Two characters imagine a life in another country and what the feeling of that imagining does to them in “Flight 717: Going to Denmark.”

Track: “Flight 717: Going to Denmark”
Album: Ghana (1999)

When I was in graduate school, one of my assignments was to go through one hundred years of yearbooks to piece together a narrative of the athletics department for a larger history. Ultimately the things people care about are things they already know, so it’s not likely I was going to find anything that people found all that interesting. The search, still, was worth doing. There is something to be said for the hunt.

I feel similarly about this story. Theme Park Records released one 7-inch for the Mountain Goats and two compilations with Mountain Goats songs on them. In 1995, they released Corkscrewed, which includes both “The Admonishing Song” and “Flight 717: Going to Denmark.” It is difficult to find information beyond this because “Theme Park Records” generally shows up records of things happening at theme parks, but label owner Russell Hill confirmed the details about why this exists at all in this funny thread.

It is interesting that you can find this stuff today. This is a great song, but it’s also just one of those songs from the early days. Twenty years ago this kind of information would be unthinkable, and even if you heard from a guy that it was true you might not believe it. In this modern era, John Darnielle follows this account, replied to the Tweet, and thanked someone named “Russell Hill” on the 7-inch they released. There are still mysteries in this world, but I pick this song to demonstrate how complete a picture it’s possible to create, even if that won’t tell you everything.