MORE DREAM THEATER / MIKE PORTNOY PUBLIC DRAMA!

A quick catch-up sesh for anyone who’s not a DT fanboy like me: YtseJam Records is Dream Theater’s own label imprint they’ve been using for years to release official bootlegs of live recordings. “YtseJam” is “Majesty” backwards; again, for the non-fanboys, Majesty was their original band name.

OK, now onto the drama! A fan recently asked via Mike Portnoy’s official message board what would become of YtseJam now that Mike’s out of the DT picture. Fair question, right? Portnoy handled most of the business for pretty much every aspect of DT, so it would stand to reason that YtseJam would be effected by his departure. Portnoy — who has an astonishing 1394 posts on his own message board (!!) — took to answering the question himself. It’s the 7th post down at this link. Quote:

As this question seems to come up every few weeks, I may as well go on the record:

I have no idea why JP would have said Ytsejam Records wouldn’t be effected…

I was the one that hand picked and decided on every title, compiled the music and videos for the CD’s and DVD’s and oversaw the artwork and liner notes.

John’s side of the YJR Production team consisted of dealing with the manufacturing factory and staying on top of the payments and deliverys after I produced all of the titles…

Being I have the entire 25 year archive of every studio and live recording from 1985 to 2010 in my home, and being the band currently refuse to answer my emails or calls, I honestly cant see any upcoming releases…

It’s a shame too….I was already working on another batch before all of this went down….

MP

The band is refusing to answer Portnoy’s emails or calls? BURN! Shit is intensifying. This is like the worst kind of breakup… divorce x10.

-VN

Thanks: Huthaifa Al-Rawi