Harvey Danger – "Flagpole Sitta" (1997)

Paranoia, paranoia

Everybody’s comin’ to get me

Just say you never met me

The last two 2 or 3 lines posts featured two covers of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” which I’ve become slightly obsessed with.

Not nearly as obsessed as Sean Nelson, of course.  He penned a 2018 article for a Seattle alternative newspaper that was titled “Who Sang It Best? The ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ Olympics.”  It discussed no fewer than twenty different recordings of “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”

Writer and musician Sean Nelson

I wanted to learn more about my fellow obsessive, so I checked out his biography on the newspaper’s website. 

It turns out that Nelson has written for a number of well-known newspapers, magazines, and music websites – including the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Pitchfork – and also authored a book on Joni Mitchell.  He’s also worked on independent movies, hosted a radio show, and taught  a songwriting class.

But most importantly, he was the lead singer for Harvey Danger, a Seattle group that recorded what might be the best song of the nineties, the absolutely fabulous “Flagpole Sitta” – a work of true genius and a stick of dynamite to boot.

I’m guessing that Nelson and I are the only two people in the world who are wildly enthusiastic about both “Anyone Who a Heart” and “Flagpole Sitta” – two songs that couldn’t be more different.  So I’ve sent him a series of increasingly desperate e-mails in hopes of interviewing him for 2 or 3 lines.

No reply yet . . . but I haven’t given up hoping that I’ll hear from him, and that he’ll become my new best friend!

I originally wrote about “Flagpole Sitta” almost exactly ten years ago.  What follows is a slightly edited version of that post.

*     *     *     *     *

I had a plan for what was going to follow the “Season of the Witch” post.  [NOTE: The previous 2 or 3 lines had featured the Al Kooper-Stephen Stills cover of “Season of the Witch,” which was written and originally recorded by Donovan.]  But when I was listening to that song on my morning bike ride to Lake Needwood a couple of days ago and thinking about the paranoia-related aspects of that song, suddenly the above lines from “Flagpole Sitta” hit me.  

Just like me when I’m mountain biking on Cape Cod, 2 or 3 lines twists and turns and takes little side trails until it doesn’t know where the hell it is.  So let’s forget what I had planned to write – after all, the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley. 

Harvey Danger

“Flagpole Sitta” is a real tour de force of a song.  It’s crazy – but in a really good way.

If “Season of the Witch” is about sly, sixties-style paranoia – one part rational fear of the FBI and the police (and all those government agencies they’re keeping hidden from us) and one part marijuana overconsumption – “Flagpole Sitta” is about paranoia as plain ol’ insanity.

At first, the song is amusingly snarky:

Been around the world and found

That only stupid people are breeding

The cretins cloning and feeding

And I don’t even own a TV

But later it gets really creepy:

Put me in the hospital for nerves

And then they had to commit me

You told them all I was crazy

They cut off my legs now I’m an amputee, Goddamn you

Didn’t see that coming, did you?  It’s all rather Girl With the Dragon Tattoo-ish, isn’t it?  (Now there was someone who had good reason to paranoid.)  

It’s like the old saying – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

The first line of the chorus is “I’m not sick, but I’m not well.”  The second part of that sentence is clearly true – I’m not sure about the first part.

*     *     *     *     *

By the way, flagpole-sitting was a real phenomenon back in the 1920s.  The fad began when a friend dared stunt actor Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly to sit on a flagpole. Shipwreck’s initial 1924 sit lasted 13 hours and 13 minutes, but his record was quickly broken by many others.  

In 1929, Shipwreck decided to reclaim the title. He sat on a flagpole for 49 days in Atlantic City.  

But the following year, Bill Penfield sat on a flag pole in Strawberry Point, Iowa, for 51 days and 20 hours. 

*     *     *     *     *

Click here to watch the official music video of “Flagpole Sitta.”

Click here to watch the first office lip dub video ever made – which just happened to feature “Flagpole Sitta.”  It was made in 2007 by the staff of Connected Ventures LLC, a new media network and development company with headquarters in New York City.  (I need to make sure none of my mutual funds own stock in this company, because doing actual work doesn’t seem to be a high priority for the employees.)

Click here for another lip dub video of “Flagpole Sitta.”  (Not as well done as the previous one, but the girls who did it are in bikinis most of the time.) 

What the heck – click here for one more “Flagpole Sitta” lip dub video.  (This girl is not a very good lip-syncher, but she’s supercute!)

Here’s a link to use if you want to buy “Flagpole Sitta” from Amazon: