【搬运译】叉婊Pitchfork评Grateful Dead 1970年专辑《American Beauty》
搬运自：网易云音乐专栏【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：豆目豆科
Reissued for its 50th anniversary, American Beauty is undoubtedly the Dead’s most beloved studio album, a pure and potent representation of their style and philosophical outlook.
在50周年之际重新发行的《American Beauty》无疑是乐队Grateful Dead生涯最受欢迎的录音室专辑，是他们风格和哲学观最纯粹、最有力的代表作。
To an outsider, Grateful Dead fandom can look like a religious calling. Consider the hours spent in contemplation of their famously lengthy jams, the lexicon of shibboleths and symbols that are inscrutable to the uninitiated, the seemingly prescribed style of dress, the reluctant messiah figure in Jerry Garcia. Actual religious groups even attached themselves to the endless tours that provided this community with its gathering places. If you attended one of the Dead’s carnivalesque stadium shows in the late 1980s—when hippie nostalgia, spectacle-driven TV news coverage, and a bona fide MTV hit converged to make their crowds much larger than they’d ever been in the hippie era—you might have encountered the Peacemaker bus. Filled with longhaired evangelicals who followed the band in hopes of drawing its listeners into a cultish Christian sect known as the 12 Tribes, the Peacemaker had two floors, a groovy paint job, and a faintly eerie slogan emblazoned on the back: “We know the way, we’ll bring you home.”
对局外人而言，考虑要用许多时间去沉思他们著名而冗长的即兴摇滚演奏会、考虑到对不熟悉这一乐队的人来说那些难以理解的术语和符号、考虑到看似刻意而为的着装风格、考虑到Jerry Garcia这一迫不得已的救世主形象，Grateful Dead的粉丝完全就是一群癫狂的某宗教使徒。甚至吸引着真正的宗教团体参与到他们巡演之中，一场无休止的狂欢Party。如果你在20世纪80年代末参加了Grateful Dead乐队的狂欢式体育场演出——在当时嬉皮士的复古情结、奇观驱动的电视新闻报道以及MTV热单风潮的影响下，他们的受众比嬉皮士时代要多得多——你可能会偶遇通往the Peacemaker的巴士。上面坐满了追随乐队而来的长发翩翩的教派人士，他们希望在吸纳一些听众加入一个叫做“12 Tribes”的基督教狂热教派，那是the Peacemaker名下的双层别墅，有着诡异而华丽的装潢，门后还印着一个些微阴森的话：“We know the way, we'll bring you home.”
That line comes from “Ripple,” the sixth song on American Beauty, Grateful Dead’s fifth and greatest studio album. But as Pitchfork contributor Jesse Jarnow notes in Heads, his wonderful history of American psychedelia, the Peacemaker’s motto was a perversion of the original. The musicians of the Dead, as well as Robert Hunter, the eremitic poet who wrote many of their lyrics, were temperamentally averse to dogma of any kind. On “Ripple,” a crystalline acoustic ballad with a hymnlike melody, they don’t profess to have the answers. “You who choose to lead must follow,” Garcia sings in his plainspoken tenor atop a cascading mandolin, then finishes with the line the 12 Tribes appropriated: “If I knew the way, I would take you home.” Were the Dead a religion, this would be one of its core tenets. Devotion and uncertainty are inseparable; no one knows the way, but we can try to get there together.
这句话来自“Ripple”，这是Grateful Dead第五张也是有史以来最伟大的录音室专辑《American Beauty》中的第六首歌。但正如Pitchfork的撰稿人Jesse Jarnow在他精彩的美国迷幻乐史中指出的那样，the Peacemaker的座右铭是对原作的一种歪曲。Grateful Dead乐队的音乐家们，以及为他们贡献了许多词作的悲观主义诗人Robert Hunter，在性情上都不喜欢任何形式的教条。在“Ripple”这首带有赞美诗般悠扬旋律的集大成原声民谣中，他们并不会自诩手握真理。“You who choose to lead must follow,” Garcia在层层叠叠的曼陀林上用他平易近人的男高音唱道，然后用“12 Tribes”争相传诵的那句话来结束——“If I knew the way, I would take you home.”如果“Grateful Dead”真的变作一种宗教，这将是其核心教旨之一。奉献和不确定性是不可分割的；没有人知道路在何方，但我们仍可以尝试一同前往那里。
Released in November 1970 and reissued for its 50th anniversary this month, American Beauty is a pure and potent representation of Dead-ness as a philosophical outlook. Earlier in the year, with Workingman’s Dead, the band made an abrupt about-face from the murk and discord of previous albums toward the bluegrass and folk that had captivated Garcia in his early days as a musician, with some Buck Owens and Merle Haggard thrown in for good measure. American Beauty, which came just five months later, uses a similarly earthy palette, but its concerns are quite different. The songs of Workingman’s Dead, filled with archetypal characters of the American West, involve a fair amount of rambling and gambling. American Beauty is more like a guided meditation, or a solitary swim in a cool, clear lake.
