Candid 10 Questions with Alan Paul: Setting the Record Straight, Big in China, Controversy, Jianbing and more

Jean-Sébastien Héry says:

Alan,

If you made it with the book, good for you, but just be honest with the level of fame you got here, you’ve lived here, you know what things are like. You know as well as me that nothing has happened so far, that everything needs to be done, that this is not America, Europe, or Japan.

People in the West need to be educated on what China and the Chinese music scene is really about, with its good sides and bad sides.

You know it’s completely selfish of you to use your experience here as a tool to make yourself famous and get a movie deal, this is not making things get better, it’s giving another wrong perspective on China and on things in the Chinese music scene….makes me want to write a book too…

linda@adventuresinexpatland.com says:

I get that many of you are questioning how big or influential Woodie Alan really was in China, its talent level, etc. If you’ve read the book and some of Alan’s dispatches back to the Wall Street Journal (I have), you’ll know that he was capturing the excitement of being an expat in an entirely different culture, making his way and living life to the fullest. His affection and appreciation for his time with the band is clear. He wrote a book that people are enjoying, and speaks highly of his time as an expat, and especially China. It seems that many of the comments are trying to project on him things he hasn’t said, weren’t in the book, all because of a book title and band award. It’s the overall experience in China (and his writing) that people are celebrating, not where the band fell in terms of charts, rankings or personal opinions.

Jez says:

To think that Ivan Reitman making Ghostbusters 3 would make more people happy than this project…

Emmet says:

Wow. Seems like some people really have some jealousy issues.

Jean-Sébastien Héry says:

I wish it was jealousy….it’s more like a form of sadness

El Santo says:

I think there’s more honesty in the marketing of GHOSTBUSTERS than Mr. Paul’s book.

This bon mont was a howler, “I don’t want go point by point defending myself, but it’s flat out untrue to say we only were popular with a small group of my friends. ”

Nobody has fucking heard of Woodie Alan Band. Really. Comparatively speaking, if you go to Chinese music sites for LOCALS (who gives a damn about what expats claim for the Chinese? ONLY expats and the govt.!) There are far more obscure bands that “sold out the JZ Club in Hangzhou; played in front of 2,000 people in a theater there; headlined the Xiamen Beach Festival in front of 5-6,000 people, a performance which was broadcast on TV throughout Fujian; appeared on Changsha radio and in magazines there; played the Star Live a bunch, were hired for the black tie British Olympic Committee Olympics dinner,” that only remain obscure because expat journalists who like to use their pulpit to exaggerate their own accomplishments would rather brag about their bar band that only mattered to expat bankers, lawyers and journos (who rarely support Chinese music) than to the Chinese music fans who still support the local bands.

In a nation of a billion people, playing a free, outdoor festival to 5-6,000 people is nothing. KTV models outside of department stores in big cities play to more people than that on one weekend. they can make the same claim, and Alan, your caveat about playing at the British Emabssy shows what you’re doing. It really proves that the emperor has no clothes. You only give a damn about vindication in expat eyes.

I shudder to think what bullshit this Ivan Reitman production will spew. It will be epic lying on the level of Howard Stern’s PRIVATE PARTS (another Reitman production), no doubt. Reitman’s long-forgotten CANNIBAL GIRLS will probably come off as intellectually honest, compared to what they’ll do with Mr. Paul’s fabrications.

After this interview I am doubly certain that Mr. Paul’s book is full of spin and steaming hubris. I won’t pay to read it. If I am loaned the book then I’ll read it to see if I am 100% correct, but this interview definitely displays what Mr. Paul’s book is about: twisting his China experiences to put himself over. If it reads like this interview (not BD’s work but Mr. Paul’s words) then “Big in China” may very well be like an ego-tripping, awesomely bad, China rock-marginalizing flip side to something like Mark Salzman’s “Iron and Silk” for lawyer-ball playing expat yuppies who like to piss on all of the hard working Chinese bands.

Alan Paul: the Pat Boone to China’s Little Richards?

Hmmmm…………..

El Santo says:

You know who is the real Alan Paul: Joyside’s Yang Yang. HE deserves the praise and respect. He didn’t “talk” (write) the “talk.” He really did everything Paul claims and was an important part of JOYSIDE’s rise. If anything, Yang Yang has undersold his place in Chinese rock history (as have Cui Jian’s old bandmates; but that’s a whole other sub-topic!).

Yang Yang also played in front of more people with JOYSIDE than Alan ever did (will) with Woodie Alan Band.

Yang Yang, my tomodachi, I salute you!

Jez says:

Hold on Lulu, be fair. Your living room is bigger than Jianghu.

Froog says:

Wow – is this BD’s busiest-ever thread??

I feel kind of sorry for Alan that he’s provoking so much negativity (although I can see why). I don’t think we need to be so precious about his book misrepresenting the Beijing/China music scene. Realistically, I think it’s going to have just about zero impact on anyone’s perceptions of the scene here. The book isn’t going to sell that well, and the film is never going to get made (I don’t know precisely what proportion of optioned titles actually make it to the screen, but it’s a fairly tiny percentage, particularly with non-fiction…. although I suppose some may dispute whether Alan’s book should be categorised as non-fiction!!). If the book does become a huge bestseller and a movie version does materialize… well, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It will generate wider interest in the music scene here, create opportunities for all these dissenting voices we find here to put across their different views, and – most importantly – enable more Chinese bands to play abroad and find foreign fans. If that were to happen (very unlikely, I think), it would be A GOOD THING. And the brief phenomenon of the Woodie Alan Band would have become retroactively ‘significant’ as the catalyst for achieving this. Debating whether they were a significant part of the China music scene during the short two or three years they were active is kind of irrelevant, I feel.

