alanpaulinchina

Thanks for checking in - now go here

2012-03-09T03:39:00.000+08:00

New posts on the Fab Five, Chinese basketball, Jimmie Vaughan, blues at the White House and much more at www.alanpaul.net. Come on over and say hello.

Unrest and beauty in Sichuan, China’s Wild West

2012-02-09T05:51:00.000+08:00

Latest post: Unrest and beauty in Sichuan, China’s Wild West and much more over at www.alanpaul.net. com eon over.

Come on over to alanpaul.net

2011-10-12T22:21:00.000+08:00

New posts about Ivan Reitman, Mark Karan, Chinese hoops, Rebecca Blumenstein, the Wall Street Journal....all at www.alanpaul.net.

Blogging away... come on over....

2011-09-21T01:44:00.000+08:00

I have moved my base of operations over to www.alanpaul.net...

Recent blog posts about Stevie Ray Vaughan's last gig, Peter Hessler, my wife Rebecca Blumenstein's new job at the WSJ, Paul Westerberg and much more. Please drop by.

Still posting, but not here...

2011-08-22T09:00:00.000+08:00

Recent posts on Rick Perry, John Belushi, Animal House, the Doors, Dawes, hiking in Colorado, Electric Pass and much more... at www.alanpaul.net/blog.

Thank you to everyone clicking in from the Star Tribune

2011-08-08T02:19:00.000+08:00

I am happy to have you here, and I deeply appreciated Tom Zelman's kind, thoughtful review today. I am now blogging daily on my website, www.alanpaul.net. Please click on over and let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for checking in - please click over to alanpaul.net

2011-08-04T20:23:00.000+08:00

A big reminder that I am doing all my active blogging over at www.alanpaul.net. Please join me there to stay up to date on Big in China and all my other activities.

New, old Buddy Guy interview up

2011-07-11T23:17:00.000+08:00

I just posted a 2001 Buddy Guy interview from my archives at my new site: www.alanpaul.net. Please click on over and have a look.

Happy Holiday weekend and thanks for checking in

2011-07-03T03:13:00.000+08:00

Happy 4th of July extended weekend to one and all.

I am off this week, hiking, biking and rock climbing in Idaho's fabulous Sawtooth Mountains. When I return I will be back in action, blogging at my new site: www.alanpaul.net. Please check in there.

In China on book tour and blogging away....

2011-06-17T10:47:00.000+08:00

On www.alanpaul.net. Please join me there.

My latest:

This is a nice review of my Bookworm reading, with pictures.

Note the comments below, including some haters. I think that’s the same guy who posted something similar on the Hollywood Reporter story.

It was great to play with Zhang Yong and Lu Wei. Tonight at the Orchard was even better… and tomorrow at Jianghu will be best. More coming.

Special BookPerks offer this week: Buy Big in China, get a free Beijing Blues CD.

2011-06-07T01:14:00.001+08:00

BookPerks is running a special offer, this week only. Buy Big in China and receive a Beijing Blues CD for free. Same one praised by musical giants like Billy Gibbons and Warren Haynes. Check it out: http://ow.ly/5b4WQ

“Best Chinese blues band I ever heard. Who knew?”

-Billy F. Gibbons, ZZ Top

“You can hear the emotional commitment in every note of Woodie Wu’s playing. It is the sound of someone determined to find his own voice and destined to do so.”

-Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band

“A great mix of Western and Eastern blues that proves blues is a universal language. This cool CD has lots of soul and there is definitely music for more than just a blues fan here. “

-Joe Bonamassa

“A very pleasantly smoking CD…good tunes and good musicians clearly enjoying making great music together.”

-Blues legend Charlie Musselwhite

“A can’t-miss Beijing phenomenon. It’s always Tsingtao time when these guys take the stage.”

-Beijing City Weekend

“Very cool.”

-Derek Trucks  Allman Brothers Band

“Simply amazing.”

-Col. Bruce Hampton

“The very essence of world music: stone cold American blues with subtle, interesting Chinese overtones and killer slide guitar.”

-Brad Tolinski, Guitar World

“Woodie Alan has really pushed forward the development and growth of blues in China by playing hundreds of well-received shows. Woodie Wu is a new kind of guitar hero here — subtle and killer.”

