Musical Montage: Harvey Danger “Carlotta Valdez”
Obviously best known for their hit single “Flagpole Sitta”, 90s pop/indie/power punk band Harvey Danger also paid homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo with “Carlotta Valdez”. The lead track on the album “Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?”, the same album that contained “Flagpole Sitta”, “Carlotta Valdez” was basically a complete re-telling of the plot of Vertigo from Jimmy Stewart’s perspective and it gets it title from the “ghost” that Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson believes may be possessing Kim Novak’s Madeleine Elster and causes her to wander around various parts of San Fransisco. If you’ve seen Vertigo, you know there’s much more to the story. Harvey Danger actually wanted to release “Carlotta Valdez” as their follow-up single to “Flagpole Sitta” but the record label overruled them and released the track “Private Helicopter” instead but it’s unlikely that either song would have had the insane success of “Flagpole Sitta”. The band ended amicably in 2009 but Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? was actually released on vinyl for the first time in 2014. You can check out the song below set to scenes from Vertigo (although I don’t believe this is actually an official music video)