《American Beauty》发行于1970年11月，同时选在本月（2020年10月）为其50周年重新发行，这张专辑极具哲学意味，为我们简洁有力的阐明了何谓“死亡”。今年早些时候发行的《Workingman's Dead》五十周年再版中，乐队突然一改过往专辑中阴暗和不和谐转向蓝草和民谣，这早在Garcia成为音乐家之初便吸引着他，其中还添有一些Buck Owens和Merle Haggard的味道。仅仅五个月后的《American Beauty》便使用了类似充斥着泥土气息的调色板，但其着重点却截然不同。《Workingman's Dead》中的歌曲讲述的是美国西部的经典人事，它们洋溢在漫无边际的浪迹和博彩之中。而《American Beauty》给人的感觉更像是一次正念冥想，或是在一个清凉的湖里独自游泳。
Bassist Phil Lesh earned a rare songwriting credit for “Box of Rain,” the heartbreaking opener, whose melodies he wrote to sing to his father as he died of prostate cancer. Hunter’s dreamlike titular image might stand for the ephemerality of the present moment, or of life itself. Again, the band goes out of its way to avoid presenting its wisdom as something certain or compulsory: “Just a box of rain/Wind and water/Believe it if you need it/If you don’t, just pass it on.” Hunter conjures similar impossibilities across the album: lights that no eyes can see, tunes that play on harps unstrung, ripples emerging in water without pebbles to cause them.
贝斯手Phil Lesh凭借“Box of Rain”在音乐界享有他的作曲荣誉，这首令人心碎的开场曲是他为死于前列腺癌的父亲所写。Hunter塑造出的梦幻般图景或许代表了当下的短暂，又或许映射了生命本身的短暂。同时乐队也竭力避免将其中的哲理表现为某种确定的或强制性的东西：“Just a box of rain/Wind and water/Believe it if you need it/If you don't, just pass it on.” Hunter在整张专辑中创造了类似的不可能奇观：瞳孔无法捕获的光、无弦竖琴演奏的歌谣、静水中无缘出现的涟漪。
Decades before mindfulness became a corporate buzzword, the Dead were devoted to being here now. According to Garcia, an acid-fried visit to the Watts Towers a few years before the American Beauty sessions informed this approach, albeit in an inverted way. The guitarist was inspired not to toil in solitude for his legacy, like Simon Rodia building his folk-art monuments in southern Los Angeles, but to live in the world as it unfolded. “If you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can’t tear down, you know, after you’re gone,” he said later. “But hey, what the fuck? I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime...I also don’t want to be isolated. I don’t want to be an artist suffering in a garrett somewhere, you know what I mean? I want to work with other people.”
