The 90's US One-Hit Wonders Rate: WINNER REVEALED - Goodbye, farewell and amen
- Thread starter Ironheade
- Start date
Awww I feel bad that I called it putrid maudlin garbage now, I’m glad that I didn’t give it too low of a score considering! Such a sad story and @Ironheade youre description of the song actually made me like it a little bit more! DeLoach for President!
Phew. At least I can ease off on the overlong writeups for personal faves now, and get back to business as usual for our next group of unfortunates.
I can tell you, they're not sick but they're not well...
46. FLAGPOLE SITTA
Average score: 5.961
Highest scores: 3 x 10 (@CorgiCorgiCorgi , @DJHazey , @Andy French )
Lowest scores: 2 x 0 (@soratami , @Daniel_O )
Chart positions: #38 Radio Songs, #32 Mainstream Top 40, #31 Adult Top 40, #3 Modern Rock, #33 Mainstream Rock
Year-End Hot 100: N/A
Who? Oh yeah, them...
Something something Peep Show. Yeah, I think that's how most of us Brits are going to be most familiar with Harvey Danger: hearing a twenty-second clip of “Flagpole Sitta” played at the beginnings of the amusing antics of Mark and Jez. But there was a lot more to Harvey Danger than that, so let's dig in and see why these nerdy journalists with a surprising knack for a catchy tune couldn't quite get the chance to show that to the world. I live for this shit, people.
When you think of 90's alternative rock, your mind probably can't help but turn to Seattle, all those grunge bands emerging from the fog to change the face of mainstream rock music forever. But the city, and the surrounding environs, had other layers to their musical scenes as well. And it is here, in 1993, that we find a group of four journalism students at the University of Washington, all writers for the campus newspaper, who decided that it might be fun to start a band; they took the name “Harvey Danger” from a piece of graffiti they saw on the wall of the newspaper's office. Right from the beginning, they were a do-it-yourself act in the finest Our Band Could Be Your Life tradition. None of the members of Harvey Danger were experienced musicians, and they were perpetually short of money, living in a grotty student house together and grinding it out at shithole Seattle clubs. And this leads them to one of the most charming stories about any of the alternative rock bands in this rate, or at least it is in my view, anyhow. Apparently, they were so low-budget that, at their first few shows, their drummer Evan Sult could not afford a proper kit, and compensated by playing on a homemade contraption constructed from a laundry bucket, a pickle jar and three hubcaps. Now that is what I call dedication to the cause. Move over Einsturzende Neubauten, Harvey Danger are the new kings of homemade instruments! (...Wow, I am so proud that I managed to reference Einsturzende Neubauten in a PopJustice rate.)
Although it's not quite as cool as... whatever the hell instrument this is.
Eventually, the band started garnering local popularity, selling their demo tapes at shows and playing regularly at the Crocodile Cafe, one of the staple venues for underground rock in Seattle at the time. So, of course, they started attracting record label attention, and signed to a local independent label named The Arena Rock Recording Company to release their debut album, Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?, in 1997. The record was not terribly successful. That is perhaps unsurprising, given that it was an independent release from an unknown band. Some of the record's songs got fairly substantial play on college radio in Seattle and New York, and it sold decently enough in Harvey Danger's hometown, but outside of indie rock circles, the band was still flying under the radar. By the end of 1997, the band were demoralized from the lack of success they were seeing, and were contemplating breaking up.
Inside the house, of course.
But then their lead singer Sean Nelson, whose day job was as a writer for Seattle's alt-weekly The Stranger, passed a copy of Merrymakers to a DJ at a Seattle alternative rock station, and “Flagpole Sitta” quickly became the station's most requested song. From there, it spread to the playlist of the influential KROQ in Los Angeles, and it just took off further and further. When Greg Glover, the founder of The Arena Rock Recording Company, was hired by Slash Records, Harvey Danger went over there with him, surprise major label signings with a surprise nationwide sleeper hit. Well done to them.
So what do I think?
8! Aww yeah, gimme that vaguely lo-fi college rock goodness. While Harvey Danger's musical setup by the time of “Flagpole Sitta” may involve less banging on pickle jars than previously, they still sound charmingly ramshackle, in everything from the clomping tom-heavy drumbeat to the thick swaying bassline that barely manages to hold the whole enterprise together, while the guitars still have a thin coating of fuzz even when they don't kick up for the fuzzbox-distorted chorus. And yet, like all the best indie rock of the time, Harvey Danger have a great ability to let hooks emerge naturally from the distortion, with a big bolshy power-pop chorus that's easily the equal of anything from a more polished act, and both the guitar and bass riffs working hard in tandem to infuse the song with an incandescent energy. The wide-eyed, sweat-streaked physicality of Sean Nelson's yelping vocal also adds a great deal to the song, playing excellently with the thumping overdrive of the instrumentation and really putting those lyrics over the top. And yes, the real drawcard for me in “Flagpole Sitta”, a lot more than its good-but-fairly-standard instrumentation or even that catchy and instantly recognizable chorus, is the lyrics. Honestly, they're pretty hard to interpret overall: the most I can really get is something about trying to stay sane in a world gone mad, with side orders of dissatisfaction with the world of indie rock culture and a good dose of psycho-sexual torment. But the lack of a real narrative flow is not remotely bothersome to me. There's plenty of witty and surprising turns of phrase to be pulled from it, when it's all put together, it sounds bloody good. And that's about all I ask for, really. “Flagpole Sitta”: a cultural touchstone of sorts, memorable for both its film placements and its odd turns of phrase, and deservedly so. Great stuff.
