Category Archives: Influences

Who to thank for the insiration, either director indiect or subconscious, for this song

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.

Listen:

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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.

Listen:

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Elegant Space Gentleman

Fogelfoot Al Fresco

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This picture was taken at Hollywood’s Bronson Bar the other night, then shipped to 1500 B.C. Crete where it was painted on a plaster wall in a labyrinth. That is why one of us looks like a Minotaur.

Thanks for the great show. We did a slightly-altered version of “Summer Breeze” (the song was altered, not us; we’re STRAIGHT EDGE) that went over well.

It’s Been Good to Know Ya, Uncle Tina

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As this week marks the 35th anniversary of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the song of the same name was a signature hit for the man who is referenced in 1/3 of the syllables of our band, we are proud to share with you, fellow Internauts, a song that most likely will never be played onstage. Continue reading →

Now playing: Lady And the Man

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The idea was simple. We were thinking about Abba’s “Fernando” and how odd it was that those Swedes would write a song about a Mexican revolutionary in love with a United States citizen who, er, hears drums and crosses the Rio Grande.

This made us think of “Brandy” by Looking Glass and similar songs about men whose true love is anything other than the chick who’s serving them whiskey and wine.

Then there was the propensity of the 70′s cokespoon class to call women “Lady,” as distinct from how Jerry Lewis might do it.

We then wrapped these complex feelings into Jose Feliciano’s “Chico And the Man” and – there you have it – The Greatest Song of All TimeTM.

Listen:

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