Harvey Danger

Harvey Danger started in Seattle in 1992, when bassist Aaron Huffman and guitarist Jeff Lin, both journalism students at the University of Washington, got a band going; drummer Evan Sult and singer Sean Nelson came aboard the following year. After cutting demos with producer John Goodmanson, they put out Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? on the tiny Arena Rock Recording Company label in 1997, and nobody much noticed, until radio stations across the country started playing its second track.

"Flagpole Sitta" is a jittery, wisecracking, lo-fi rush, Nelson's nervy yelp riding a chugging riff and a chorus you can't get out of your head, and it's a sharper, funnier song than most of what shares its airwaves. Slash Records signed them and reissued the album in April 1998, and it went gold the next year. The band, though, grew uneasy with being known for one song and started steering away from it.

King James Version, in 2000, was more ambitious, with Radiohead and Frederic Tuten as touchstones, and "Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo" was a small hit, but the album flopped and they split in April 2001. It has since picked up a cult following. Nelson, Huffman and Lin came back in 2004 with Michael Welke on drums, and in 2005 gave away Little by Little..., a more piano-driven record, as a free download, which put them back in the spotlight. They called it a day amicably in 2009, playing their last show at Seattle's Crocodile Cafe on August 29.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.