Category Archives: Demos

What we’re working on

“Behold His Hamhock Fists of Wrath”

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It was pointed out at a recent Republican debate that you can’t spell Fogelfoot without Elf. For this reason and no other, we debut our take on the beloved carol “Behold His Hamhock Fists of Wrath,” which we will be performing December 19 and 22.

We recorded this as if we were playing the Midnight Mass at St. Rita’s.

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Behold His Hamhock Fists of Wrath

To Joseph and Young Mary in the town of Bethlehem
Came an angel bright as lightning
Who proclaimed this to them:
“O fear not, Tender Virgin!
For much will come to pass;
The babe that you hold swaddling
Will kick the Devil’s ass.”

Behold! His hamhock fists of wrath!
Behold! His well-shod boot!
With Toe of Steel
And Godly Zeal
He’ll F the Devil up

To Joseph, who stood trembling’The angel spoke these words
“Your Son shall smite Foul Satan
And scare him free of turds.”
The cattle who stood lowing,
The Little Drummer Boy,
And Rudolph And the Yule Log
Heard these words with joy.

“Unfriendly Waters”: Occupy Amity Island Edition

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Like any American classic, “Unfriendly Waters” finds different meanings for each new generation. Occupy Amity Island protesters have embraced it for its theme of speaking truth to Amity’s corporate interests who would rather see the beaches open and making money, even at the expense of bathers who may be injured.

See also: All That Jaws

Now Playing: Ann & Hope (Is Painless)

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In 1806 a ship was lost off the coast of Block Island – an actual island – which was itself off the coast of Rhode Island, which you can be damn sure is a peninsula. The ship was the Ann And Hope.

Starting in the mid-1950s, the Chase family of Rhode Island opened what would become a string of discount stores in New England, naming them after the doomed boat for reasons similarly lost to time.

Perhaps by the contrivances of Satan, the Gibb family of England moved to Brisbane, Australia around the same time the first Ann & Hope opened in Cumberland, RI. The three eldest boys, Maurice, Barry, and Robin, would help form the Bee Gees, which in the late 60s and early 70s perfected the style that influences today’s song.

The Bee Gees had two distinct sounds in their career; this folky, plaintive balladeer style resonant in “Words,” “Massachusetts,” and “Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You,” and the bass-heavy disco sound that started with 1975′s “Jive Talkin’” and continued through the phenomenal success of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack.

The Bee Gees effected this monumental shift without a significant change in personnel. It is not as if they added Michael McDonald, Peter Cetera, Phil Collins, or Sammy Hagar to their lineup. They were not the Doobeegee Brothers, after all.

When Fogelfoot retires, we want to re-record all the Bee Gees’ folk hits in the disco falsetto and all their disco hits as folk songs. We will call the album “Saturday Night Mining Disaster.”

“Ann & Hope” mixes the time-honored themes of public transportation, stalking, and frotteurism and adds the elements – never before employed – of posthumous narrators and discount stores with ampersands (and the typographically time-consuming asterisks of “M*A*S*H”) to create the Greatest Song of All TimeTM.

Listen:

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Ann & Hope

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Our cover of “Words” from 2004

Darkness on the Edge of A Cormorant

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“Cormorant” was originally to be Fogelfoot’s name, until we found out some other band had it. But that didn’t stop Bob Dylan from writing “Like A Rolling Stone.”

This is a story of a plucky American working class couple, Angie and Vito, and the struggles they must face living in an unforgiving world. We thought of Tom Petty channeling the Byrds, Bob Dylan channeling himself, Meatloaf, John Cougar, Bon Jovi, and Bruce Springsteen channeling each other, and Harriet Quimby crossing the English Channel.

Cormorant! Sea Raven. Pelican-cousin. Friend
What is it you seek
With those eyes around your beak?
Give us all a peak:
Do you know how it will end?

Meanwhile, a la the monster in “Synchronicity II,” a cormorant exists at the same time, either helping or not helping Angie and Vito, either aware or not aware of them, and also maybe a little tired after a long day of being a cormorant. Regardless, the narrator thinks the cormorant might have something to do with the Fate of the World. Or not.

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Cormorant

Elegant Space Gentleman

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With the final flight of the Space Shuttle, conspiracy-minded Fogelfoot assumes that NASA has successfully tracked Jesus Christ to space, where He is working as a hands-on relationship counselor.

With a nod to both David Bowie’s and Peter Schilling’s interpretations of Major Tom as well as that not-un-Space-friendly Pixies, “Elegant Space Gentleman” brings these diverse themes together, adding an element of W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” and finding a workable rhyme to “geosynchronous” in the bargain.

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Elegant Space Gentleman

“Girls-Only Girls”: An NSFW Affair

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While Fogelfoot is beloved of everyone who was once a child—even test tube babies—we are not yet at that point in our career at which we will release a children’s album. We can’t get through half a verse of “The Wheels on the Bus” without imagining it going all Sweet Hereafter.

That said, we invite you to enjoy “Girls-Only Girls,” a song we performed on the groovy Susan Block show last week and which we will reprise at Taix on June 25. It is a song about double standards that should resonate with at least 350 people worldwide.

We are indebted to Sinn Sage (NSFW), Ela Darling (NSFW), and Dr. Susan Block (NSFW) for the arm-candy quotient in this photo.

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Girls-Only Girls

See also: Fogelfoot @ Taix on Facebook

“Herbie, Mate, please make me laugh.”

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The All That Jaws land vehicle recently ran over an already-run-over skunk in the pleasant Atwater Village section of Los Angeles, and we couldn’t help but think of a certain Boatswain’s Mate, a baseball player from Cleveland named Herbie.

The skunk had been cut in half. Continue reading →

In Progress: “Hope Boat”

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With the economic and environmental realities facing 2011, it isn’t surprising that a Peace Train is no longer a viable conveyance of strummy, acoustic idealism. But a Hope Boat, on the other hand…

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Hope Boat

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