Where Are They Now?™
Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye...
You can probably see, above, that the chart positions for Harvey Danger's one hit were not great overall. Yeah, “Flagpole Sitta” is one of those songs that's more recognizable because it was used in multiple movies and TV shows, rather than because it was a very big hit chart-wise. They got “Flagpole Sitta” placements in Disturbing Behaviour (alongside fellow one-hit wonder The Flys with “Got You Where I Want You” - oh shit, remember that jam?), and famously in American Pie a couple of years later. The reason why they couldn't get a hit to equal “Flagpole Sitta” was, yep: Because Record Labels Are Dicks. Harvey Danger had wanted “Carlotta Valdez” to be the second single from Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?, but the label rejected it in favour of “Private Helicopter” - and their meddling did not pay off, as Harvey Danger's fans mostly saw that as one of the weaker songs on the record, the single didn't chart at all, and the band didn't try again with a third single. (Not that “Private Helicopter” is bad – the entire album is pretty good as a whole actually, good solid indie power-pop that has a lot more depth in Nelson's lyrics than might be immediately apparent.) Instead, they just immediately got to work to write and record their second album King James Version. The problem is, the pressure was on due to the novelty-hit status of “Flagpole Sitta” and their failed follow-up, and to hear them tell it, the label executives were breathing down their necks the whole time. Sean Nelson has this to say, in a Stereogum interview for the 20th anniversary of “Flagpole Sitta”, on that album's creation process:
So they were not just content to be that band with the one snarky pop-rock hit, and that's good to see. But those ambitions would not quite worm their way out to the general public just yet. Almost immediately after King James Version was submitted to their label, Slash/London went into an elaborate process or corporate reshuffling and restructuring. To hear Nelson tell it, Harvey Danger didn't even know what label they were signed to in that period, and an attempt to get the record out on independent label Barsuk, which was just starting up at that time, was thwarted by the threat of a lawsuit. They were also forced to turn down an offer of an opening slot for the Pretenders, due to the lack of support from the record execs to allow them to do it. When King James Version finally appeared, it was 2000, and Harvey Danger had been moved to their new, fully merged and reorganized label, London/Sire. I shouldn't even need to tell you this, but they then proceeded to barely promote the album, and both it and its single “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo” failed to chart. Because Record Labels Are Dicks. Frustrated by the corporate shenanigans and their failure to get a second hit, Harvey Danger quietly disbanded after playing a final show in Seattle in 2001.
During the hiatus, the band members returned to their day jobs, or played in smaller projects. Nelson was the most prominent, playing with another fairly well-known indie rock band called the Long Winters, whose main man John Roderick had formerly been a live guitarist for Harvey Danger, as well as continuing to write for The Stranger, working as a radio DJ, and becoming a partner in Barsuk Records (which at that time was home to Death Cab for Cutie and Rilo Kiley). It didn't last too long, though. Harvey Danger returned in 2004 for a show at the Crocodile Cafe celebrating their tenth anniversary, and after releasing an EP, they returned the next year with their third album, Little By Little... In an unusual move, the band actually distributed it as a free download on BitTorrent and as a direct download from their own website, and actually did reasonably well in that arena, as it was downloaded over 100,000 times within two months of its release and they nearly sold out of physical copies. Kill Rock Stars reissued it in physical format in 2006, and Harvey Danger embarked on a tour in support of it. It seemed that Harvey Danger had managed to successfully shake off the mainstream, and find a comfortable niche in the indie rock underground. It was not to be, however, as in 2009, the band members mutually decided to part ways for good, playing their final shows in Seattle in August. A dignified walk off into the sunset later, and pleasant pop-culture memories of “Flagpole Sitta” were all we had.
You've got to understand, we must remain perfect strangers... oh, don't I wish.
Sean Nelson kept writing for The Stranger, which he had been doing off and on for the entire time that Harvey Danger was active, and he is currently the publication's arts editor and music critic. (...You know what, I think I may have to revise how much I like him. Anybody who allows both Dan Savage and Lindy West to be published in the same paper as him is not to be trusted, quite frankly.) He also wrote the 33 1/3 book about Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark... and, according to him, it has consistently been in the bottom 10 in sales for that series, but never mind, eh? And somehow, he's still found time to release a solo album in 2013 (he'd planned one in 2006, a cover album of Harry Nilsson songs charmingly titled Nelson Sings Nilsson, but it never saw the light of day); he's also performed with the likes of Robyn Hitchcock, Death Cab for Cutie and OHW CROSSOVER Nada Surf, and even acted in and written scripts for some indie films. So, yes, he's quite a busy man, and all those endeavours added up really do indicate quite well what Harvey Danger was: a part-time hobby project for four men who were all busy with other things in the daytime, a band that totally fluked into a hit of sorts and were never prepared to be uprooted into the actual proper music business. Not that I would want them to have been, mind you. The low-key charms of “Flagpole Sitta”, probably would have been subsumed by the big corporate fat-cats otherwise and lost for good. So, I salute Harvey Danger, another lost under-the-radar gem of a band. They might have been in hell, but they wouldn't have been hot without it.
