Incubus - Talk Shows On Mute

This single is from Incubus's fourth album. In hindsight, I should have stopped after their second, but I've never been very good at that. I think for most people, when a band releases an album they're not into (let's call it Morning View) they stop listening to a band, assuming they've "gone shit". I've always been willing to give bands the benefit of doubt, which usually means buying the album after the shit one too. In almost every case, this has been a mistake as, invariably, the next is even worse (let's call it A Crow Left of the Murder). I'll never learn, but one day it'll pay off and I'll be glad of it.

Talk Shows On Mute was from A Crow Left of the Murder, an album I'd bought a few months beforehand, which means I knew the song wasn't very good. However, it's quite likely that when I saw this 7" in my local HMV I couldn't remember exactly which song it was; playing it now, it is remarkably unremarkable for a single. It's unmemorable for a b-side, let alone a late-album filler track, so how it ended up a single I don't know.

How it ended up in my record collection is an easy mystery to unpick - it's on coloured vinyl, and has a live version of Vitamin, a song from the era of them being the band people wanted them to be. That said, the bongo solo emphasises that they were just preppy dicks really (something I should've noticed much earlier). Somewhere in there, apparently, is a cover of Hello by Lionel Richie, but if there is it's just a verse and hard to pick out. Side B is basically just one song, so implying there are two on the sleeve seems a bit misleading.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 07/06/04
Colour: Yellow
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Incubus - Are You In?

This is one of the worst purchases I've ever made. The worst part of it was that I wasn't even planning to buy it, but I was too British not to. I was at a record fair and pulled it out of the box to have a look at - it was 2003, so I was still kinda into the band - and before I really had time to think about it, the guy manning the stall said "that'll be £5 please"; I panicked and handed over the money, buying a record that had I a few seconds to really think about, I would have known was going to be junk, and definitely not worth a whole £5. Such a stupid mistake.

There are three versions of the same song here - the song being Are You In? a fairly unexciting song from towards the end of their unexciting third album, Morning View (I had the album, so knew the single was far from good - makes the purchase even worse). The original and "new mix" sound identical, except that the mix is shorter. Not sure what got cut, never cared enough to work it out. The final version is a Paul Oakenfold remix - he was famous for remixing stuff around the time, if I remember correctly. As far as I can tell, he's just made the snare drum louder. I'm sure he got paid handsomely for essentially just leaning on one fader on the panel.

I've never been one for remixes of rock songs, which really makes this purchase even more frustrating. Nothing of interest here at all, but perhaps a lesson learnt?

Format: 12", die-cut sleeve, promo
Tracks: 3
Cost: £5 second hand
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 25/01/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Incubus - Drive

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