早在正念成为官方流行语的数十年前，Dead乐队就致力于感受“当下”去发声。据Garcia说，在《American Beauty》开始演出的前几年，他在Watts Towers的一次旅行就为这一法门提供了启示，尽管是以一种颠覆性的方式。这位吉他手受到的启发并不是独守他的遗产而孤独的创作，就像Simon Rodia在洛杉矶南部建造他的民间艺术纪念碑一样，他选择将之立于世界舞台上而存在。“若你作为一个艺术家能不辞辛劳地为你地作品付出，你就可能会建成一些别人永远无法摧毁的东西，即便你离世之后，它也将永存，”他后来说道。“但是他妈的，我希望它现在就出现。我现在就想要，就这辈子......我不想被孤立、孤独一生、我不想作那个在某个车库里受苦的艺术家，你懂我意思吧？我想同他人一起为之奋斗。"
This commitment to coming together and being present manifested most clearly in the Dead’s live performances, communal explorations of the moment that only survived for posterity because of bootleg tapers, the sect of Deadheads who documented the band’s fleeting magic, like catching rain in a box. But they also show up on American Beauty, in subtler ways. “Friend of the Devil,” a narrative told from the perspective of an outlaw on the run, might have been a straightforward piece of Americana if not for the way the band played it. Joined by bluegrass-jazz mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, they refuse to sit still and simply strum the chords. Instead, each player pursues his own melodic path through the changes, which emerge in crystalline polyphony. Each line wanders freely, but complements the others; none could support Garcia’s lead vocal alone, but their latticework holds him high.
这种对“结伴而行”和“存在感”的信念在Dead乐队的现场表演中表现得最为明显，这种对“当下”的共同探索，也只能靠偷拍器才得以流传后世，那些记录下乐队施展转瞬即逝的魔力时刻的死忠粉们，就像身处在盒中接雨一样。同时它们也以更微妙的方式出现在《American Beauty》中。“Friend of the Devil”以一个逃犯的角度讲述了一段故事，倘若不以乐队的演奏方式来演绎，它最多可能是一首最简单普通的美国音乐。在蓝草爵士曼陀林大师David Grisman的加盟下，他们不再坐着不动、不再只是简单地弹拨和弦；相反，参与其中地每一位演奏者都在行进变化中追寻着自己的旋律路径。这些变化在水晶般剔透的复调中显现，每条丝线都在自由地游荡、但同时又与其他丝线交连、相辅相成；没有任何一条线能单独支撑起Garcia的主旋律人声，但它们共同缝织的结构又将他托举向上。
Across American Beauty, the band accomplishes such feats without straying from the bounds of country-folk songcraft, encoding their collective interplay within verses and choruses rather than jamming, per se. The album’s simplicity and campfire warmth make it approachable to newcomers even as it embodies the spiritual yearning that turns people into lifelong followers. It is an ideal gateway drug.
在《American Beauty》中，乐队完成了这样的壮举，却并未偏离乡村民谣的界限，他们将他们间的集体互动编码在诗句和副歌中，而非干扰将之打乱。这张专辑所具有的简易性和篝火般的温暖氛围使它对新乐迷而言很容易上道，即使它体现了将人们转化为终身信徒的精神渴望。总而言之，它是很理想的入门新手村。
The reissue comes packaged with a 1971 concert recording, and arrives in tandem with American Beauty: The Angel’s Share, a collection of demos and outtakes that will hardcore fans will lap up, but newcomers to the album should probably ignore. For anyone in between, The Angel’s Share is a useful reminder of the work that goes into sounding so free. Garcia, Lesh, and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir struggle hard with their vocal harmonies in the “Brokedown Palace” demo, an uncomfortably intimate window on their process, which hardly anyone needs to hear more than once. Drummer Bill Kreutzman stumbles over a flashy drum fill to start “‘Til the Morning Comes,” an intro the band abandoned at some point between the demo and the final version. The Angel’s Share comes in an album-length edition with one demo for every song, as well as a 56-track version containing 20 different takes on “Friend of the Devil” alone. For all their emphasis on spontaneity, these songs didn’t actually emerge from thin air.
这次的再版附加了一张1971年的演唱会现场唱片，与《American Beauty》的正式内容一起打包装订。这张附加的专辑铁杆歌迷会爱上它的，但对新歌迷而言很有可能将之忽略。对于介于两者之间的人来说，《The Angel's Share》更像是个提醒，提醒他们乐队为使音乐听来如此自由所付出的艰辛。Garcia、Lesh和节奏吉他手Bob Weir在“Brokedown Palace”的Demo中与自己的和声作着斗争，这是他们创作中的一个极其令人不适的部分，几乎不会有人想体验超过一遍。鼓手Bill Kreutzman在华丽的鼓点中缓缓开启了“'Til the Morning Comes”，这个前奏是乐队在录制Demo和最终版本之间的某个时刻被弃用的片段。除此之外《The Angel's Share》有一个专辑版本，其中的每首歌都有一个样带，还有一个56轨的版本，仅“Friend of the Devil”一首歌就有20个不同的版本。尽管他们反复强调着自发性（所谓的“自然而然”），但这些歌曲总不是凭空出现的。
American Beauty contains the final studio performances of keyboardist and singer Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. His bluesy shout and rough-hewn charisma made him the Dead’s de facto frontman in their earliest years, but his role in the band receded in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, as he grew dissatisfied with their drift toward experimentation and away from the driving rock’n’roll that was his forte. In 1973, months before the Dead started work on American Beauty’s studio followup Wake of the Flood, he died at 27 from complications related to his heavy drinking, leaving his bandmates devastated. The twangy and good-natured “Operator,” his lone lead vocal and songwriting credit on American Beauty, is the album’s outlier, content on Earth without reaching for anything resembling the divine.
