保护羊的音乐

Brian Molko并不是那么美，如果不是相由心生的话。也不是所有人都可欣赏Brian Molko比例失调的美嗓。他们的音乐是一款似药似毒的调和酒，让人神智模糊，意识清醒。 8年前在自习室里一边准备考试，一边听他们的歌，然后把持不住地去外面买了包烟，忘不了醉烟和醉歌的心情。现在已和香烟保持了一段距离，而Placebo又回来了。 究竟是Battle for the Sun呢，还是Placebo for the Sun？ 请不要嘲笑我的Chinese English。：）

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无意间听了黄秋生的几首歌，开始欣赏起这个老男人起来。他可以高调地做自己看不上眼的事，比如拍烂片，又可以低调地做文艺青年。 谈到《Bad Taste - But I Smell Good》，这张纯翻唱专辑，相当之惊艳。听似随意，实则精雕细琢，黄秋生把老男人的性感与闷骚发挥得淋漓尽致。慵懒而低沉的嗓音，适合说故事。黄秋生处理情绪的方式不是激烈、外放，而是相对平和、内敛的。哪怕无比豪迈的《海阔天空》，温柔版与Beyond的原版相比也毫不逊色，别有一番男人的沉稳、大气、从容、自信。 个人看来，这种平稳的演绎方式亦是高明的，回避了非专业歌手在唱歌技巧上的不足。 本专辑中歌曲的原版本，我有的听过，有的陌生。但基本上每首歌都有可圈可点之处，建议由《偶然》听起。至于班底，由黄耀明、黄贯中、梁基爵监制，编曲可算香港流行乐的最高水准。 呵呵，听黄秋生唱歌，就像夜晚搭一个醉汉的顺风车，他开得不快，又很专注。前面的风景歪斜地从眼前慢慢掠过，不知目的地在何方。

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翻来覆去地把Tom Waits的新专辑《Orphans》听了六、七次，且不说去都江堰那一路上听的也是它。整张专辑总共有56首曲目。老Tom疯了，我也跟着疯。可以说热爱这个老男人，或则说绝对信任他，信任他的音乐。 想到他，眼前会浮现一个不修边幅的老男人形象，他吊儿郎当而又雄赳赳地打量着你。他打的呵欠会有酒气。他的音乐与本人气质吻合，嗓音和胡子一样粗砺。您还可以用大烟囱里冒出来的滚滚黑烟形容他的破嗓子，或则干脆说是一辆老式的蒸汽机。这些本含贬义的词组放在老Tom身上就成了褒义。 Tom音乐的意义在音乐以外，音乐只是他表达自己的方式。可以说他描绘的是社会低层，呛俗、混乱、孤独，种种鲜明而微妙的刺激。又可以说他是在癫狂地歌咏着流浪者的生活，那是宿命。 躺在床上听老Tom的音乐，我的床就变成了廉价旅馆的十元床。那时候我还没有自己的睡袋，每次独自旅行，晚上基本上都躺在这种床上。我唯一的念头是：入睡，入睡，赶快入睡！但这往往无法如愿。记不得入睡前具体想了些什么，只记得很多次醒来后不知自己身在何方。那是一种让人愉快的茫然。 写这些不相干的，一方面是因为Tom勾起了我的回忆，另一方面，我想说自己能懂他的音乐。当然相辅相成的还有杰克.凯鲁亚特的《在路上》，艾伦.金斯伯格的《嚎叫》。我无缘经历的绚彩年代通过音乐和书籍诡异地渗透皮肤，在血液里不引人注目地流淌。我的脉搏里跳动的不是我自己…… 坦白说来，我还是没有搞清楚为何“Orphans”（孤儿），是复数，而不是单数形式？ 在国外网站上搜到的Tom写的一篇话。翻译未果…… When I was small I always thought that songwriters sat alone at upright pianos in cramped smoky little rooms with a bottle and an ashtray and everything came in the window blew through them and came out of the piano as a song…and in a weird way that is exactly what happens. What’s Orphans? I don’t know. Orphans is a dead end kid driving a coffin with big tires across the Ohio River wearing welding goggles and a wife beater with a lit firecracker in his ear. At the center of this record is my voice. I try my best to chug, stomp, weep, whisper, moan, wheeze, scat, blurt, rage, whine, and seduce. With my voice, I can sound like a girl, the boogieman, a Theremin, a cherry bomb, a clown, a doctor, a murderer…I can be tribal. Ironic. Or disturbed. My voice is really my instrument. Kathleen and I wanted the record to be like emptying our pockets on the table after an evening of gambling, burglary, and cow tipping. We enjoy strange couplings, that’s how we got together. We wanted Orphans to be like a shortwave radio show where the past is sequenced with the future, consisting of things you find on the ground, in this world and no world, or maybe the next world. Whatever you imagine that to be. If a record really works at all, it should be made like a homemade doll with tinsel for hair and seashells for ears stuffed with candy and money. Or like a good woman’s purse with a Swiss army knife and a snake bite kit. Orphans contains songs for all occasions. Some of the songs were written in turmoil and recorded at night in a moving car, others were written in hotel rooms and recorded in Hollywood during big conflamas. That’s when conflict weds drama. At any rate these are the ones that survived the flood and were rescued from the branches of trees after the water’s retreat. Gathering all this material together was like rounding up chickens at the beach. It’s not like you go into vault and check out what you need. Most of it was lost or buried under the house. Some of the tapes I had to pay ransom for to a plumber in Russia. You fall into the vat. We started to write just to climb out of the vat. Then you start listening and sorting and start writing in response to what you hear. And more recording. And then you get bit by a spider, go down the gopher hole, and make a whole different record. That was the process pretty much the last three years. Then we met Karl Derfler, a wizard engineer who works at Bay Side Studios in Richmond, CA, in the science fiction part of town. A battlefield medic, he did a Lazarus on a number of the songs and recorded all the new material. On Orphans there is a mambo about a convict who breaks out of jail with a fishbone, a gospel train song about Charlie Whitman and John Wilkes Boothe, a delta blues about a disturbing neighbor, a spoken word piece about a woman who was struck by lightening, an 18th century Scottish madrigal about murderous sibling rivalry, an American backwoods a cappella about a hanging. Even a song by Jack Kerouac and a spiritual with my own personal petition to the Lord with prayer…There’s even a show tune about an old altar boy and a rockabilly song about a young man who’s begging to be lied to. I think you will find more singing and dancing here than usual. But I hope fans of more growling, more warbling, more barking, more screeching won’t be disappointed either. Tom Waits August 2006 “在我很小的时候，认为音乐创作人是那种独坐在房间里，抱着竖琴，夹着香烟，旁边放着啤酒瓶和烟灰缸的人。所有的事物从窗户里飘进来，然后通过一种不可思议的方式，变成了琴声……这就是所发生的一切。” (旧文）