But there is a sad coda to the story of Harvey Danger: in 2016, the band's bassist Aaron Huffman, who worked alongside Nelson as an art director at The Stranger, passed away from complications of cystic fibrosis, at the age of 43. The report of it in that paper can be found here. It's quite a moving tribute, I think; rest in peace.
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
“Of course, brings the insufferable music and then goes. He's like the 80's.”
4Roses (4): Noise. (Nope, the noise is back over there in the Butthole Surfers elimination.)
WowWowWowWow (5): Didn’t miss this song one bit, and can’t wait to never seek it out again.
iheartpoptarts (5): Sports. How very sports.
əʊæ (6.5): Didn't know Tim Robbins was big enough to have a tribute band. (I used to play bass in Jacob and the Ladders. We could have been huge.)
Empty Shoebox (4): This really isn't good, but I imagine it was written with a sense of humour, so I'm marking it up for that.
“I think I'm falling in love. Or getting a bone on...”
chanex (6.5): Ahahahaha wanted to hate it but it's actually kinda acceptable? (Me with Celine Dion in the #1's rate.)
Ganache (7.5): Great lyrics. ("THEY CUT OFF MY LEGS, NOW I'M AN AMPUTEE!" Love that so much.)
Seventeen Days (7): Oh my lord, I am having Vietnam-style flashbacks to 7th grade on this one. I remember this would come on when we were on the bus, and people would get up and start jumping around and slamming into each other. God, tweens are such dorks. Anyway, this track is still a fun and energetic one. (You lucky bastard! I just had white suburban boys - such as myself - failing to rap along with T.I.)
unnameable (8): Pleasant enough.
berserkboi (8.1): I have bopped to this before so clearly works on that level. Nothing I’d call great or a classic though…
Hudweiser (7.5): Never heard of this before, but it was fun.
pop3blow2 (8.5): Just a catchy as hell rock song. There’s a reason it gets used on soundtracks & promos everywhere. (Harvey Danger aren't quite the soundtrack kweens of this rate, though! That band is coming up later...)
ModeRed (7): Peep Show theme goodness. Prefeable as the short theme tho.
Auntie Beryl (8): Nearly every UK commenter will talk about Peep Show regarding this, it’s tricky to ignore, but this is a great record. Never heard a single other thing by them, which is what the rate is all about I guess. (The trick with Peep Show, for me, is to pretend Mitchell wrote all the funny bits.)
Untouchable Ace (8.4): I'm actually getting into Peepshow now, wish me luck. (Worth it.)
CasuallyCrazed (9.5): I forgot this song existed but holy shit, what a song.
Andy French (10): Still goes all the fucking way off.
DJHazey (10): YAS, always had this on mixtapes too. Back in the days of recording to a cassette from the radio. That chorus is such a scream along anthem. (I'm so hot with some of these results, let me tell you that...)
I can tell you, they're not sick but they're not well...
46. FLAGPOLE SITTA
Average score: 5.961
Highest scores: 3 x 10 (@CorgiCorgiCorgi , @DJHazey , @Andy French )
Lowest scores: 2 x 0 (@soratami , @Daniel_O )
Chart positions: #38 Radio Songs, #32 Mainstream Top 40, #31 Adult Top 40, #3 Modern Rock, #33 Mainstream Rock
Year-End Hot 100: N/A
Who? Oh yeah, them...
Something something Peep Show. Yeah, I think that's how most of us Brits are going to be most familiar with Harvey Danger: hearing a twenty-second clip of “Flagpole Sitta” played at the beginnings of the amusing antics of Mark and Jez. But there was a lot more to Harvey Danger than that, so let's dig in and see why these nerdy journalists with a surprising knack for a catchy tune couldn't quite get the chance to show that to the world. I live for this shit, people.
