In the special way that certain songs can, hearing “Aqueous Transmission,” the final track from Incubus‘ fourth full-length album Morning View, transports me to a place. In this case, it’s a humid and rainy day at Houston’s 16,500-person capacity Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. It’s a full house and the general admission section on the hill is mud covered. No one cares about the less than ideal conditions, though. We’re all too busy listening to the band’s lead singer Brandon Boyd‘s suggestion that we float “further down the river.”
Hearing Boyd sing the nearly eight-minute odyssey with his high school buddies Mike Einziger, Jose Pasillas and Alex Katunich (Dirk Lance) after a solid decade of writing, recording, and playing rock music with, these Calabasas High School alumni feels like the culmination of a dream that me and my own high school buddies are at the start of. In a sense, we felt our own musical endeavors — be they confined to marching bands and jazz ensembles, or embarrassingly unbounded by whoever’s garage could fit a drum set — might live as long as theirs had. That we too could, as Boyd sang, “share what we… discovered then revel in the view” years later.
Like the “pins and needles” of a “waking limb” described by Morning View‘s second single, “Nice to Know You,” though, these ooey-gooey feelings were destined to evaporate. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe they’re fifteen years old. Not too long after the tour’s final performance a few days later, the band collectively decided to part ways with Lance, their bass player. The news wasn’t made official until early 2003 when Incubus announced Lance’s replacement — former Roots guitarist Ben Kenney — ahead of their summer stint at Lollapalooza, but the preceding rumors had both primed fans for the disappointment and eroded the notion that the band and those friendships were on a solid footing. Due to my teenage brain’s less than developed sense of logic, I felt more connected to Incubus’ members than anyone I personally knew in high school. So the split hurt.
With labels as varied as alternative rock, nü-metal, and pop, Incubus never were the kind of band who were easily categorized by radio DJs. This is exactly what made me gravitate to them. I related to the band’s lack of easy categorization as a high school senior who — despite worrying about SAT scores, college applications, and whether or not I’d have a prom date — still didn’t know what the word “belong” really meant. I wasn’t sure if I was a freak, a geek, a dork, a dweeb or whatever caste-like term applied.
I was definitely a music nerd, though. Not because I was practicing marching drills and spending summers out in the boonies of band camp, per se, but because I tried every possible curricular and extracurricular musical option high school offered.
That Incubus inspired those early musical inclinations was, of course, a side effect of what they were doing. Musicians don’t set out to be heroes, they just want to play and get their art out to anyone who will listen. Same as me and my friends — who took this all very seriously. To paraphrase Breakfast Club director John Hughes, I was, in a way, more serious then than I would ever be again. So despite the taunts of some classmates (who didn’t and couldn’t understand our destiny), the four inaugural years of Incubus fandom in high school sustained my musical inclinations and, more importantly, provided me a sense of belonging. They also fueled my dreams.
At that Incubus show everyone was singing along with Boyd’s lyrics and throwing bras onstage. I wanted this more than anything (the sing-alongs, mostly). I wondered what it truly felt like for the speaker in “Just A Phase,” who predicts “sooner than later they’ll be throwing quarters at you on the stage.” Then it hit me — Boyd and his friends were all in their mid-twenties when Morning View came out, and their memories of high school were still fresh. Memories akin to mine, in that they gravitated towards like-minded individuals for their mutual interest in music and disinterest in everything else.
While the perceived similarities between what I felt and what Incubus wrote music about were accurate, the main chorus line — “it’s just a phase” — triggered something. A realization that my 17-year-old self wouldn’t fully understand until another 14 years had passed, not unlike the song’s gradual build to a heavier series of sounds before fading out to the next track. That this awkward lack of belonging wouldn’t last forever, for contrary to the Dashboard Confessional-esque tendencies my teenage emotions constantly exposed me to, I already belonged somewhere. In the band hall every morning before school, when the marching band would practice while I skimmed through sheet music for the day’s jazz ensemble rehearsal. In the practice room, figuring out fingerings for second-violin and riffing potential bass solos. And in whichever friend’s garage would fit our instruments, and whose parents didn’t mind all the loud noises that we called music.
15 years after Morning View‘s debut, when it became the first “new” Incubus album I could add to my ’91 Honda Civic’s growing CD collection, this sense of belonging has matured along with me. The regular jamming and occasional recording sessions built on cheap instruments and hand-me-down electronics gave way to college degrees, a few career changes and a cross-country move outside my comfort zone. Life no longer affords me the luxury of high school’s laissez-faire attitude with time, as I can no longer sit with my old friends and play our favorite Incubus tunes over and over again. But I still have my CDs and their more frequently used streaming successors. I did, after all, grow up listening to a bunch of high school buddies from California with my high school buddies from Texas, but I never completely grew out of it.
Perhaps Boyd was alluding to this kind of future in the third verse of “Aqueous Transmission,” when he and his addressee “share what [they] both discovered.” Belonging to a group isn’t just about sticking together forever, but leaving and returning whenever life allows. He describes “Building an antenna / Transmissions will be sent / When I am through” in a future where he and his friend “Can meet again / Further down the river” to share their new lives.
As devastating as it was to Incubus fans at the time, that has already happened between ousted bassist Lance and his Calabasas High School pals, as he and the drummer, Pasillas, collaborated in 2013 on another project. And as striking as life after high school can be, and was, I still find myself reconnecting, from time to time, with my fellow Morning View concert attendees further down the river that we’ve all been floating down together. Because it’s the memories and the music keep us connected through the storm of life and the distance of time.
