A few weeks ago a guy at work was selling a pair of tickets to the Incubus concert in Camden, NJ. The tickets were only $50, and since I dig Incubus' music and hadn't been to a concert in over 3 years, I thought it'd be a good time.

My wife and I got the date night (thanks to my youngest brother, who watched our children) and headed down. Parking was $25 by the Susquehanna Bank Center, and not much cheaper further away. Maybe I'm just getting old and miserly, but wow- $25 is ridiculous. Whatever, we paid it and parked. There were tons of people pre-gaming the concert- beer cans everywhere, and as we walked down to the gates we caught a whiff of some extracurricular smoking activities. Getting into the park was painless, and we were concerned about getting a decent spot on the lawn. But once we made our way up the steps, we found a spot to our immediate left, and laid out our blanket and chilled.


The camera phone shot doesn't give you too decent a perspective, but we had a good view. We had a clear sight to the stage and would have an easy time of leaving the concert once it was over.

By the time we sat down, Young the Giant was on their final couple of songs. From what I heard I really enjoyed them. "Catchy rock with a pop appeal" would be my initial impression- again, didn't hear too much but enough to want to seek out more of their music down the road.

After a brief wait, Incubus came on. They put on a great performance, kicking things off with "Megalomaniac" and then seguing into "Wish You Were Here". Their performance went on to be a mix material off of their new album, If Not Now, When?, and older material. They did an acoustic set comprised of "Defiance" and "Stellar". Fittingly, they concluded with "Nice to Know You", only to return for a 3-song encore.

Vocalist Brandon Boyd sounds great live, skillfully bringing to life the band's tracks. Musically Incubus was amazing; Mike Einziger is the real deal live with his guitar work. Chris Kilmore's turntable work was great live and added an aural element that I love about Incubus' sound. This is a band playing in their prime and it showed.

Something else that I enjoyed was the video that played during the band's performance. It showed footage of the band's performance intermixed with surreal or symbolic imagery, and it made for a nice companion piece to their performance.

It was a killer performance and I would recommend checking out Incubus if given the opportunity.

Set List:

1. Megalomaniac 
2. Wish You Were Here 
3. Adolescents 
4. Anna Molly 
5. Promises, Promises 
6. The Original 
7. Privilege 
8. Consequence 
9. A Certain Shade of Green 
10. In the Company of Wolves 
11. Defiance (Acoustic)
12. Stellar (Acoustic)
13. Punch Drunk 
14. A Kiss to Send Us Off 
15. Dig 
16. Drive 
17. Switchblade 
18. Nice to Know You 

Encore:

1. Pardon Me 
2. Are You In? (Riders on the Storm snippet)
3. Tomorrow's Food 

When not filling up Inside the Circle with his own brand of crazy talk, Julio maintains a blog over at http://www.julioinprogress.com.