Mike Schwartz, baritone & etc.

Where did "Snake" come from? The mysterious history: About ten years ago, my brother, cousin, and I were playing catch in a field next to some very tall grass. When my cousin waded in to retrieve an errant ball, he yelled "Snake!" and ran out, screaming like a banshee. (There was no real snake.) For the next hour we all kept yelling out "Snake!" like idiots whilst we kept on playing ball. For years afterward, the ubiquitous phrase filtered its way into our speech at random times: as a greeting, as an adjective, exclamation, admonition, curse, whatever. Example: "What's the next song?" "Mack the Snake!" See, it's just plain stupid. Nothing to do with literary or religious symbolism, phallocentric or other. And I'm not a biker, either, believe it or not.

Musical history stuff about me: I've been singing since I was 14, when I was introduced to the whole Shabbas-singing thing in Yeshiva. When I fled Yeshiva, I sang with the Avon Old Farms Riddlers (12-man group, barbershop and doo-wop) for the rest of my high school years. At Brown (undergrad), I joined the High Jinks (claim to fame: the original members of Rockapella were all High Jinks alums). My senior year, I started The Bear Necessities, which continueth until this very day. At UConn (Master's), I started two short-lived but pretty fun groups: The Conn Artists (no relation to Conn College's current group) and Notorious. years ago, I joined Brandeis VoiceMale, and since then I've sung with Similar Jones, then The Elements, and now Similar Jones again.