-Guitar China

Please join me at alanpaul.net

2011-05-25T21:35:00.002+08:00

After six years of blogging goodness here, it is with a somewhat heavy but very excited heart that I move my base of operations over to www.alanpaul.net. Please click on over. Thanks.

Live Wire, Blues Power: the mighty Albert King

2011-05-24T00:48:00.003+08:00

As I've written before, interviewing the mighty blues guitarist Albert King during my first months as Guitar World's Managing Editor way back in 1991 was a tremendous thrill. Twenty years later it remains a definitive career highlight. Please go back and read that interview and my intro to it to understand just how much Albert meant to me.

I have also written before about the new, rather amazing stash of videos being posted on Wolfgang's Vault. Well, this one just took my breath away. It's Albert King live at the Fillmore West in 1970, playing "Blues Power." It captures everything that drew me to Albert and still makes him such a towering figure to me. I would have been awed to see a performance of this song at this time at this venue filmed on a shaky handheld, but this is a professionally recorded, multi-camera shoot.

Albert is so in command of his music, his voice, instrument, his band. He is completely in the moment. His playing is pithy, deep, and soulful. His tone is manly; he is pushing the gain quite a bit for a 1970 blues player and riding the edge of feedback. And his singing is just as good, as is his stage presence and pattern. I just love it all.

The album that got me hooked on Albert KIng was Live Wire/Blues Power, which was recorded in 1968 at the same Fillmore. It includes a similar, though extended take on "Blues Power." I put this album onto a cassette tape and I made a couple of cross-country drives with this being one of just a handful of tapes that I listened to over and over. This particular song always just resonated in some unspeakable way to me. It made me crank the volume and lose myself in every note. It made me want to know more. It made me happy to be alive. it made me want go out and kick ass in whatever I did. All of which is to say it stirred my soul.

I’m not the same yearning kid I was when I first listened to it. I’m a 44-year-old father of three prepping for his kid’s bar mitzvah, a published author and a decent musician myself. Whatever.

All these years later, actually seeing the man play the song in the same place, with the same arrangement in the same time frame evokes all the same feelings inside me.

In case you missed the link above, just click here.

-Gregg Allman on Big in China: "What a romp. After writing about music for years, Alan Paul walked the walk, preaching the blues in China. Anyone who doubts that music is bigger than words needs to read this great tale.”

Ladies and gentleman, Woodie Alan

2011-05-21T07:36:00.001+08:00

I always liked this guy's photos and I just came across this one, which I had not seen in a while on Woodie's My space page. It is a bad copy and the image is too small, but it captures something and I like it.

Alan Paul and Woodie Wu of Woodie Alan at Jianghu Jiuba, Beijing.

Welcome Back to Pittsburgh Jim Leyland

2011-05-21T04:46:00.000+08:00

With Jim Leyland and his Tigers pulling into PNC tonight, it seemed like a good time revisit one of the skip's finest moments as amanager: taking on Barry Bonds. Thanks for the memories and the years of service.

"It's oil...black, black gold"

2011-05-20T22:27:00.000+08:00

The fine folks from Taiwan's NMA animation strike again, this time with this fine summary of rising gas prices. The lead character is a pretty insulting caricature of an American, but this sums things up in a fun and amusing few minutes better than anything else you are likely to come across. I believe that Paul Krugman makes a cameo at the end, too,

If you are not hip to these guys' great animations of current news, you should be.

As an added bonus, here is their take on Mayor Bloomberg's war on unhealthy living, from salt to smokes:

Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai Here I Come

2011-05-20T00:06:00.001+08:00

Photo by Kathryn Huang

I'm very happy to say that I will be in China to promote Big in China very soon. Scroll down the page to read some excerpts from the book.

More dates are being added, but I am already looking like a busy boy.

Confirmed dates:

June 14, 7:30 PM Chengdu Bookworm Reading and Signing
Always happy to have an excuse to go eat Sichuan food in Sichuan.

June 15, 7:30 PM Beijing Bookworm
Reading, Signing and Acoustic Performance
Looking forward to appearing at this Beijing landmark, where I have spent many hours buying books, working, eating, drinking, chatting - and listening to others read. And very pleased that I will be joined by Woodie Alan bandmates Lu Wei and Zhang Yong for a brief acoustic performance.

