On early listens to Hosono House, I thought the songs in the middle of Side B (or maybe starting with Crossing the Winter) didn't stand out enough. The first four on Side A are real distinctive, as are the closer and the coda — and Party is pretty special too, in its rustic minimalism — and you could definitely make a case for Fortune, Come In! Demons, Get Out!'s advance peek of the Tropical Trilogy — but it seemed to me that A5 / B3 / B4 muddied things.
The more I listened, the less true that felt, and it became utterly untrue once I worked out the lyrics, because every song on the album is touching and endearing in its own way.
In the lyric sheet it's a cigarette, not his own body, that the narrator wants ignited (fourth line of the first verse), but Hosono sings "body" (からだ). A bit of a Freudian slip? The narrator is so totally impoverished, and so cold as a result, that he feels he may as well be burned alive? In the words of Terry Pratchett, "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
But on Hochono House it's a cigarette again, as I expext it would have been in the unreleased '73 solo acoustic demo that inspired the Hochono House arrangement.
:::
Could you get me a good cigarette
and light up that bright red flame?
I feel cold down to my body's core.
Ignite my body with that fire.
Are there any offers on the table
too good to actually be true?
I have to find a treasure map.
It's the only hope I have left.
At this point, I'm like Captain Cook:
no fixed abode, jobless,
and to make matters worse,
barely making any money.
If my dream tonight's a good one,
then tomorrow, in the giddy deeps,
I'll have a chance encounter with an ocean goddess,
a la-la-landezvous upon the coral.
Are there any offers on the table
too good to actually be true?
I have to find a treasure map.
It's the only hope I have left.
At this point, I'm like Captain Cook:
no fixed abode, jobless,
and to make matters worse,
barely making any money.
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