Personally, I preferred it when he had no harmonies going, or when he was doing the harmonies instead of the melodies. I mean, I remember Portnoy doing SOME backing vocals on LSFNY, but there were also quite a few songs that were obviously too high for him, so JLB just did them by himself, like the chorus to Strange Deja Vu, or parts of Finally Free, and I thought, "This is cool, to just hear those parts in one voice," especially when he did the higher harmonies. So yeah, I kinda prefer that.