When you think of 90's alternative rock, your mind probably can't help but turn to Seattle, all those grunge bands emerging from the fog to change the face of mainstream rock music forever. But the city, and the surrounding environs, had other layers to their musical scenes as well. And it is here, in 1993, that we find a group of four journalism students at the University of Washington, all writers for the campus newspaper, who decided that it might be fun to start a band; they took the name “Harvey Danger” from a piece of graffiti they saw on the wall of the newspaper's office. Right from the beginning, they were a do-it-yourself act in the finest Our Band Could Be Your Life tradition. None of the members of Harvey Danger were experienced musicians, and they were perpetually short of money, living in a grotty student house together and grinding it out at shithole Seattle clubs. And this leads them to one of the most charming stories about any of the alternative rock bands in this rate, or at least it is in my view, anyhow. Apparently, they were so low-budget that, at their first few shows, their drummer Evan Sult could not afford a proper kit, and compensated by playing on a homemade contraption constructed from a laundry bucket, a pickle jar and three hubcaps. Now that is what I call dedication to the cause. Move over Einsturzende Neubauten, Harvey Danger are the new kings of homemade instruments! (...Wow, I am so proud that I managed to reference Einsturzende Neubauten in a PopJustice rate.)
Although it's not quite as cool as... whatever the hell instrument this is.
Eventually, the band started garnering local popularity, selling their demo tapes at shows and playing regularly at the Crocodile Cafe, one of the staple venues for underground rock in Seattle at the time. So, of course, they started attracting record label attention, and signed to a local independent label named The Arena Rock Recording Company to release their debut album, Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?, in 1997. The record was not terribly successful. That is perhaps unsurprising, given that it was an independent release from an unknown band. Some of the record's songs got fairly substantial play on college radio in Seattle and New York, and it sold decently enough in Harvey Danger's hometown, but outside of indie rock circles, the band was still flying under the radar. By the end of 1997, the band were demoralized from the lack of success they were seeing, and were contemplating breaking up.
Inside the house, of course.
But then their lead singer Sean Nelson, whose day job was as a writer for Seattle's alt-weekly The Stranger, passed a copy of Merrymakers to a DJ at a Seattle alternative rock station, and “Flagpole Sitta” quickly became the station's most requested song. From there, it spread to the playlist of the influential KROQ in Los Angeles, and it just took off further and further. When Greg Glover, the founder of The Arena Rock Recording Company, was hired by Slash Records, Harvey Danger went over there with him, surprise major label signings with a surprise nationwide sleeper hit. Well done to them.
So what do I think?
8! Aww yeah, gimme that vaguely lo-fi college rock goodness. While Harvey Danger's musical setup by the time of “Flagpole Sitta” may involve less banging on pickle jars than previously, they still sound charmingly ramshackle, in everything from the clomping tom-heavy drumbeat to the thick swaying bassline that barely manages to hold the whole enterprise together, while the guitars still have a thin coating of fuzz even when they don't kick up for the fuzzbox-distorted chorus. And yet, like all the best indie rock of the time, Harvey Danger have a great ability to let hooks emerge naturally from the distortion, with a big bolshy power-pop chorus that's easily the equal of anything from a more polished act, and both the guitar and bass riffs working hard in tandem to infuse the song with an incandescent energy. The wide-eyed, sweat-streaked physicality of Sean Nelson's yelping vocal also adds a great deal to the song, playing excellently with the thumping overdrive of the instrumentation and really putting those lyrics over the top. And yes, the real drawcard for me in “Flagpole Sitta”, a lot more than its good-but-fairly-standard instrumentation or even that catchy and instantly recognizable chorus, is the lyrics. Honestly, they're pretty hard to interpret overall: the most I can really get is something about trying to stay sane in a world gone mad, with side orders of dissatisfaction with the world of indie rock culture and a good dose of psycho-sexual torment. But the lack of a real narrative flow is not remotely bothersome to me. There's plenty of witty and surprising turns of phrase to be pulled from it, when it's all put together, it sounds bloody good. And that's about all I ask for, really. “Flagpole Sitta”: a cultural touchstone of sorts, memorable for both its film placements and its odd turns of phrase, and deservedly so. Great stuff.
Where Are They Now?™
Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye...
You can probably see, above, that the chart positions for Harvey Danger's one hit were not great overall. Yeah, “Flagpole Sitta” is one of those songs that's more recognizable because it was used in multiple movies and TV shows, rather than because it was a very big hit chart-wise. They got “Flagpole Sitta” placements in Disturbing Behaviour (alongside fellow one-hit wonder The Flys with “Got You Where I Want You” - oh shit, remember that jam?), and famously in American Pie a couple of years later. The reason why they couldn't get a hit to equal “Flagpole Sitta” was, yep: Because Record Labels Are Dicks. Harvey Danger had wanted “Carlotta Valdez” to be the second single from Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?, but the label rejected it in favour of “Private Helicopter” - and their meddling did not pay off, as Harvey Danger's fans mostly saw that as one of the weaker songs on the record, the single didn't chart at all, and the band didn't try again with a third single. (Not that “Private Helicopter” is bad – the entire album is pretty good as a whole actually, good solid indie power-pop that has a lot more depth in Nelson's lyrics than might be immediately apparent.) Instead, they just immediately got to work to write and record their second album King James Version. The problem is, the pressure was on due to the novelty-hit status of “Flagpole Sitta” and their failed follow-up, and to hear them tell it, the label executives were breathing down their necks the whole time. Sean Nelson has this to say, in a Stereogum interview for the 20th anniversary of “Flagpole Sitta”, on that album's creation process:
So they were not just content to be that band with the one snarky pop-rock hit, and that's good to see. But those ambitions would not quite worm their way out to the general public just yet. Almost immediately after King James Version was submitted to their label, Slash/London went into an elaborate process or corporate reshuffling and restructuring. To hear Nelson tell it, Harvey Danger didn't even know what label they were signed to in that period, and an attempt to get the record out on independent label Barsuk, which was just starting up at that time, was thwarted by the threat of a lawsuit. They were also forced to turn down an offer of an opening slot for the Pretenders, due to the lack of support from the record execs to allow them to do it. When King James Version finally appeared, it was 2000, and Harvey Danger had been moved to their new, fully merged and reorganized label, London/Sire. I shouldn't even need to tell you this, but they then proceeded to barely promote the album, and both it and its single “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo” failed to chart. Because Record Labels Are Dicks. Frustrated by the corporate shenanigans and their failure to get a second hit, Harvey Danger quietly disbanded after playing a final show in Seattle in 2001.