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作为一个脱离不了庸俗的人，基本上自己对弄不明白的事物，都不会流露出反感，有时候甚至会表现出相当的兴趣，——当年的数理化除外哈。Yoko Ono的《Yes,I'm a witch》就可归为此类（这张改编专辑的合作阵容非常强大：DJ Spooky, Peaches, The Flaming Lips, Craig Armstrong, Cat Power）。怎么说呐，饶有兴致地听了五遍以上，说喜欢也未尝不可。虽形容不出它的光怪迷离，但大抵还是可以描述下的，捷径即是女巫（witch）。 可以说这张专辑把女巫的涵义概括得非常完整。疯狂、精力充沛、孤独、敏锐、倨傲、年龄感模糊、聪慧、神秘感……透过这张风格杂乱，总的该算另类舞曲的专辑，可以看见一个姿态张扬、笑容歪斜，感情极端的女巫。当然，这位女巫并没有骑扫帚，而是戴着墨镜。 帮我下这张专辑的朋友听了两首后就听不下去了。 我说：别删，说不定若干年后你会喜欢的。 他十分肯定地说：我想这辈子都不会喜欢女巫。 这位朋友代表了大部分人的看法：永远都不会喜欢女巫，更不会喜欢Yoko Ono的音乐，以及这位乖戾的女人。 抛开音乐，单从犀利的歌词，想必Yoko Ono会受爱摆姿态的当代女士们的喜欢。 当我开始注意这个女人，Yoko Ono已经是世界上最有名的寡妇了。与其说自己对她的音乐有兴趣，不如说是对她的私生活。Lennon说过的一段话至今在脑海里留有鲜明的记忆：“我和Yoko Ono的关系就是一杯爱情、情欲、性欲和忘却对成的怪味鸡尾酒。” 在我看来，和Lennon结婚后的Yoko Ono并没有失去自己，但艺术上的光芒一度被Lennon掩盖。不知道这算不算Yoko Ono的悲哀？当然，她也是个成功的女人，除了艺术上的，最成功之处是使自己的名字和Lennon，这个光芒万丈的男人永远、紧密地联系在一起。 在我比现在还要年轻的时候，如同大部分迷恋披头士的女孩们，极其向往Lennon和Yoko Ono之间的爱情。现在看来不尽然，若Lennon还活着，没准他们最终还是会走向分手呐？ （旧文）

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