Orphans

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.

小时候我一直以为一个歌手应该是在一个充满烟雾的小房间里边，有着他的一瓶酒，他坐在一架钢琴前，微风从窗外吹进来，钢琴中也传出美妙的声音。然后这些竟然都一一实现了。

Orphans中有一首关于一个用鱼骨越狱的囚犯的曼波舞曲，一首关于Charlie Whitman和John Wikes Boothe的福音歌，一首关于一个吵闹的邻居的三角洲蓝调，一篇关于一个被闪电击中的女人的朗诵，一首关于谋杀兄弟的十八世纪苏格兰式小情歌，一首关于绞刑的来自美国荒蛮地区的合唱。

听到Tom叔熟悉的声音 那感觉就像是一个人深夜看一部老电影看到美满结局时所感到的一丝丝释然 又像是终于把所有事情做完后 看到窗外已经没什么灯亮着的宿舍楼和柔和的月光 心里的那一份平静与安宁

收集这些声音样本材料很像是在海滩上翻动着烤鸡。这不同于你去保险库查看自己需要什么。有些材料丢了或是被埋在房子下。有些带子我得向一个俄国的管子工买。就像是你掉进了缸子里。我们开始写歌来爬出缸子。

Kathleen和我希望这张唱片可以像是经历了一夜的赌博，盗窃，耍牛后桌子上空荡荡的口袋。我们都喜欢奇怪的组合，所以我们在一起合作。我们希望Orphans像是一个过去排在未来前面的短波电台节目，由你在这个世界或下个世界，或是不能在世界上找到的东西组成。随你想象这是什么样吧。

我认为你可以在这里发现比平时更多的歌和舞。但我也希望喜欢咆哮，颤音，吠叫以及尖叫的粉丝不会失望。

甚至还有一首Jack Kerouac的歌和一首带有我个人向主祈祷的灵歌……甚至还有一首关于祭坛上的男孩的音乐剧歌曲和一首关于一个祈求被骗的年轻男人的乡村摇滚乐。

我年幼的时候，总是幻想在烟雾缭绕的狭小房间里，钢琴旁坐着歌者，风从窗户吹入，穿过这一切，再从钢琴中吹出，成了一首歌……奇怪的是，事情正是这个样子的。

Orphans包含所有时候的歌。有的是在一片混乱中写成，在夜车中录制，有的是在旅馆房间中写成，在好莱坞巨大的conflamas（不懂这个词）中录制。那正是矛盾和戏剧相遇的地方。不管怎么说，这些歌都是活过了洪水，水退后从树梢上被救下来的。

后来我们遇到了在Richmond, CA——当地的科幻地带——的Bay Side Studios工作的Karl Derfler，一个巫师般的工程师。就像一个战地医生，他拯救了许多歌并且录制了所有的新材料。

通过我的声音，我可以听起来像是一个女孩，布吉（一种传说中的恶魔），特雷门琴（一种电子乐器），樱桃炸弹，小丑，医生，谋杀犯……我可以是tribal。讽刺。或是不幸。我的声音真的是我的乐器。

（29-40楼是专辑简介翻译）（有没有大神能把简介倒数第二段里说的几首歌和专辑里边的歌对应起来呢）

然后你得仔细听，把听的东西分类，并写一些评论。接着是后续的录制。后来你好像是被蜘蛛咬了，掉进了地鼠洞，录制出了一个完全不同的东西。这大概就是是过去三年里的历程。

这张唱片的中间是我的声音。我尽力地去（模仿缓慢运转的发动机）突突，（用声音模仿）跺脚，哭泣，低语，呻吟，喘息，（模仿乐器）拟声，blurt（本意脱口而出），怒斥，哀鸣，诱骗。

Orphans（本意孤儿）是什么？我也不知道。Orphans是一个死到临头的孩子，带着电焊用护目镜，穿着背心，耳朵里有一个点燃的爆竹，驾着带有巨大轮子的棺材跨过俄亥俄河。