During the hiatus, the band members returned to their day jobs, or played in smaller projects. Nelson was the most prominent, playing with another fairly well-known indie rock band called the Long Winters, whose main man John Roderick had formerly been a live guitarist for Harvey Danger, as well as continuing to write for The Stranger, working as a radio DJ, and becoming a partner in Barsuk Records (which at that time was home to Death Cab for Cutie and Rilo Kiley). It didn't last too long, though. Harvey Danger returned in 2004 for a show at the Crocodile Cafe celebrating their tenth anniversary, and after releasing an EP, they returned the next year with their third album, Little By Little... In an unusual move, the band actually distributed it as a free download on BitTorrent and as a direct download from their own website, and actually did reasonably well in that arena, as it was downloaded over 100,000 times within two months of its release and they nearly sold out of physical copies. Kill Rock Stars reissued it in physical format in 2006, and Harvey Danger embarked on a tour in support of it. It seemed that Harvey Danger had managed to successfully shake off the mainstream, and find a comfortable niche in the indie rock underground. It was not to be, however, as in 2009, the band members mutually decided to part ways for good, playing their final shows in Seattle in August. A dignified walk off into the sunset later, and pleasant pop-culture memories of “Flagpole Sitta” were all we had.
You've got to understand, we must remain perfect strangers... oh, don't I wish.
Sean Nelson kept writing for The Stranger, which he had been doing off and on for the entire time that Harvey Danger was active, and he is currently the publication's arts editor and music critic. (...You know what, I think I may have to revise how much I like him. Anybody who allows both Dan Savage and Lindy West to be published in the same paper as him is not to be trusted, quite frankly.) He also wrote the 33 1/3 book about Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark... and, according to him, it has consistently been in the bottom 10 in sales for that series, but never mind, eh? And somehow, he's still found time to release a solo album in 2013 (he'd planned one in 2006, a cover album of Harry Nilsson songs charmingly titled Nelson Sings Nilsson, but it never saw the light of day); he's also performed with the likes of Robyn Hitchcock, Death Cab for Cutie and OHW CROSSOVER Nada Surf, and even acted in and written scripts for some indie films. So, yes, he's quite a busy man, and all those endeavours added up really do indicate quite well what Harvey Danger was: a part-time hobby project for four men who were all busy with other things in the daytime, a band that totally fluked into a hit of sorts and were never prepared to be uprooted into the actual proper music business. Not that I would want them to have been, mind you. The low-key charms of “Flagpole Sitta”, probably would have been subsumed by the big corporate fat-cats otherwise and lost for good. So, I salute Harvey Danger, another lost under-the-radar gem of a band. They might have been in hell, but they wouldn't have been hot without it.
But there is a sad coda to the story of Harvey Danger: in 2016, the band's bassist Aaron Huffman, who worked alongside Nelson as an art director at The Stranger, passed away from complications of cystic fibrosis, at the age of 43. The report of it in that paper can be found here. It's quite a moving tribute, I think; rest in peace.
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
“Of course, brings the insufferable music and then goes. He's like the 80's.”
4Roses (4): Noise. (Nope, the noise is back over there in the Butthole Surfers elimination.)
WowWowWowWow (5): Didn’t miss this song one bit, and can’t wait to never seek it out again.
iheartpoptarts (5): Sports. How very sports.
əʊæ (6.5): Didn't know Tim Robbins was big enough to have a tribute band. (I used to play bass in Jacob and the Ladders. We could have been huge.)
Empty Shoebox (4): This really isn't good, but I imagine it was written with a sense of humour, so I'm marking it up for that.
“I think I'm falling in love. Or getting a bone on...”
chanex (6.5): Ahahahaha wanted to hate it but it's actually kinda acceptable? (Me with Celine Dion in the #1's rate.)
Ganache (7.5): Great lyrics. ("THEY CUT OFF MY LEGS, NOW I'M AN AMPUTEE!" Love that so much.)