June 17, 9:00 PM Jianghu Jiuba
Woodie Alan Reunion, Book Release party
A Woodie Alan partial reunion gig at Jianghu Jiuba, my favorite little Beijing hutong bar - often discussed in Big in China. I will be performing with my brothers Lu Wei and Zhang Yong, plus some special guests. CD and Book giveaways all night long.

June 18, 6:00 PM Garden Books, Shanghai Reading and Signing
Looking forward to filling up this great little spot in Shanghai's French Concession.

June 19, 4:00 PM M on the Bund, Shanghai Reading and Signing
A BIC reading and signing at the home of the Shanghai Literary Festival.

"Alan Paul plunges into Chinese life and takes us along for the ride, through vegetable markets, used-car lots, Taoist temples, divey bars, and a beachside music festival before thousands of cheering fans. He conveys the thrills and challenges of living abroad, the confusions and regrets, and most of all the opportunity to become the person we always hoped to be. “

-Peter Hessler, author, River Town; Country Driving

Portland Oregonian Review of Big in China

2011-05-19T22:13:00.000+08:00

The Oregonian ran a really nice, thoughtful, in-depth review of Big in China last week. Here it is re-reun on the website of the writer, John Strawn.

RIP Tractor Traylor: A personal rememberance

2011-05-19T02:02:00.000+08:00

Wow. Tractor Traylor dead at 34.

This is just very very sad. Tractor was starring for U-M when I was living in Ann Arbor in 96-98. I saw him play a lot and did a piece in Slam - one of the first things I wrote for the magazine. He made tremendous strides during his career there, and started passing out of the box his final year; he had sort of been a blackhole before then. When he lost a bunch of weight prior to the draft, I took him seriously and, combined with the improvement I had seen, thought he was going to thrive in the NBA, despite the fact that he was simultaneously too small (6-8) and too big (300 pounds or so) at once. I remember laughing at the Mavs when they traded his draft rights for Dirk Nowitzki, some German teen I had never heard of. Oops.

Tractor's legacy at Michigan is cloudy. He was part of a team that let everyone down in a million ways, and he was one of four players, along with Louis Bullock., Chris Webber and Maurice Taylor who seem to have taken money fro Ed Martin. I saw all of them, including Martin, at St. Cecilia's in Detroit when I spent time there writing a story for Slam - one of my favorite things I've ever done, by the way.

Aside from the money, the team was a really a letdown on the court. They never achieved what seemed possible and we'll never know why.

But Tractor was a garrulous, friendly guy and a cool presence - and what a perfect nickname, to tie this in with the previous post. During the weeks before the 98 Draft, he was working out for teams and Becky and I were in the old Detroit airport flying back to New York. At the last minute, they announced a flight cancellation and a gate change for us and we knew that it was a blood-in-the-water, first-come, first-served situation. So I took off running. I turned the corner into the right corridor at full sprint, Becky trailing me, pushing infant Jacob in a stroller. I was flying, with bags flapping behind me, when I almost ran smack into Tractor. He had lost a ton of weight but was still massive, like a brick wall. I stopped, said hi, reintroduced myself, shook hands and said, "I gotta go."

He laughed. As I ran away, I looked over my shoulder and said, "Tractor, you look great! Keep working hard."

And he smiled this huge smile and said, "Thanks, man. I will."

Soon after, I was at Toys R Us and saw a U-M Tractor bobblehead, which I bought and placed on Jacob's dresser, next to Josh Gibson. Both are still there 13 years later.

RIP Tractor. Gone far too soon.

Some Soulshine for the 800th rainy day in a row

2011-05-18T21:11:00.003+08:00

The sun may never shine again in the Northeast, so you might as well focus on letting your soul shine. Bluesman Larry McCray, an old friend of Warren Haynes', was the first one to record this. This goes out to my brother Woodie Wu and to the memory of Tim "Tragocaster" Lamb, my guitar mentor who was like a brother with Larry. I wish I could jam with either of those guys right now.

Warren Haynes on Big in China: “It’s hard to imagine a better American musical ambassador than Alan Paul. After spent crafting words, he found himself in a situation where words didn’t work anymore and was able to transcend them and make a deeper emotional connection with music. With the help of great local musicians, he bridged cultures with notes. It's an amazing story.”

Some new pictures by Kathryn Huang

2011-05-18T10:12:00.002+08:00

I did a photo shoot with Kathryn Huang today because I needed some very specifically framed photos for a Beijing magazine. Here are a couple examples of what we did.

