PHOENIX, AZ, USA - Halfway through the Incubus show this September at America West Arena in downtown Phoenix, a shit load of melancholy overwhelmed me, and it wasn't because these guys had a real handle on the blues.

Nor was it the heat of the hyped-up gymnasium. A full day of forcing the body through the thermal island of concrete and steel pretty much cancelled any intention to take notes. Instead, I promised myself, I'll just put my head into this problem called Incubus, simply observe my 18-year-old son during the show and, from those observances, cast an image of a sub cult

However, he disappeared into the mosh pit at the opening song. Gone, into the bobbing buzz saw of elbows and heads and glittering neo-goth adornments bought at Spencer's Gifts. I was left to muse, alone. I was left to long for the missing link, the hot thing.

Was it melancholy? Well, let us just say there were a lot of things I missed in my youth, including promiscuous living (not that this band really generates very much of that kind of heat), including threesomes and foursomes and teen dreams and kewpie dolls, all the things older males think they missed out on (I am 42), certain drugs and very crazy days of youth ä well, hmmm, that was it ...

Lost youth.

Exhaustion at the show.

The desire to forge a new name for this kind of band. Something along the lines of Tears for Wham (forging Tears for Fears with Wham) for the new century.

Hell, I have been to a million of such shows, not much has changed, and so I am qualified. But this was the first such melee (hell, more like mall-esse) that I had seen in three years. The previous being U2 in Providence, R.I., shortly after September 11, 2001. It was fall and the vibe was different then. Thank God. Now we have made peace with the apocalypse and the entertainment value of the blessed event is restored, in full, in all available media platforms. But this was a pretty long fall from U2, and in the end, it made me also long for someone like Coldplay.

At least that band has a celebrity womanhead I can relate to.

Too old to rock-n-roll? Shit no. Too young to die? No on that one, too. Too fucking hot? Of course. But the real nasty pin and needle sticking in my third eye was the brutal efficiency of this act. And, more than that, how its bloodless professionalism sucked the very life out of this vision I had about writing about new bands.

Incubus, certainly one of the hotter name brand bands out there, came off slick as an egg off a well-greased frying pan in the America West Arena pressure cooker. The band, after all, has one foot in Top 40, another in Hell. Unfortunately, this mixture of post-alternative verve and Gothic youth-sing has the wrong end in Hell, and therefore, the other wrong end in commercial appeal.

Sometime, back in the day when this band was forming (and I was missing out on still more teenage promiscuity as an old married man), they had this orgy, see, and what came out was the bastard child of Metallica and Foreigner.

So, when this band caves in from its days of being named, pretty poorly, for some kind of demon that devours young flesh, it can later reform as Fatallica. Because that is the word they made me feel for: fatal metal, sweetened in familiarity.

Oh, I found my son.

Because, after the lighters indicating one more grim song, there are cell phones freely available for this crowd. As for a portrait of a teenage boy. Here is his shadow: Live long, Fatallica! May your mall lights shine!

Douglas
McDaniel

DOUGLAS MC DANIEL is the publisher of Mythville.com (http://mythville.com and http://mythville.blogspot.com). His once-dormant column, Radio Free Arizona, is now resurrected after a 10-year stint as a music critic in Phoenix, Arizona, in the late 1980s and 1990s. He can be e-mailed at mythville@yahoo.com.