Seventeen Days (7): Oh my lord, I am having Vietnam-style flashbacks to 7th grade on this one. I remember this would come on when we were on the bus, and people would get up and start jumping around and slamming into each other. God, tweens are such dorks. Anyway, this track is still a fun and energetic one. (You lucky bastard! I just had white suburban boys - such as myself - failing to rap along with T.I.)
unnameable (8): Pleasant enough.
berserkboi (8.1): I have bopped to this before so clearly works on that level. Nothing I’d call great or a classic though…
Hudweiser (7.5): Never heard of this before, but it was fun.
pop3blow2 (8.5): Just a catchy as hell rock song. There’s a reason it gets used on soundtracks & promos everywhere. (Harvey Danger aren't quite the soundtrack kweens of this rate, though! That band is coming up later...)
ModeRed (7): Peep Show theme goodness. Prefeable as the short theme tho.
Auntie Beryl (8): Nearly every UK commenter will talk about Peep Show regarding this, it’s tricky to ignore, but this is a great record. Never heard a single other thing by them, which is what the rate is all about I guess. (The trick with Peep Show, for me, is to pretend Mitchell wrote all the funny bits.)
Untouchable Ace (8.4): I'm actually getting into Peepshow now, wish me luck. (Worth it.)
CasuallyCrazed (9.5): I forgot this song existed but holy shit, what a song.
Andy French (10): Still goes all the fucking way off.
DJHazey (10): YAS, always had this on mixtapes too. Back in the days of recording to a cassette from the radio. That chorus is such a scream along anthem. (I'm so hot with some of these results, let me tell you that...)
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he/him
This deserved top 10 placement tbh. A banger in the truest sense.
he/him
@Andy French and I during this rate.
I have a handful of low scores I swear, it just seems like we don't want to eliminate them!
I have a handful of low scores I swear, it just seems like we don't want to eliminate them!
she/her
OH.
he/him
Not that one!
Okay let's see if I can remember what's on the CD (labeled '90s Alternative Hits') I found the other day, in no particular order:
Faith No More - Epic
Republica - Ready to Go
The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony
Marcy Playground - Sex and Candy
New Radicals - You Get What You Give
Lit - My Own Worst Enemy
Len - Steal My Sunshine
-not in this rate-
The Offspring - Pretty Fly For a White Guy
Blink 182 - Dammit
Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing
Blur - Song 2
Chumbawampa - Tubthumping
311 - All Mixed Up
Living Colour - Cult of Personality
Stone Temple Pilots - Plush
Stone Temple Pilots - Interstate Love Song
Radiohead - Karma Police
This is what I remember off the top of my head being on it.
So the question is...did my 11 come from an old school favorite or something I've grown to love since those days? You decide.
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she/her
Knowing me, it's probably something I've been told already and forgot about!
Oh come on y'all. That adorable little bee deserved better.
she/her
Not too fussed about the rest of what's gone on here since I've been away, but No Rain leaving that soon is just rude! @Ironheade, we seem to have pretty different taste (... sorry about your 11) but I'm glad we can at least agree on that strange hopeful little depression ditty. Also Bee Girl is still cute.
he/him
*flashbacks to both the Madonna rates and the Garbage rate as well*
he/him
Guess what? It's not letting up yet!
But as Pink said, don't let me get me, I'm
45. MY OWN WORST ENEMY
Average score: 5.974
Highest scores: 4 x 10 (@DJHazey , @iheartpoptarts , @unnameable , @Andy French )
Lowest scores: 2 x 0 (@soratami , @Daniel_O )
Chart positions: #51 Hot 100, #45 Radio Songs, #31 Mainstream Top 40, #30 Adult Top 40, #1 Modern Rock, #6 Mainstream Rock
Year-End Hot 100: N/A
Who? Oh yeah, them...
I feel somewhat confident in saying this: the last few years of the 90's were the happiest time ever in the history of the Hot 100. Popular rock was making a turn towards the light-hearted and fun, hip-hop was forging as strong a contract with pop as it ever had, and the radio programmers were looking for a new trend that fit in with this sudden turn towards perkiness after the grunge era. The sunny pop-punk sound coming out of Southern California fit the bill perfectly, and though Green Day and the Offspring had both broken down the door with their respective 1994 multi-platinum blockbusters (I believe Smash is still, to this day, the highest-selling album ever released on an independent label), it was the last few years of the decade where the wave really broke. And while 1999 may have been dominated by Blink-182's massive Enema of the State for pop-punk fans, the less successful bands of the genre deserve their due. And here is where Lit come in.
Graphic design is my passion.
The seeds of Lit actually go back a decade and some change before “My Own Worst Enemy” hit the airwaves. The band members, or at least some of them, would first come together in 1988, in their Orange County hometown of Fullerton, as a hair metal band called Razzle. They played together for six years, and released an EP called New Vibe Revolution independently – in 1993, long after the kind of music they played was more or less dead and buried for good, so I can see why they decided to switch it up a bit for a chance of greater success. That switch-up came in the form of the members rejigging it into a post-grunge outfit named Stain. I believe Razzle and Stain are “officially” considered to be separate bands, but they basically had all the same members (though their second guitarist Chad Benekos left in 1995, before they released anything, and would later come to wider notice on his own as a founding member of rap-rock's premier conspiracy theorists Hed PE). But when it came time for them to start recording, it was discovered that the name “Stain” was already taken, and so they rebranded as Lit in time for their first LP, Tripping the Light Fantastic, which came out in 1997 on independent label Malicious Vinyl.