I suggested this as sort of a joke after seeing versions of it in so many Guitar World stories.

This. or something very similar, will be in Beijing City Weekend in a few weeks.

Big in China Excerpt: The Ecstasy of the evangelist. Preaching the blues in Changsha

2011-05-17T11:11:00.001+08:00

The following excerpt, from Chapter 30, Bittersweet Surrender, captures Woodie Alan when we were riding a crest and performing the first of three gigs at Changsha, Hunan's Coco Clubs. It captures the essence of what Gregg Allman was thinking when he said this about the book:

What a romp. After writing about music for years, Alan Paul walked the walk, preaching the blues in China. Anyone who doubts that music is bigger than words needs to read this great tale.”

-Gregg Allman, the Allman Brothers Band

—This post is adapted from Chapter 8 of Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China (Harper). Click here to buy. Copyright 2011 by Alan Paul.

Woodie Alan at a Changsha radio station, with DJs.

Our first gig was at Coco’s “private club for successful people,” a members-only establishment that looked like the bastard child of a Seventies fondue restaurant and a high-end brothel, with burnished wood and red banquettes everywhere. It also featured an impressively stocked cigar humidor and an extensive private bottle collection where members kept their own wine, cognac and scotch.

The packed crowd cheered loudly before and after every song, a remarkably enthusiastic reception for American roots music in Chairman Mao’s home province. Though it was a Wednesday night, people were partying hard.

When we kicked into our next-to-last song, “Hey Hey Guniang,” the hard-charging Chinese jump blues sung by Zhang Yong, three beefy tough guys and their beautiful molls started dancing right in front of the stage. I had noted them all night as they alternated between drinking cognac in their banquette booth and leaping up to cheer. One of the men stumbled towards me, with something in his hand. I couldn’t make out what it was until he stuck a giant Cuban cigar in my mouth and raised his lighter with an unsteady hand.

I continued to pound away on my guitar, the giant stogie protruding out of my crooked grin. My hand was aching and bleeding under the bandages from a cut I received from a broken beer bottle in Xiamen, but I didn’t even notice. As we segued into the American jump blues “Kansas City,” I held the cigar in my left hand and spread my arms wide as I belted out, “I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come.” Watching all these Chinese people grow almost delirious, dancing with abandon, I growled out the lyrics: “They got some crazy little women there and I’m gonna get me one.”

When we ended the night with “Soulshine,” the crowd clapped along, swaying to the music and waving lighters in the air. I thought of Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist who wrote the song, and remembered all the time I had spent listening to his music, watching him play and interviewing him on his tour bus and in his New York apartment. I imagined how happy he would be to have his music spread so far from home and for the first time I understood the ecstasy of the evangelist. I felt like a preacher spreading the gospel into the farthest reaches of China.

When we finished playing, the tough who had given me the cigar pulled me down into his banquette and poured me a glass of Courvoisier. He and his buddies patted me on the back, as two long-legged beauties slid in on either side of me. When one of the thick-necked men raised his snifter in salute, I realized that the girls were just like the cigar and the cognac to them— rewards offered for a job well done.

Before I could sneak away, I felt a hand on each of my thighs. One of the women pulled me close and whispered into my ear, in slurred, drunken English.

“What is the name of your bass player?”

“Zhang Yong.”

“If you bring me to Zhang Yong, you can touch me anywhere.”

She squeezed my thigh hard. Then the other one pulled me to her and put her lips inside my ear. “Don’t bring her to your bass player.” She was equally drunk. “Bring me.”

The first one yanked me back. “Touch me anywhere!”

I laughed at the fact that the first time I had groupies they were just trying to get to Zhang Yong, but I wasn’t surprised. The quiet, self-possessed bassist had several beautiful girlfriends in Beijing, sometimes showing up at an afternoon gig with one and an evening performance with another. When I asked him once, in Chinese, how many girlfriends he had, he laughed and responded, in English, “Many, many girlfriends.”

I just wanted to get away from both of these women. The path of least resistance was to lead the more persistent one to Zhang Yong, who could certainly handle her easier than I could. “Just come with me,” I said

She slid out of the booth and rose onto unsteady feet. When I got up she put her arm around my waist and leaned into my side. We walked into the back room where the band was sitting at a discrete corner table. Surprise washed over everyone’s faces at the sight of this beautiful Chinese woman draped over me. “Don’t worry,” I said in Chinese. “She wants Zhang Yong.”