Well, there’s nothing to debate: they weren’t. They were a fairly unremarkable band who merited almost no attention from anyone outside of Beijing’s expat community.

So, I can see where Beijing musicians’ irritation comes from, with this storm of media attention Alan Paul is currently getting and the merits of his band suddenly becoming our No 1 chattering topic. (Ahem, it’s really our own fault for diving into the chatter! And it won’t last: he’s just in town for a week to plug the book.)

And I don’t think Alan has been doing himself any favours with the defensive/self-justificatory tone of a lot of his remarks.

I see where he’s coming from. He feels very pleased and surprised with how much he was able to do with the band, and how many different places they played. And he needs to talk that up as much as possible to promote the book. But it does grate that the book’s blurb talks of him becoming a “star” in China (inverted commas might have saved it! and perhaps a more obviously mocking follow-up like How did THAT happen??).

However, although I appreciate how this happens, it does start to seem rather ludicrous, desperate, pathetic, the way he enumerates all of his supposed achievements: “a bunch of shows at Star Live” (really? I don’t remember that. On their own, or just padding out a folkie bill??), on the radio once in Changsha (seems like they interview every visiting band that passes through down there), played to thousands at a festival once (wasn’t that a free festival?), played for the British Ambassador once (expat novelty act!), won a ‘band of the year’ accolade (hahahahahaha!!!), almost a house band at Jianghu (except NOT, in fact, and Jianghu is Beijing’s second smallest music club).

Alan has explained the provoking ‘Big In China’ title as a joking reference to Tom Waits’ jokey song ‘Big In Japan’. Big In Japan has long been the kind of empty boast that mediocre bands would console themselves with, particularly fading Metalheads of the Spinal Tap ilk. There are a number of reasons why such a claim does not usually command much respect, and is not taken very seriously: irrelevance (Japan may be a valuable market in some genres, but it remains very isolated from the mainstream of the worldwide music business), self-delusion (some bands may never even have played there, but convince themselves that they have a significant following because of a handful of fan e-mails), or outright dishonesty (musicians may feel they can make the claim unchallenged, because almost nobody knows anything about what’s really going on with music sales in Japan). That being said, it it still A BOAST of sorts. However trivial the claim, or however self-deprecating the intention behind it, it does sound as if you are sort of in earnest about enjoying some kind of importance or celebrity there.

In the context of the way Alan’s publishers are promoting the book, that goes tens times over for ‘Big In China’. It does sound as if he’s making out that the Woodie Alan Band were a major force on the scene here. And I can see why that gets under people’s skin.

I was inclined to defend Alan against his more scathing detractors like El Santo at first; but after reading what he’s said here, and the thread that’s developed from it, my sympathy wanes.

Yes, he is coming across as self-important and delusional. But let’s mellow out. It doesn’t matter a damn. It will all be forgotten in a few weeks.

Froog says:

I really didn’t want to come down on the side of the Alan-bashers too much. I think there’s been some overreaction here, and a lot of the criticism has been unnecessarily sharp (perhaps including my own).

I have no beef with Alan. I’ve spoken to him a few times after gigs, and he seems a really nice guy. I have no beef with the book. I expect it’s an honest and entertaining account of his experience here – with little or no aggrandizing about how successful his band were or what a transformative impact he had on the Chinese music scene. My beef is with the way the book is being presented.

Unfortunately, Alan is complicit in that, now that he’s on the promotional tour. When he ticks off all the remarkable accomplishments of the band, he may innocently believe that he’s just recalling what were for him the highlights of his experience with them. But in the context of his publisher touting him as being “a music star in China”, it does tend to read as if he’s, if not exactly bragging, at least seeking to partly justify that claim. (I fear the poor chap is just getting worn down by the carping and becoming overly defensive. When I mentioned in the thread on Ruby’s review of his Bookworm talk that I had particularly fond memories of Dave Loevinger’s farewell gig with them at The Stone Boat, he immediately came back with Well, we didn’t only play at The Stone Boat, you know.)

Alan may feel that’s it’s disloyal to his publisher (or potentially detrimental to his sales) to try to distance himself too much from that “star in China” puff. But from a PR point of view, I think it would be better for him to meet criticism like that he’s received here with something along the lines of: I kind of regret the choice of title now. It was meant to be a joke, but I see how a lot of people have taken to be in some way serious. And my publisher hasn’t helped by adding that blurb about me becoming a ‘star’. I never claimed that for myself. We were just a small band, and we weren’t together very long; but I was just really surprised and delighted with how much we developed together musically in that time and with some of the gigs we got to play.

zhang Si'an says:

Hi,

I want to apologize.

I think this thing has now gone too far and is starting to be ridiculous.

I wish good luck to Mr Alan Paul and his book (and possible movie) and i hope this will bring attention to the China underground music scene in a good, positive way, because it needs it

I hope to see Woodie again soon on the Beijing stages rocking his guitar.

I think everyone has a place in this world and i wish everyone peace, and love.

Zhang Si’an