The year was 1996. The iPod didn't exist. No one knew what mp3s were. It was a much simpler time... for most. For Mike Portnoy, however, things were not so simple. He was in the middle of writing and eventually recording Dream Theater's 'Falling Into Infinity' album and he was not a happy camper. He was restless. He wanted to, dare we say, prog the hell out. What was one to do?

Magna Carta Records, the [then] home of the "new" progressive rock movement, happened to be the right label at the right time. A phone call from the label, who was totally unaware of Mike's plight, ignited the process for what would become a supergroup. "I received a call from Pete Morticelli and Mike Varney who wanted to put together a couple of "supergroups" (for lack of a better term)," says Mike. "One turned into the Black Light Syndrome project with Terry Bozzio and they asked me if I'd like to help construct the other."

Mike, at the label's urging, put together a "wish list" of musicians he'd wanted to work with if he could. Among those on the list was Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel), Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big, Talas, Niacin) Jordan Rudess (Dixie Dregs) and Jens Johansson (Straovarious). After some stops and starts, both Tony and Jordan were in. Finding a guitarist for the then-unknown project was difficult. "After several calls to my original 'wish list'," says Mike, "we were still coming up empty handed...it took my wife, Marlene, to point out to me one night over dinner that the answer was right in front of me the whole time: John Petrucci!"

The four piece booked five (yes, five) days of studio time at Millbrook Studios in September 1997, to write and record. After one rehearsal (sadly, the same day of Princess Diana's car accident), the band deemed itself armed with enough bits to sound presentable. The writing and recording moved at a frenzied pace (as one could expect with only a week allotted to put an album together). The band (having given themselves the name "Liquid Tension Experiment") had their debut album released on Magna Carta records in March of 1998 to rave reviews. So impressed by the response to the album, the band decided that if they could do it once, then why not again?

They reconvened in mid-October 1998, for three days and again in November. The tracks from this session ran the gamut, from straight ahead, balls-to-the-walls speed ("Acid Rain") to the soft and subtle ("Hourglass"). The opus "When The Water Breaks" had its foundation in the birth of John's child. "John had to leave on the third day because of his wife's water breaking, which left the three of us to wrap up the writing without him," says Mike. Jordan says that "the baby soundscape in the middle is LTE's sonic history marker for the section we were working on when her water broke." Another interesting tune written during these sessions was "Chewbacca," but for an odd reason. Mike says "what you are hearing is Jordan, Tony & myself completely improvising and then, months later, John took the tapes and learned all of Jordan's improvised riffs at the top and bottom of the piece and then doubled them, giving them the 'illusion' of written composition!"

Before the album was released, however, the band found a week in their schedule with nothing to do. So...could they reproduce the magic live? That question was answered on January 21, 1999, as the band performed for the first time at a packed Bowery Ballroom in New York. With the second album not yet released, the band tore through their catalog with urgency. Due to the pure speed that was needed, Tony only brought his Chapman Stick to play live. The biggest applause that night, however, was when everyone was told that Jordan had agreed to become the new keyboardist in Dream Theater. After playing live the next evening in Philadelphia and two nights in Los Angeles later that week, Tony and the now three-fifths of Dream Theater went their separate ways to work on other projects. Please join us this week as we spotlight the 1999 album from Liquid Tension Experiment, titled 2.