We'll be playing, having fun...
Unfortunately for Lit, Malicious Vinyl went out of business shortly after Tripping the Light Fantastic came out, and they found themselves adrift, writing a new batch of songs. And it is here we meet what will become a recurring theme in Lit's career: trend-hopping. Within a year, Lit got themselves signed to RCA, and released their major-label debut A Place in the Sun in 1999, on which they switched their sound up from a moodier and heavier post-grunge style into the lighter and more anthemic pop-punk that they came to be known for. And on the strength of “My Own Worst Enemy”, which topped the Modern Rock chart for twelve weeks and was named by Billboard as that format's biggest song in 1999, A Place in the Sun would soon be certified platinum. The single never cracked the Top 40, but it became emblematic of a style nonetheless, thanks to its memorable tales of debauchery and retro-camp video. And some of it, as per Lit's lead singer A. Jay Popoff, came from real life experience:
Funnily enough, I found an MTV News article from 1999, right around when “My Own Worst Enemy” was at its biggest, describing A. Jay being arrested for indecent exposure when he dropped trou on stage at a show in Charlotte and his package fell out. (He was cleared of the charges in county court.) You know, I'm starting to wonder if the song might be even more more revealingly autobiographical than I would have thought...
So what do I think?
6.5. Well, “My Own Worst Enemy” certainly gets off with a bang, but it's too bad it can't sustain that punch for the song's entire length. That opening guitar riff, which recurs as a main hook throughout the song to the point that it's almost more prominent of a hook than the chorus, is just great, and while the guitar solo in the bridge is pretty lame, the rhythm in the verses and the sturdy guitar chugs that accompany it make for a workable foundation. The whole thing's decently catchy, too, very much standard for slower pop-punk tunes but professionally done and well put together. But it's the vocals and lyrics are where things sort of fall apart for Lit. A. Jay Popoff's voice is no worse than any number of other pop-punk frontmen, but the problem is that that particular variety of strangulated, slightly whiny yelp is not a vocal style I have ever been fond of; especially when he has to stretch his voice a bit to hit the longer notes that make up most of the chorus, it can get particularly grating, when he does much better on the more low-key vocals of the verses and bridge. The vocal melodies themselves aren't awful, it's really just his delivery I don't like. Granted, the obnoxious fratboyish lyrics he's got to sing don't help him very much. So overall, while "My Own Worst Enemy" is certainly listenable, it's silly and definitely made for one specific mood, such that it's not something I want to turn to all that often. Just another piece of decent but standard power-pop to soundtrack Animal House ripoff movies until the end of time.
Where Are They Now?™
Lit are another band who only had one pop crossover hit, but had more success to their name on the rock stations. Quite substantial success, in fact, with the second big single from A Place in the Sun entitled “Miserable”, to the point that they should really be called a two-hit wonder on their home format, if not on the Hot 100. “Miserable” charted at #3 on the Modern Rock chart and #29 on its Mainstream counterpart, and also made it to the seventeenth position on the Bubbling Under chart. Despite not going to #1, it was apparently one of the ten most played songs on alternative rock formatted stations in 2000, and also came with a memorable video that got substantial MTV play, featuring the band performing the song on top of a giant Pamela Anderson!
I'm pretty sure there's a fetish for this sort of thing.
A Place in the Sun yielded another, lesser rock hit with “Zip-Lock”, but the second album on RCA proved to be a bit of a challenge. The thing about pop-punk bands is that, unless they're called Green Day, they don't tend to mature very well. You can't stick to the formula of three-minute, three-chord loud-and-fast songs about dick jokes and getting dumped forever, but when a band from the genre decides to put away the skateboards and grow up, usually they either turn into boring mainstream rock that's “mature” in the most irritatingly self-conscious way, or if they're one of the 2000's breed of pop-punks, they release a really shitty electropop album. Lit didn't quite do either of those: on their third album, 2001's Atomic, they moved into a softer and more ballad-heavy direction that's more reminiscent of their post-grunge past than anything, though some of the Place in the Sun style pop-punk tunes are still present and correct. The presence of Butch Walker and Glen Ballard in the writing credits should tell you where they were at by that point, and if I'm honest, the whole thing could've turned out a lot worse. It did certainly go worse for them commercially, though. The lead single “Lipstick and Bruises” went to #10 on Modern Rock and also crossed over to Mainstream at #28, but it attracted no pop radio attention whatsoever, and the other two singles both failed to crack the top 20 on either rock chart. Thanks to the singles' underperformance, and Atomic failing to reach certification (despite only charting five positions below A Place in the Sun on the album charts), Lit found themselves unceremoniously dropped by RCA.
