Author Topic: Mysterious, obscure songs (The Mind's Beginning/End, Bleed With Me, Patterns)  (Read 1636 times)

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Offline Robo4900

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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/10149347
And for reference, here's the standard version of Precious Things: https://www.discogs.com/Dream-Theater-Precious-Things/release/7504299
Assuming 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?
« Last Edit: April 28, 2020, 01:38:09 PM by Robo4900 »
Q: "When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go also, would he have brought you, meaning she and then, to the station?"
A: "OBJECTION, your honor! That question should be taken out and shot!"
--Allegedly from Utah vs Kelly, Superior Court of Utah, 1994. May be apocryphal

Offline MoraWintersoul

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That's very interesting. Maybe post this in the bootleg section as well? The bootleg guys don't log on too often but after some time you are probably going to get an answer.

The only thing that pops into my head that maybe they jammed a little bit of A Mind Beside Itself-suite and called one bit the end and one the beginning, but that's probably not what happened.

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Offline Setlist Scotty

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Good question. I honestly don't know, but I do remember reading about those unknown tracks when Bahr first announced the PT bootleg. Seeing your post reminded me about it, so I've just sent some messages to both the guy who posted it on the Discogs website as well as Bahr himself. Hopefully I'll get an answer from one of them.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least if it was Bahr and/or his band just jamming something. IIRC, that's exactly what he did on track 12 of his Subconscious bootleg, which was labelled "Experimental" and supposedly was JP experimenting on guitar. So I wouldn't expect anything noteworthy or revolutionary. But hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all...

On a separate note, a few months ago, I did manage to solve one 12 year old mystery. If you look at the credits on Chaos in Motion, there is no mention of where Blind Faith and Surrounded were from - at least for the audio that appears on the CD of the deluxe package. Even when I questioned MP about it during an interview in 2009, he didn't know. He had explained that the songs were supposed to be from the Toronto 2007 show, but somehow the wrong multi-track recordings had been grabbed and mixed instead. So for the video, they just went with the audio feed from the cameras and left the mixed audio for the CDs. Anyway, I discovered that the show those particular performances were taken from the 2008/05/09 Calgary, Alberta show. So that mystery is solved!
As a basic rule, if you hate it, you must solely blame Portnoy. If it's good, then you must downplay MP's contribution to the band as not being important anyway, or claim he's just lying. It's the DTF way.

Offline Robo4900

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Good question. I honestly don't know, but I do remember reading about those unknown tracks when Bahr first announced the PT bootleg. Seeing your post reminded me about it, so I've just sent some messages to both the guy who posted it on the Discogs website as well as Bahr himself. Hopefully I'll get an answer from one of them.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least if it was Bahr and/or his band just jamming something. IIRC, that's exactly what he did on track 12 of his Subconscious bootleg, which was labelled "Experimental" and supposedly was JP experimenting on guitar. So I wouldn't expect anything noteworthy or revolutionary. But hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all...
Thanks!
Huh! I didn't know anyone was in contact with Bahr anymore. I'd heard he kinda disappeared from DT fan circles at some point, possibly leaving some orders paid-for but unfulfilled (possibly just a rumour intended to slander him, IDK).

Was always kinda curious what happened to him.
And hey, I didn't actually know about the story behind Experimental! I'll have to make a note of that somewhere. Thanks.

On a separate note, a few months ago, I did manage to solve one 12 year old mystery. If you look at the credits on Chaos in Motion, there is no mention of where Blind Faith and Surrounded were from - at least for the audio that appears on the CD of the deluxe package. Even when I questioned MP about it during an interview in 2009, he didn't know. He had explained that the songs were supposed to be from the Toronto 2007 show, but somehow the wrong multi-track recordings had been grabbed and mixed instead. So for the video, they just went with the audio feed from the cameras and left the mixed audio for the CDs. Anyway, I discovered that the show those particular performances were taken from the 2008/05/09 Calgary, Alberta show. So that mystery is solved!
Huh! I did always wonder. :)
Q: "When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go also, would he have brought you, meaning she and then, to the station?"
A: "OBJECTION, your honor! That question should be taken out and shot!"
--Allegedly from Utah vs Kelly, Superior Court of Utah, 1994. May be apocryphal

Offline Setlist Scotty

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Here's what Mike Bahr said about those tracks:
Quote
95% likely they appeared on one of the three instructional videos that Petrucci, Portnoy, and Myung released at the time.  That's where I grabbed a bunch of other tracks for PT for the alpha, beta, and final versions.  I don't know why I left anything in particular off the final disc, it's possible Portnoy asked me to remove them, which means they might be on his video

I wish I could just go back and check but in 1999 I had a full loss of data and all my working tracks went away with an un-backed-up hard disk
As a basic rule, if you hate it, you must solely blame Portnoy. If it's good, then you must downplay MP's contribution to the band as not being important anyway, or claim he's just lying. It's the DTF way.

Offline TAC

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Thanks Scotty, for the facts!
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline Robo4900

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Here's what Mike Bahr said about those tracks:
Quote
95% likely they appeared on one of the three instructional videos that Petrucci, Portnoy, and Myung released at the time.  That's where I grabbed a bunch of other tracks for PT for the alpha, beta, and final versions.  I don't know why I left anything in particular off the final disc, it's possible Portnoy asked me to remove them, which means they might be on his video

I wish I could just go back and check but in 1999 I had a full loss of data and all my working tracks went away with an un-backed-up hard disk

Thanks!
Mystery solved, at last! :biggrin:

Shame about the hard drive wipe on Bahr's part; I can sympathise with that. I've lost some stuff in hard drive deaths. Still, maybe an alpha or beta copy of Precious Things will turn up at some point and we can hear this stuff for ourselves.

In the meantime, I'll see if I can find the time to figure out which instructional video jams these are most likely to be at some point, and report back to this thread if/when I figure it out. :)
Q: "When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go also, would he have brought you, meaning she and then, to the station?"
A: "OBJECTION, your honor! That question should be taken out and shot!"
--Allegedly from Utah vs Kelly, Superior Court of Utah, 1994. May be apocryphal

Offline ZirconBlue

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Huh! I didn't know anyone was in contact with Bahr anymore. I'd heard he kinda disappeared from DT fan circles at some point, possibly leaving some orders paid-for but unfulfilled (possibly just a rumour intended to slander him, IDK).



My recollection is that he went incommunicado for a while with some unfulfilled orders, but resurfaced later on MP's forum and attempted to make good on any outstanding orders.

Offline Elite

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That 'Covers Medley' on the second links looks very intriguing.
Hey dude slow the fuck down so we can finish together at the same time.  :biggrin:
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Offline Robo4900

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That 'Covers Medley' on the second links looks very intriguing.
It does indeed.

If you want to give it a listen, here's the bootleg.
The version of Raise The Knife on here is quite interesting too; it's from a live show in 1995, and is just under four minutes in length. There are better copies of it out there, but it's quite interesting all the same. :)
(Also, FWIW, the "Learning To Live 4-part harmony demo" doesn't appear to me to be any different from the normal Learning To Live demo that goes around, though the quality is rather poor; mid frequencies are quite blown-out)
Q: "When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go also, would he have brought you, meaning she and then, to the station?"
A: "OBJECTION, your honor! That question should be taken out and shot!"
--Allegedly from Utah vs Kelly, Superior Court of Utah, 1994. May be apocryphal