Last Updated on December 23, 2025 by Black Sunshine Media
Of the four books in the Lunar New Years series, Year of the Dragon & Everything After: Book 4 (2025) was the hardest to write, and it’s my least favorite of the series, for several intersecting reasons. As an author, you can’t think of books like children. It’s normal to like one more than the other. I don’t feel bad about it.
Year of the Dragon & Everything After covers a lot of unpleasant emotional and psychological ground, so it’s the only book I didn’t want to write, and, for that reason, it’s the hardest (for me) to read. I don’t dislike the book, but I think you gotta be careful not to fall in love with your ideas—or get too bent out of shape when they’re not great.
Much of Book 4 is about those not-so-great ideas, and Dragon might not be my favorite, but it’s probably the funniest of the series. Decisions + time = consequences.
Never Did Get the Blues
Year of the Dragon is also the most musical book of the series. The other books have passages or sections that mention music, but Dragon is the only book with a chapter (“Never Did Get the Blues”) dedicated to music (and my experience as a musician).
- Year of the Rat talks about my previous life as a failed musician and briefly mentions some of the music I heard during my first year in Taiwan.
- Years of the Ox & Tiger has an important scene from “Beer and Loathing on the Asian Riviera” that’s instigated by music (and vice versa).
- Year of the Rabbit: Music plays a small but pivotal role in “Ghost Month”.
Excerpt from Year of the Dragon & Everything After, Chapter 11 (“Never Did Get the Blues”)
Music was the most important thing in my life until I turned 40, not coincidentally, when I moved to Taiwan. My love of music didn’t disappear; it went into remission while I focused on traveling, writing, and reinventing myself as a serious person. That’s not to say musicians aren’t serious people, but rock star is a laughable aspiration when you’re 36 and playing original indie rock to the bartender on a Tuesday night in yet another shithole nightclub. At some point, I had to accept that music would henceforth be a hobby, not a career. In other words, start taking things seriously.
Forgetting a previous life as a failed musician wasn’t difficult, but keeping it in the past proved a challenge, especially when half the people I met in Taipei were musicians of some variety. For the first three years, I didn’t tell anybody that I played music until I met Ken Sloan. And even then, I demurred my involvement, saying, “I can play guitar, keep a beat on drums, and bang out a sloppy version of ‘Let It Be’ on piano.” To everybody else, I was a writer and had always been a writer. Period.
“Old People Music”
I got reinvolved in making music after my son was born in early 2012, with a paternal sense of excitement about sharing music. The soundtrack of our lives became very important. A chance to pass something on to him, or at least create some core childhood memories attached to music.
We listened to mostly Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles during the boy’s first year. My wife called it “old people music.” During my son’s second year, he got into the Wiggles and “Gangnam Style” by Psy, so I started playing more adventurous music at home. Next thing I knew, the kid loved One Direction, which dominated our lives for roughly a year.
The Danger of Time to Kill
Commuting between Taipei and Manila locked me into opposite but similar worlds, and I would step from one to the other without thinking too much about it. Family > Work > Family. I didn’t want to think about it. And so, getting back into music was an intentional distraction from the amount of time I had to kill in Taipei, i.e., when I wasn’t working.
Time was a reluctant luxury. I routinely had 50 nights to kill before taking off for Manila. That much time is dangerous, and I was already flirting with disaster, so I spent countless hours in my suite, getting high, drinking wine, playing guitar, writing and recording songs, and learning fun stuff to play. It kept me out of trouble, and for many years, I had no desire to perform live again.
As my son got older, my wife asked what I would tell him about my music career, and I said, “I dunno. How about the truth?” And then, of course, as the mind wanders, I started thinking, “Well, maybe it would be nice for him to see me play.”
The Soundtrack in Context
You gotta get the full story from the book, but the soundtrack represents what a typical evening sounded like in my earbuds when I was walking around Taipei at night, drinking convenience store beers, and killing time—specifically between 2017 and ’18.
In Spring 2017, a new bar and music venue (also known as a “live house”) opened in Zhongshan District. I got a Wednesday-night residency playing solo acoustic. It was super chill, and I mostly played what I wanted.
Now and again, I’d invite some of my friends from the music scene to do a spotlight vocal set, but it was mostly me doing cover songs for an hour and a half.
Let’s do a little math here. Thirty-seven shows, two sets per night, roughly 10–12 songs per set, 24 songs per night.
