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I had the pleasure of being at Harvey Danger’s Los Angeles show of their final Farewell tour. Since I was young–say, when Flagpole Sitta came out in 1998–I was the ripe old age of 13 at the time, and later when I was 15 and finally sat down to listen to Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? and was immediately floored by Vertigo homage Carlotta Valdez and saddened by Jack the Lion I’d like to say I knew then that Harvey Danger was a band that was going to stick with me and effect my life in ways that The Presidents of the United States of America could never have dreamed of back when I was a brooding middle schooler turned high schooler but no, I wasn’t aware then, but I knew I’d found a band that I finally had something in common with, and that was Vertigo, and I had Vertigo in common with absolutely nobody I knew personally.

So, Harvey Danger and I bonded over Vertigo. In later years we’d bond over other things, like my discovery of their second album, Kings James Version, which I had been searching for for what felt like years until I finally listened to it at the beginning stages of what has since turned into a full blown addiction to music, at 19 years old, and I dug their energy. I didn’t get a lot of the slow music on the album at the time, my taste was more about Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Authenticity and not so much The Same As Being In Love.

In 2005 they released Little by Little for free on the internet and even before I downloaded it and listened to it, I bought the pre-order package they offered. I think it was for $20 you got a copy of the CD, a bonus disc, a t-shirt, a sticker, and a set of pens. It was a tremendous offer, and even though the shirt is this color of baby blue that matches my car in the most unfortunate way, I still cherish the pens and the CD, thoroughly digitized within the bowls of my laptop, sits on a shelf, feeling the love the MP3s radiate out toward it every time they spin across my iPod’s hard disc.

Little by Little, at the time, seemed like a refined mission statement by Harvey Danger, as if they were saying, “Yes, we’re going to write smart songs, and we’re going to play them smartly, and behave smartly about them, and maybe all those other people desiring or smart music will listen to us and we’ll all be smart together.” That’s not to say Harvey Danger has ever been smug about Sean Nelson’s incredible songwriting that I am not biased in support of at all, but on Little By Little the emotion of the music isn’t supported by loud guitars (though on Little By Little B-Side “Picture, Picture” they still paint one hell of a–oh fuck, I have no words!) but by marvelous vocals and ingenious songwriting.

I don’t care about how hyperbolic I’m getting: I’m going to miss Harvey Danger.

And I’m going to bring you down with me. If you can listen to this whole thing and not immediately want to listen to all three of their albums in sequence–and you will want to, because Harvey Danger is one of those rare bands that doesn’t have bad songs–then I have failed at life, and I deserve no respect or love.

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Because this is all one artist I am not going to let you download it, sorry.