Pardon Me

One word defines my youth: Incubus.

To be clear, I’m referring to the band Incubus and not the male demon that has sexual intercourse with sleeping women. But as a hormonal teenager at the time, in a metaphorical sense, it’s kind of the same thing.

At 13, I had become "too cool" for pop icons:

NSYNC - Too cool.

Backstreet Boys - Too cool.

Britney Spears - (I both owned and listened to her CD ...Baby One More Time) Too cool.

Like most teenagers, I didn’t know who I was.

Let alone have an identity.

I was at that age of transition from idolizing my parents to wanting nothing to do with them. I was trying to find who I was outside of my familial unit.

I had a strict mom, so exploring my identity had its limits. The one thing I could do was "be different". I refused to acknowledge the catchy tunes and my preteen desires for the boybands with spiky, bleached hair.

This "too cool" phase coincided with my discovery of QUAD: Sacramento’s Alternative Rock Station. We lived over 60 miles away from Sac (that's what us "too cool" Bay Area kids called it) which meant the reception on the station was sporadic and had a similar dial number with a Bay Area Christian station.

I spent my Saturday afternoons searching for the allusive location where my boombox antenna would allow me to listen to QUAD without disruption.

If I was lucky, this would last for a few songs. But usually, if I wanted to listen to an entire song without disruption, I had to awkwardly hold my arm and hand up in such a way that my little 13-year old muscles would immediately fatigue.

Armed with a blank tape and quick reflexes, if I heard a song I liked through the static, I would press record with my non-dominant, left hand and execute (what I now know) an isometric hold of the antenna with my right hand. I would maintain that hold for the three-plus-minute duration of the song.

Which in teenage years is forever.

This is how I was introduced to Incubus. I kept my little hand up and out so I could get the full song of Pardon Me static-free on my newly pirated playlist. Along with the upbeat tempo of Jimmie’s Chicken Shack's Do Right and the profound lyrics of Last Resort (where Papa Roach both says the word and defines it in their chorus), the song Pardon Me lived innocuously on my blank tape playlist.

That is until I saw the music video.

As an eighth-grade girl in the year 2000, I really had a thing for guys with bowl cuts. Since I could remember, I had always been boy crazy. At the time my type had evolved to eighth-grade boys with hair that looked like umbrella caps.

That was until I saw Brandon Boyd.

I finally caught the video for Pardon Me on MTV. To my surprise, it was an attractive 23-year-old Brandon Boyd who was behind the voice.

An older man.

Not an eighth-grader.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a bowl cut. Instead, he had spiky hair that was not bleached like a member of a boy band.

It was spiky and unbleached like a bad boy.

And his ears were slightly stretched. A trend that (after 20 years) still slightly turns me on.

Maybe it was the 2000s alternative sound. Maybe it was the hormones. But at that moment, I became an Incubus fanatic.

I bought the Incubus Make Yourself album and listened to it non-stop until I learned about their previous S.C.I.E.N.C.E and Fungus Amungus albums.

(In hindsight, I have no idea how I learned these things without modern Google, but I like to think it proves my dedication to the band.)

At a time where my parents still had total control over what I did and how I acted, I at least now had Incubus. If nothing else, this was my favorite band.

Not my older siblings' favorite band.

Not my parents' favorite band.

MY favorite band.

Their albums became my personal soundtrack. And that soundtrack sounded like home.

My love for Incubus did not end there. At 15, I went to their Signing at Tower records when they released their Morning View album.

At 16, I blasted the song Warning on my little Toyota Echo speakers during my short six-minute commute to my job at the mall.

At 19, I coughed up the 99 cents to buy the shitty digitized Megalomaniac ringtone as a broke college student.

At 21, I created interpretive dances to Dig when my college roommates weren’t at home.

At 28, they were the first concert I went to with my now-husband.

At 30, I made my spin class sprint to Anna Molly.

At 32, I could hear their muffled setlist from my apartment when they played BottleRock in Napa.

Now at 35, as I continue the journey of figuring out who I am and what my identity is, I still have Incubus on my Spotify playlist to help me feel at home.

And it's still a mystery if it's the hormones or the music ;)