Hi.
I was recently reminded of this oddity, which was pointed out to me like four years ago, and I've still not found any info on it.
Basically, back on the old YtseJam mailing list (no link to hand, sorry, but shouldn't be too difficult to dig up if you are desperate to find the original posts), Mike Bahr, the guy who used to release the Prism CDs, posted an early track listing for the "Precious Things" CD. Only he listed four tracks that I've never heard of, and have had trouble finding any further references to. These tracks are "The Mind's End", "Patterns", "Bleed With Me", and "The Mind's Beginning".
Now, Mike Bahr tended to make shit up quite often (the liner notes on some of the Prism CDs are HILARIOUS for this reason), but I'm fairly sure he was given copies of Mike Portnoy's recordings of various obscure DT things, including some obscure jams and such (for those unaware, the Prism CDs were sort of like official bootlegs from before the official bootlegs were a thing, and were handled by this guy called Mike Bahr), so it's possible these four tracks are nothing, or it's possible they're obscure jams or something, either from a live show or a rehearsal or something.
Either way, if it was just four mystery tracks listed on the mailing list back in the day, with no other references, it would be easy to write it off, except someone made a Yahoo Groups post at one point, a long time ago (I've lost the link, and IIRC Yahoo Groups is dead now?) listing their bootleg collection, including an entry for "Precious Things Beta - Includes 'The Mind's Beginning' and 'The Mind's End'."
And just a few months ago (I only saw the message now, though), someone pointed out to me in a message that the "Precious Things Beta" CD is listed on Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/Dream-Theater-Precious-Things-Beta/release/10149347And for reference, here's the standard version of Precious Things:
https://www.discogs.com/Dream-Theater-Precious-Things/release/7504299Assuming Mind's End and Mind's Beginning are just a couple of minutes of some of the band jamming, one
could guess that these were just eventually renamed to Solar Groove and Freeport Jam, except the track lengths don't match. It's possible the Discogs entry is wrong, of course, but it seems like quite a stretch for such a niche act of trolling.
So... Does anyone know anything about this stuff?