Whatever happened to Harvey Danger? The band caught fire in 1997 and 1998 with “Flagpole Sitta,” the lead single from their debut album Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? But it was tough sledding for Harvey Danger and in a few years many wondered where the band had gone.Who Were Harvey Danger?The band Harvey Danger was formed in 1992 in Seattle by bassist Aaron Huffman and guitarist-multi-instrumentalist Jeff J. Lin while both were journalism students attending the University of Washington. Within their first year, the pair added drummer Evan Sult and singer Sean Nelson and those four were part of the band through their biggest moments.Harvey Danger eventually caught the attention of Arena Rock Recording Company, who put out their debut album, Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? Once “Flagpole Sitta” started getting national attention, Slash Records signed the band and reissued the album in 1998 helping “Flagpole Sitta” to garner an even larger audience.Sult would exit in 2001, with Michael Welke taking over after his departure. The group would also add keyboardist Rob Knop to the group in 2005.About Their Biggest Hit”Flagpole Sitta’ was recorded by the band in June 1996. According to Sult, the song was written as a response to the Seattle music scene of the ’90s and its mainstream impact on culture.Speaking with A.V. Club, Sult recalled of the track, “[‘Flagpole Sitta’] manages to snag some sort of zeitgeist experience. I think it’s a really true version of what it felt like to be alive, at least in Seattle [when] we actually wrote it. The ironic remove and the innate suspicion of both the mainstream culture and the alternative culture, and the yearning to be part of something, but not being able to get around the suspicion and the self-loathing.”He adds, “The ‘bah-bahs’ are just also the joy of being alive. It resonates with a frame of mind that turns out to be more universal than I would’ve thought. It’s both really upbeat and kind of savage and snarky at the same time.”As for the song title, it takes its name from the 1930s Marx Brothers film Animal Crackers in which the comedic outfit reference the 1920s fad of pole-sitting. What would happen is a person would perch themselves upon a platform that had been attached typically to a flagpole or other high reaching pole and attempt to remain in place as a show of endurance.At one point, Bill Penfield of Strawberry Point, Iowa held the record staying on his flagpole perch for 51 days and 20 hours. He ended his run when a thunderstorm forced him to abandon his platform.Harvey Danger, “Flagpole Sitta”READ MORE: The 75 Best Rock Songs of the 1990sThe song climbed to No. 3 for Alternative Airplay and got some run at Mainstream Rock radio where it peaked out at No. 33. In the years surrounding the song’s release, the track also turned up in the film American Pie and soundtracked a trailer for the movie Disturbing Behavior.Over the years, the song has seen a resurgence by its use in the British sitcom Peep Show, its inclusion in the Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed soundtrack and its usage in a 2024 Taco Bell ad campaign. The song has also been covered by All-American Rejects and Kelly Clarkson.”Flagpole Sitta” in Taco Bell AdWhat Happened With Harvey Danger?The band had their share of challenges along the way after the success of “Flagpole Sitta.” The group wanted to release “Carlotta Valdez” as the second single, but the label went with “Private Helicopter” instead and the song failed to gain any traction at radio.This was the beginning of issues the band had with their label. After the second song didn’t find its audience, the group began working on their follow-up album. However, the record that would become King James Version was plagued by delays as their label went through some internal reshuffling and everything was put on hold until it was sorted out.The band had to back out of a tour with Pretenders due to lack of label support. Attempts to release the record through Barsuk Records fell through due to legal issues. But finally, just over a year after finishing their record, King James Version was released in 2000.But with not much label push behind the record, the band saw lukewarm returns for their single “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and the overall sales of the record. After the record faltered commercially and touring was complete, the band quietly split in 2001.Harvey Danger, “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo”The band members splintered off in different directions, some joining other bands for a few years before eventually coming back together in 2004 to give it another shot.A five-song EP titled Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas (Sometimes) would arrive in late 2024, leading into work for a third album, Little by Little, which arrived in 2005. Noting the technological advances and changing strategies in the music industry, the group decided to issue the album as a free download through BitTorrent. In 2006, once again another label took notice and Kill Rock Stars re-released the record. The group returned to the road for their first national run in five years.But despite what seemed to be a mostly positive experience resuming their career, Harvey Danger eventually split again in 2009.”After 15 years, three albums, hundreds of shows, and far more twists and turns than we ever imagined possible, we’ve decided to put Harvey Danger to rest. The decision is totally mutual and utterly amicable,” the band said in their farewell statement.What Happened After Harvey Danger?Throughout his run with Harvey Danger, singer Sean Nelson had kept a journalistic career ongoing on the side. In 1996, the singer had been hired by Seattle’s The Stranger newspaper. He worked both as an editor and writer through 2018 when he left for a job in Nashville, Tennessee.Nelson has revisited his musical background at times, even recording a Nelson Sings Nilsson covers album of Harry Nilsson songs in 2019.Sean Nelson, “Gotta Get Up”Jeff J. Lin bowed out of the music scene, but turned his focus toward becoming a tech entrepreneur. He founded Memento 360 that uses 2D and VR technology to help create virtual tours and he’s also a founder of Captricity that uses AI-powered intelligent automation technology to extract, prioritize, contextualize and route data.After leaving Harvey Danger, drummer Evan Sult initially relocated to Chicago where he was part of the math rock band Bound Stems. He later moved to New York where he’s continued to work as part of the indie duo Sleepy Kitty.During Harvey Danger’s initial split, Aaron Huffman formed the alt-rock group Love Hotel. That was his musical outlet until Harvey Danger reconvened for their third album. His latter years saw him working with the indie rock group Weather and releasing the album Waters Electric.Huffman remained close with Sean Nelson and worked as an art director for The Stranger newspaper alongside the singer. The bassist died of respiratory failure due to cystic fibrosis in 2016 at the age of 43.Nelson paid tribute to Huffman in The Stranger, noting of his bandmate and co-worker, “Aaron dedicated so much of his life to making music and art, and though he liked when people liked it, what really meant the most to him was that his work be part of the fabric of the city. He drew essential life force from the rhythms and pleasures of Seattle, from the friendships he made while walking its sidewalks, drinking its drinks, seeing its art, reading its comics, hearing its music. The homemade subcultural life here in the early ’90s drew Aaron out of his intense shyness, and gave him a model for emerging as the smart, funny, gentle, discerning artist, husband and father he became.”As for their “one-hit wonder” status, Nelson admits it was a tricky thing to deal with. In speaking with Alternative Press in 2014, the singer commented, “It was really crippling at the time; we took everything we did seriously—maybe too seriously—but there was no way in our mind as a band that ‘Flagpole Sitta’ was better or more important than any of the other songs on that record or any of the songs on subsequent records. They’re all equally meaningful to us. If you look at songs like kids, that’s the kid that got a full scholarship to Harvard, while the other kids are struggling to read. [Laughs].”He continued, “I don’t feel like I need everyone to recognize the rich tapestry of my body of work. [Laughs.] But people do. There are lots of people who I have contact with who are aware of the rest of our work, and who really love our second record and our third record and my solo work. It’s just never gonna be a million people. Having gone out and try to curry favor with the million-people idea, it’s not a very fun thing. It’s not what we’re built for..”The Second Best Songs of ’90s One-Hit WondersOne song dominated their career, but how well do you know their second best song?Gallery Credit: Chad Childers, Loudwire