He got up and laughed when I told him to be careful. They walked off together and five minutes later he returned alone and said that he had walked outside and put her in a cab.

My patron - the guy who provided the cigar and cognac

This is the performance referenced above. It is not our finest effort - incredibly sloppy and Tianxiao blowing the sax instead of the smoother, more elegant Dave Loevinger. But boy does it capture the scene:

Drummer Lu Wei was on fire throughout our three days performing in his home province of Hunan:

Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba loves Big in China

2011-05-16T21:22:00.000+08:00

Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba on Big In China: "This book is great. I recommend it to any guitarist, traveler, or basketball fan!"

He sent this out as a tweet and also referred to me as "my friend..." That's all really nice. We have had some really nice email exchanges and phone conversations but have not actually met yet.

Here's how I met Chris: Someone wrote Slam Editor in Chief Ben Osborne a while back and told him that Chris, the founder/leader/songwriter/singer/guitarist of the pioneering emo band Dashboard Confessional was a basketball junkie who had frequently referenced Slam in blog and Twitter posts. Ben forwarded to me, the mag's resident crossover guy between the world of hoops and loud guitars, and asked me to check it out.

I ended up interviewing Chris for a dime Drop feature. It's the kind of interview that could be done in 10-15 minutes, but we spoke for an hour or more - about hoops, guitars, playing music while watching hoops, feeling inspired by sports while playing music, being inspired by music while playing sports... and how it all relates. It was a fun and easy conversation.

Afterwards, we exchanged some emails and Chris wrote me, "I really enjoyed that chat - so few people share my passion for both basketball and music guitars!" I was in complete agreement. I was supposed to go see him in New York shortly thereafter but unfortunately the gig coincided with the eve of my deadline for final, final readbacks on my book. I could not go. I did send him a galley of the book - and I was very excited when he wrote me the other day, apologized for having taken so long and told me that he loved Big in China. then he tweeted about it.

Thanks Chris, and I look forward to seeing you in NYC next time. Let's catch a game next season.

Bob Dylan was not censored in China - and so what if he was

2011-05-14T05:55:00.000+08:00

Bob Dylan has spoken out, making a rare public statement, er blog post, on his website, about his allegedly having been censored in China.

I don't blame him for being pissed and stepping up here. The whole incident was widely and wildly misconstrued and badly reported. Most teeth grindingly stupid was this ill-informed, no-nothing column by Maureen Dowd, who never found a cultural trend she wasn't ready to jump on, regardless of her level of knowledge.

This is my favorite part of Bob's statement: “As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous three months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.”

The emphasis is mine, because I think it's hilarious and gets right at something; Bob plays different sets every night, which anyone who follows him at all knows. Thus, it was ridiculous from the start to read so much into what he DIDN'T play on any given night.

Look, I wasn't there, though I would have have loved to have been. I did have a whole lot of friends there, many sending me email and tweet updates. We all laughed at the idea of a Chinese censor trying to write down Bob's lyrics. Fans who have pored over his music like the Talmud often can't recognize a song in their constantly evolving version, or understand what he is singing these days in his croaky, totally reimagined versions. How the hell would a Chinese censor have any idea?

I will take Bob at his word that he didn't alter the setlist, but the bigger picture is, so what if he did? That would not be selling out, no matter what Maureen Dowd says. It would be making a reasonable compromise to play by the rules of a different place and there is more value to him being there than not. Good old Bjork really didn't do anyone any favors - except maybe her own career - when she yelled "Tibet" at the end of a Shanghai performance of her song "Declare Independence" in 2008. The only result was less Western rockers have been to China since. And who exactly benefits from that.

Give 'em hell, Bob!

Bob in Beijing

"Alan Paul, A Southern Rock Champion"

2011-05-14T01:13:00.002+08:00

There are times when I wish the 12-year-old could see me, and reading a headline calling me a "Southern Rock Champion" is one of them. It makes me think of being in my basement staring at the Skynyrd poster on the wood paneled wall, or laying on my brother's yellow shag carpet, listening to Eat a peach and poring over the psychedelic gatefold artwork.

I am proud to have this shout out on swampland.com, a great Southern Rock-oriented site. And yes I'm proud to be a Southern Rock Champion. Full review coming there soon.

With Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington, backstage at the Beacon Theater