Incubus Official Bootlegs: June 14, 2011 – London, England

Venue: HMV Forum
Capacity: 2,450

Set List:

1. “Megalomaniac” (5:54)
2. “Wish You Were Here” (3:47)
3. “Pardon Me” (4:17)
4. “Have You Ever” (4:13)
5. “11am” (4:48)
6. “Consequence” (3:34)
7. “Anna Molly” (4:06)
8. “Circles” (5:24)
9. “Just a Phase” (5:44)
10. “Adolescents” (5:29)
11. “Drive” (4:42)
12. “I Miss You” (3:33)
13. “Agoraphobia” (4:07)
14. “Rogues” (4:26)
15. “Love Hurts” (4:04)
16. “Sick Sad Little World” (7:01)
17. “Promises, Promises” (5:06)
18. “A Crow Left of the Murder” (4:32)
19. “Are You In?” / “Riders on the Storm” (4:36)
20. “Nice to Know You” (6:50)

Album Length: 96:03

Incubus play things pretty close to the vest here, debuting only two songs – the first two singles, incidentally – from their new album, If Not Now, When?, which was released precisely four weeks after this show took place. This is essentially a warm up concert, the first of four the band played in Europe over the course of a week in mid-June before heading back Stateside to do promotion for If Not Now, When?

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The Master List – AllMusic’s 5 Star Albums: BEBOP & HARD BOP

In the 1940s, a new movement in jazz emerged in the form of bop (also known as bebop), which was spearheaded by saxophonist Charlie Parker in New York City. It emphasized the virtuosic performances on the part of its participants and the tempo was considerably faster.

Bop eventually evolved into hard bop, a more melodic and intricate form that yielded an astonishing number of great albums. Most of the albums below fall into the hard bop genre.

The Master List – AllMusic’s 5 Star Albums: EARLY JAZZ, BIG BAND, SWING, VOCAL JAZZ & MAINSTREAM JAZZ

All of the more traditional, “normal” jazz is included here. Jazz developed in New Orleans and spread rapidly from there, catching favor in all corners of the country (particularly up and down the Mississippi River) and eventually many parts of the world.

A lot of early jazz was simply never recorded at all, let alone released commercially, which is a shame. Ragtime, stride, dixieland – when these genres were at the peak of their popularity, the music industry didn’t exist yet.

In the ’30s and ’40s, big band and swing were very popular, since they provided music for people to dance to. Unfortunately, much of this music does not exist in album form either.

Frank Sinatra released the very first concept album, In the Wee Small Hours, in 1955, a full ten years before the Beatles released Rubber Soul, which was their first attempt at actually creating an album instead of a collection of songs.

I have included lots of the early greats here for you to peruse: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, even Jelly Roll Morton, the greatest player of ragtime.

The Master List – AllMusic’s 5 Star Albums: ELECTRONIC, HOUSE, TECHNO, TRIP HOP & ALTERNATIVE DANCE

This one’s more or less a continuation of the Psychedelic/Progressive/Krautrock/Ambient list, to which I have made some additions.

The Master List – AllMusic’s 5 Star Albums: R&B, SOUL, FUNK, DISCO & DANCE POP

The R&B charts were created for “black music” back in the day, but unfortunately, the famous R&B hit machine Motown just released singles until Marvin Gaye made What’s Going On in 1971. It transformed the entire industry and gave the artists more creative power during the ’70s.

Motown eventually fell apart and we saw the rise of funk and disco and a more dance-oriented music emerge in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I’ve included those here, as well.

Favorite Album #1: Incubus – MAKE YOURSELF (1999)

Genre: Alternative Rock
Label: Epic/Immortal
Produced by: Scott Litt, Incubus
RIAA Certification: 2x Platinum

Tracks:

1. “Privilege” (3:55)
2. “Nowhere Fast” (4:30)
3. “Consequence” (3:19)
4. “The Warmth” (4:25)
5. “When It Comes” (4:00)
6. “Stellar” (3:20)
7. “Make Yourself” (3:03)
8. “Drive” (3:52)
9. “Clean” (3:56)
10. “Battlestar Scralatchtica” (3:50)
11. “I Miss You” (2:49)
12. “Pardon Me” (3:44)
13. “Out from Under” (3:29)

Album Length: 48:04

Make Yourself, in one of the greatest coincidences on my list, was released one week before my number two pick, Rage Against the Machine’s The Battle of Los Angeles, on October 26, 1999. The Battle of Los Angeles was Rage’s final album, and it opened at number one, selling 420,000 copies in its first week en route to going double platinum. Make Yourself was Incubus’ breakthrough album, as it also went double platinum, but it managed to do so by peaking only at number 47. I can remember hearing “Pardon Me” in the fall of 1999 and not being all that impressed by it, and I don’t really have any other memories of Incubus (though “Pardon Me” was probably still in heavy rotation on the radio) until the following summer, when their video of “Stellar” started appearing on MTV’s TRL.

I must have liked it to some degree, since I downloaded it on the original Napster and listened to it over and over. Napster may have been subsequently shut down due to its rather ruthless promotion of piracy, but in the case of me buying Make Yourself, my favorite album of all time, I actually credit Napster with letting me enjoy “Stellar” to a large enough degree that I eventually bought the CD. I can still remember being at Best Buy in the fall of 2000, trying to decide whether I wanted to buy Make Yourself or Green Day’s Warning. I eventually went with Make Yourself, and I can still remember just being blown away when I first listened to it. I was listening to terrible music at the time, and Make Yourself was like a portal to another galaxy.

Favorite Album #2: Rage Against the Machine – THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES (1999)

Genre: Rap Metal
Label: Epic
Produced by: Brendan O’Brien
RIAA Certification: 2x Platinum

Tracks:

1. “Testify” (3:30)
2. “Guerrilla Radio” (3:26)
3. “Calm Like a Bomb” (4:59)
4. “Mic Check” (3:34)
5. “Sleep Now in the Fire” (3:26)
6. “Born of a Broken Man” (4:41)
7. “Born as Ghosts” (3:22)
8. “Maria” (3:48)
9. “Voice of the Voiceless” (2:32)
10. “New Millenium Homes” (3:45)
11. “Ashes in the Fall” (4:37)
12. “War within a Breath” (3:37)

Album Length: 45:10

The ’90s were an amazing time for music, as an enormous amount of great material emerged in the first half of the decade. By the last few years of the decade, however, all of the grunge heavyweights had gone down in flames or, in the case of Pearl Jam, had been exiled to relative obscurity, as power rapidly began to shift back to corporate, “produced” music. When I first started listening to music back in the spring of ’99, Britney Spears was on top of the world. She had released her debut album …Baby One More Time at the beginning of the year and it took off like a rocket, soon pervading every inch of public consciousness, reaching even an eleven-year-old like myself who didn’t follow music at the time. And thanks to MTV, everyone got a good look at her and saw this bizarre mix of an angelic schoolgirl and an obvious sex object.

It all seems so carefully calibrated now, and it was all part of a teen pop movement that included *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and a slew of other boy bands. Interestingly, I don’t recall girl groups being as successful, with the exception of Destiny’s Child, which served as a launch pad for Beyonce. As for Christina Aguilera, Britney’s chief rival, I felt like her success was a little more deserved since she has such a great voice. As for rock music, grunge was out, and nu metal was in. Nu Metal bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit amplified the angst of grunge to caricature-like levels, and given how few channels existed back then for discovering new music and how naturally resistant I was at the tender age of eleven to listen to old music, I felt like I was forced to choose between overly feminine teen pop and overly masculine nu metal.