Lit put out a self-titled album in 2004, on the New York based independent label DRT Entertainment (founded by Derek Shulman, the former Gentle Giant lynchpin turned former President of Roadrunner Records). It attracted almost no attention, and Lit ended up quietly sinking into a state of semi-obscurity and inactivity while a new wave of pop-punks took their spot in the mainstream. Sadly, the band would face tragedy within a few years when their drummer Allen Shellenberger was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2008; after a lengthy battle with the disease, during which time Lit held a benefit show for him alongside Sugar Ray at the House of Blues in Anaheim, he passed away the next year, at the age of 39.
Lit took some time out after that, trying to decide whether they wanted to continue, but they ultimately decided that they would. And continuing the running theme of alternative rock bands being signed to inappropriate labels in this contest, their 2012 comeback album, entitled The View from the Bottom (an ironic reference to their one-hit wonder status, perhaps?), came out on Megaforce Records, the label that had been formed in 1982 to distribute Metallica's first recordings! For the record, I would like to point you, on this album, “Here's to Us”, a tribute to Allen Shellenberger that is actually quite moving. Lit got back to work on nationwide touring, and have since become further staples on the nostalgia circuit (I don't think there's any better indication of that status than that they have played two of Everclear's Summerland tours, in 2012 and 2016). Remember how I talked about Lit being serial trend-hoppers trying to stay relevant? Well, I wasn't joking. Astoundingly enough, with their most recent album, 2017's These Are the Days, Lit have undergone a total metamorphosis...
...into a country band. Now, there's a lot of ageing punks who turn to folk music in their middle years (Chumbawamba did it on their last few albums, so have Social Distortion at times, and Greg Graffin's solo records fit the bill too), but this is something different: straight-up Nashville country, presumably trying to compete in the same arena as Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban. A. Jay Popoff has apparently been working alongside Nashville songwriters for some time, but when I browsed on Discogs, I couldn't find any writing credits for him on any country records. I've got to be honest, this move does somewhat smell of desperation on Lit's part. But, still... the best of luck to them in their new yeehaw endeavours.
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
I did mean to call you that
əʊæ (2.5): ghod, enough of these angsty emo punk dudezzz.
Seventeen Days (5): It’s starting to feel like we’re scraping the barrel now. (...Admittedly, we are a bit. - Ed.) This doesn’t do much for me these days, but I thought it was awesome when it first came out.
DominoDancing (6): Mediocre pop-punk, not a highlight of its genre.
Empty Shoebox (4): I've heard too much of this kind of music. I'm numb to it. (So did I, although the face of pop-punk had changed a bit by then. Less sideburns, more eyeliner.)
ModeRed (5.5): Okay, not much more.
Blond (2): This really sounds like that one Sum 41 song, right? (Hmm... the rhythm guitar in the verses does sound a bit like the one under the rap verses in "Fat Lip", now you mention it...)
Hudweiser (6.5): This sounds suspiciously like Son of Dork's song 'Boyband'.
pop3blow2 (6.5): I just can’t with this vocals (and this vocal style in general). (Poor the genre.)
CorgiCorgiCorgi (4): https://thehardtimes.net/hardstyle/still-dont-know-car-front-lawn/ (Man, I love the Hard Times so much.)
Bowled over
berserkboi (7.6): Like it enough but not something I’d be too sad with leaving early.
4Roses (8): Teen angst realness. (Nah, it's not REAL angsty teen pop-punk, because they don't mention hating their hometown once!)
WowWowWowWow (7): Pop-punk glory.
Auntie Beryl (6.8): The alt-rock dullards are slowly turning into pop punkers, and upping the tempo at least. This isn’t any great shakes, but doesn’t make me want to smoke crack, as Beck would say. (Always take Beck's advice, kids. OK, maybe not the stuff about Xenu.)
chanex (7.5): The video is so awesome and this sing has always stuck with me through the years so even though its not my usual cup of tea I think it merits a 7.5 right? (I'll allow it.)
CasuallyCrazed (7.5): Pretty impressive that this was all over TRL, usually sitting higher than Jessica Simpson & 98 Degrees. (Ah, TRL, where Mandy Moore was followed by Korn on a regular basis. That says so, so much about the general teenage zeitgeist of the times.)
unnameable (10): Serious bop that sets the rock club on fire.
DJHazey (10): One of the go-to songs for cranking up in my bedroom, and singing at the top my lungs into a comb pretending I was a rockstar. (I preferred singing into a pen personally, but each to their own.)
iheartpoptarts (10): WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. (Yeah, I think this elimination has probably given you something to WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY about...)
she/her
I was just about to post all whyyyyyyYYYYYYYYYYYyyyyyyyyyyYYYYYYYYYyyyyyyyy.
I forgot I wrote that.
I forgot I wrote that.
I'll guess it's one the acts who are big in the UK but one-hit in the US, like The Verve, Republica or The Cardigans.