, Space Dye Vest, that I thought matched the...again..the elegance of I&W. I know KevMo played some nice shadings and colors to Awake, but he is really AWOL on that album IMO.
One bootleg, I think it's Osaka, is very keyboard heavy, so you can almost listen to KevMo in isolation. I think Only A Matter Of Time was his strongest performance.
Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out to Kevin Moore, as he really stood out to me over the last week while listening to a number of DT live shows.