《American Beauty》还收录有键盘手兼歌手Ron "Pigpen" McKernan一生最后一次录音室演唱。他的蓝调呼喊和粗犷魅力使他成为Dead乐队早期名副其实的主唱大大，但在随后的60年代末到70年代初，他对乐队向实验性方向的发展而背离他所擅长的内驱性摇滚乐感到不满，便渐渐销声匿迹。1973年，在Dead乐队开始制作《American Beauty》的后续作品《Wake of the Flood》的几个月前，他死于过度酗酒引起的并发症，享年仅27岁，这让他的乐队伙伴大受打击。他在《American Beauty》中唯一作为的主唱同时为之作曲的作品“Operator”，可谓是专辑中的异类，让人身处尘世便能心感满足，而没有触及所谓“神圣之物”的丝毫。
Though American Beauty is undoubtedly the Dead’s most beloved studio album, by fans and skeptics alike, most of its songs were never major staples of their live sets, making it something like an island in the stream of their larger canon. One exception is “Truckin’,” the album closer, an easygoing ode to the open highway that became an anthem for Deadheads and for freaks and hippies more generally. It can be difficult to apprehend how the Chuck Berry pastiche of “Truckin’”’s verses relates to American Beauty’s zen worldview, until you get to the song’s spacious bridge, which spawned one of those catchphrases so ubiquitous as to seem without origin:
尽管《American Beauty》无疑是Dead乐队最受欢迎的录音室专辑，无论对于他们的歌迷还是那些阴谋论者，但它之中的大多数歌曲都不是他们现场演出的主要曲目，这使得它在他们无数作品中像是一座孤岛。有一个例外是“Truckin'”，这张专辑的收官之作，一首轻松的公路颂歌，更是在之后的岁月中渐渐成为乐队头号乐迷、怪咖和嬉皮士们的圣歌。你可能很难理解Chuck Berry模仿“Truckin'”中的诗句与《American Beauty》中所隐含的禅宗世界观有何关联，直到你来到了这首歌最宏伟宽阔的桥段，也是由此产生了那些无处不在、像是凭空而现的口头禅：
Sometimes, the light's all shining on me
Other times, I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it's been
In the scheme of things, Grateful Dead were only just getting started in 1970; the trip would get much longer and stranger still, and Pigpen was not the last member they’d lose along the way. The “Truckin’” bridge offers a brief pit stop for reflection on the past, but the point is to keep going, city to city, moment to moment. In concert, “Truckin’” regularly stretched past 10 minutes; on record, it is a modest 5:07. It ends with a fade, a tantalizing glimpse at a jam that might go on forever—six brothers truckin’ down the road together toward home, whichever way that is.
1970年，Grateful Dead的故事刚刚完成序章；这段旅程对他们而言将变得愈加漫长和陌生，同时"Pigpen"也并非他们在途中会失去的最后一个成员。“Truckin'”中的桥段为反思过去提供了一个短暂的停靠点，但重心仍应落在继续前行上，跨越一个城市到另一个城市、历经一刻再到另一刻。在音乐会上，“Truckin'”经常被延长至10分钟以上；而在唱片上，它只有五分钟出头。它以淡出作结，就像一场可能永远持续下去肆意即兴演绎，听者眼中一闪而过一幅图景：兄弟六人结伴而行，一起沿着公路向家的方向走去，无论那路途是何等漫长、艰辛。
