There was a while when Incubus were a Very Big Band. They were from what I'm calling the "second wave of nu-metal", but in their case the record label execs went full boy-band rather than over-the-top post-Slipknot nu-metal. If you heard Drive without hearing the rest of the album Make Yourself, you'd never know they were from the same scene as Deftones, etc. Drive was the real turning point away from S.C.I.E.N.C.E and the heavier songs on Make Yourself, and marked the beginning of the chilled Incubus who would go on to make increasingly unlistenable albums (or maybe the fact I found the subsequent two albums so hard to listen to was because I'd got older instead of/as well as them getting shittier).
The a-side here is a live "orchestral" version of Drive, the song that made them famous outside of the circles of people who read Kerrang! who thought A Certain Shade of Green was good (as an aside, I suspect A Certain Shade of Green might still be enjoyable now; it was a huge song). If anything, I think the song sounds worse for the additional strings, but maybe it's because I wanted them to be strange nu-metal band, not a boy band.
On the b-side we're treated to two live songs - Favourite Things from the first album and Pardon Me, one of the highlights from the second (at least, that's what it was in my memory - it's much smoother and more over-produced than I had thought, but the chorus is still huge, even if the guitars are far too quiet in this recording). At the time, I remember being excited to hear the live versions, but in reality they don't add much. Much like many of my old 7" records, I paid £3 for this at a record fair in Southampton.
Format: 7"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £3 second hand
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 27/10/01
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
