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 affected 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.
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 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
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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Fogelphiles