May, 2002

Disc One

• Audience and Welcome
• Me Too
• The Bear Song
• I Want to Grow Old With You
• The Mouse Song
• I'd Like to Live on the Moon
• The Armadillo Song
• Your Song
• Dave Introduces Mike
• Vampire Seeking Female (Vince, The Bat-Child)
• News Reporters
• A Marble Fountain
• Aisle Thirteen
• Basically Trying
• Answering Machine
• Everything's Fine in Kalamazoo

Disc Two

• Crash; Just Like Dave
• Spinal Tap and You
• Gone 'Till November (Give a Kiss to 106)
• Wild World
• The Lessons We Have Learned
• Introduction to Not in Notingham
• Not in Notingham
• As You Go
• Enter Sandman Blues
• Magic Girl/Taken
• A Case of You
• The Hamster Song
• Listen to the Flower People
• The Show
• Audience and Tom Waits
  

The only official release documenting The Mike and Dave show. The original story behind Mike and Dave is lost. Anything I would attempt to divulge here would be mythology, so I intend to not make matters worse. I will say this. Dave and I were two RAs in Crissey Hall in 2001-2002 and felt that the world (but specifically Kalamazoo College) was in a funk and needed songs about Vampires, Armadillos, Bears, Mice, Hamsters, News Reporters, Flower People and Incest to get the good vibes pumping. About the recording though...

Chris Jackson recorded this, and then I mastered it and assembled it on two CDs. This record will be permanently attached in my memory to the day in May when the release happened. It was our last show for the year and we intended to end it with a bang. We had advertised so much it was insane. Street chalking, stickers, flyers that included us and the president of the school, Jim Jones. Invitations to faculty.

The night before, I went into the emergency room with an extremely nasty chest infection and bronchitis. The show came and I was really sick. I'll always remember it...along with the Detroit Red Wings winning game three over their rivals the Colorado Avalanche in triple overtime. Fredrik Olausson. We didn't have cable for some reason in Crissey Hall that week, so I listened to a live stream of the game. I remember after the final Mike and Dave show I went back to the dorm and listened to the game, sick as a dog, fading in and out of consciousness. I was on a bunch of prescription drugs for the pain in my lungs and throat. I only had strength to clap a few times when the game ended in victory and then I passed out.

Listening to it now, it's great to think we had as wonderful of a time performing as it seemed the audience did listening and singing along. We were like two brothers fooling around in front of our parents on "performance night" at our home. There was no malice in our performance, no rage, no witty smug indie pessimism. It was upbeat. I miss that. Throughout this recording you can hear us laughing at some of the situations we'd gotten ourselves into. Although this recording was shown up by our "Mike and Dave show" movies in 2004, I still feel like this is the best thing we did. Maybe with the exception of our live performance in Delafield Wisconsin.