But maybe also Festival of Mud.
I think this is Hosono's take on the same theme as Kosaka's Locomotive. If so, then these guys were either really lucky, or one or both of them put some serious thought into the sequencing. Festival of Mud and The Locomotive, these sister songs, are the second and second-to-last songs on Side A. Spring is Here and Country Roads, sister songs themselves, are the first and last songs on Side B. In both cases, it's Hosono's first, and Kosaka's later.
This song was left off of the Chu's Garden box set of re-releases because the word for "deaf" has turned derogatory over the years. The most recent re-release, from last year, reinstated Festival of Mud onto Arigatou and printed an apology/explanation on the back cover.
One of the great projects I have ahead of me is figuring out what recordings have my favorite Shigeru Suzuki guitar work on them (I haven't dug very deep, he played on tons of stuff in the years before he went soft rock). He's my favorite guitarist. For the time being, Festival of Mud is way up there. His tone is fantastic, and mixed so beautifully. It sounds like Hosono had been listening to Jethro Tull's Aqualung record (compare Mother Goose) but I don't know if he had been, he'd need to have gotten hold of a copy right away. Maybe he'd been listening to Benefit instead. Or maybe it's just further evidence of Hosono's genius — maybe Hosono/Suzuki and Anderson/Barre got to the same sound at (more or less) the same time, independently of each other.
In the line about mushrooms, the word for "sprouting all over," shigeru, is Shigeru Suzuki's given name — the kanji is the same too (茂る). I don't know if Hosono realized why that particular verb popped into his head back when he was still working on the words, but by the time Kosaka was recording the album, he definitely had, because the moment Kosaka sings the word "shigeru," Shigeru's electric guitar answers with a gnarly riff, as if his name had been a cue.
The one-note solo at the end is as wonderful as Neil Young's in Cinnamon Girl and Vampire Blues.
:::
Stylish Shinto palanquins.
A festival band playing.
Let yourself get carried away,
you'll see flowers blooming everywhere.
Stylish Shinto palanquins.
A festival band playing.
Let yourself get carried away,
you'll see flowers blooming everywhere.
The dull light of the sunset.
The festival of evening.
My hands over my ears. Just passing by.
Torrential rain is visiting
a village wracked by drought.
Let yourself get carried away,
you'll see mushrooms sprouting all over.
Torrential rain is visiting
a village wracked by drought.
Let yourself get carried away,
you'll see mushrooms sprouting all over.
Nothing but sludge, thick and viscous.
The festival of mud.
My hands over my ears. Just passing by.
The festival! The festival!
Buddha's birthday festival!
The bonfire! The bonfire!
The cascade of fallen leaves!
And one deaf person
remaining deaf to it all.
Stylish Shinto palanquins.
A festival band playing.
Let yourself get carried away,
you'll see flowers blooming everywhere.
Stylish Shinto palanquins.
A festival band playing.
Let yourself get carried away,
you'll see flowers blooming everywhere.
The dull light of the sunset.
The festival of evening.
My hands over my ears. Just passing by.
No comments:
Post a Comment