Traffic Jams: Harvey Danger – ‘Flagpole Sitta’

Harvey Danger – Flagpole Sitta (Official Music Video)

There comes a time when an anthem-type song graces the top charts, or your radio, and it sticks with you, your own personal anthem, usually rebellion-related in some way, shape or form. When things go wrong, or when the world is falling apart, this song will often play on repeat in the depths of your subconscious. For me, that anthem is usually Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta.”

Harvey Danger was another band out of the Seattle, Washington music scene, and as much as we heard this song in the late ‘90s and ‘00s hit burned cds, radios and mostly indie stations, the band itself graced stages just a few years after another local favorite that got big, Nirvana. Wild.

It wasn’t until 1997 that Harvey Danger would begin to find its footing with its album, Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? That album, was the home for “Flagpole Sitta,” which would launch them into the main scene.

“Flagpole Sitta” would be the song Harvey Danger would be most remembered by, despite having put out a handful of albums. The band would break up in 2001, regroup in 2004, and called it quits in 2009.

But the song would live on, even getting a cover by a band local to me in Michigan that would hit the scene hard in the aughts, Chiodos. And from either version, you still feel that angst and disappointment in a world where things are just… unwell.