The Book of Jams
Before taking the gig, I had a collection of 150 cover-song “cheat sheets” in my fakebook. If I had time, I practiced the upcoming set, but a lot of times, I went in there blind, as I’ve never played “Make Me Smile” by Chicago, but I drew up a cheat sheet on Wednesday afternoon and put it on the set list and added it to the Book of Jams.
Sadly, I lost the physical copy of The Book of Jams, but I’ve got all the cheat sheets on my hard drive and an incomplete index.
Sometimes I had a “tribute theme” for the evening, for example, only doing Simon & Garfunkel songs. I’d decide Tuesday afternoon what new jams to play, print out the cheat sheets, and do ‘em live and unrehearsed. Even though some nights I was playing to three people, it was exciting and challenging to go up there with just a guitar and do high-speed fly-bys of all these great songs without a ton of preparation. Predictably, I had some hits and some misses.
I covered A-sides and B-sides from INXS, Carly Simon, 10cc, Cheap Trick (often), Nilsson, Supertramp, The Kinks, Bob Seger, ELO, Christina Aguilera, Joe Jackson, Van Halen, Adam & the Ants, The Pretenders, Billy Joel, Madonna, Styx, Velvet Underground, Crystal Gayle, Prince, Hall & Oates, Whitesnake, Jane’s Addiction, Big Star, Genesis, Roxy Music, Generation X, et al.
And I took requests (with one exception, NO Frank Sinatra).
Keeping an audience entertained as one guy who can’t sing very well but plays decent guitar is one of the hardest things to do in the entertainment industry. The Wednesday night crowd at the live house was erratic and unpredictable. I realized early on that the only way to hook them was to play something familiar.
Show’s Over
The residency ended in December 2017, and I had something of a meltdown or a breakthrough, depending on how you view it. I had to get out of there, so I dropped out of sight and stayed home.
I stopped hanging around the bars and attending social events or musical performances, speaking only to my weed dealer and the people in proximity to work and home. After work, I’d have dinner and play or listen to music until 9:00 p.m. I’d start walking around the neighborhood, listening to music on earbuds, drinking convenience store beers, and sneaking one-hits in the shadows. For nearly a year, I didn’t have a conversation with anybody except my co-workers and the girls who worked at the coffee shop.
During those late-night walkabouts in Taipei, I listened to YouTube playlists that I created earlier in the day at work. A new setlist every day, but many songs appeared in multiple playlists. I went through so many phases and genres, like a week of listening to nothing but the first three AC/DC albums and Japanese noise rock. One week, I’d geek out on a post-metal progressive instrumental band called Russian Circles. The next week, it was Hall & Oates.
Intermittent isolation is easy to manage in a big city where nobody really gives a fuck if you live or die.
Year of the Dragon & Everything After Original Narrative Soundtrack
Songs in boldface were performed at least once during my Wednesday night residency.
| Song | Artist | Album |
| “Theme” | Moondog | Moondog (1969) |
| “Let’s Go Away For Awhile” | Beach Boys | Pet Sounds (1966) |
| “X-French Tee Shirt” | Shudder to Think | Pony Express Record (1994) |
| “Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)” | Van Halen | Diver Down (1982) |
| “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” | Crystal Gayle | We Must Believe in Magic (1977) |
| “Never Been Any Reason” | Head East | Flat as a Pancake (1975) |
| “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” | Prince | Sign O’ The Times (1987) |
| “Yes” | Manic Street Preachers | The Holy Bible (1994) |
| “Naxalite” | Asian Dub Foundation | Rafi’s Revenge (1998) |
| “Out in the Street” | The Who | My Generation (1965) |
| “God Hates a Coward” | Tomahawk | Tomahawk (2001) |
| “Mannish Boy” | Muddy Waters | King of the Electric Blues (1977) |
| “You’re More Beautiful Than a Rose” | Akira Fuse | Survival: Ai Aru Kagiri Kimi wa Utsukushī (1979) |
| “Point of Know Return” | Kansas | Point of Know Return (1977) |
| “I Won’t Stand in Your Way” | Stray Cats | Rant N’ Rave with the Stray Cats (1983) |
| “Rich Girl” | Hall & Oates | Bigger Than Both of Us (1976) |
| “Up on the Sun” | Meat Puppets | Up on the Sun (1985) |
| “Faith” | George Michael | Faith (1987) |
| “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” | The Allman Brothers | Eat a Peach (1972) |
| “Prehistoric Dog” | Red Fang | Red Fang (2009) |
| “Retrovertigo” | Mr. Bungle | California (1999) |
| “Jesus Is The Answer” | Wesley Willis Fiasco | Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (1995) |
| “Losers, Boozers, & Heroes” | fIREHOSE | Flyin’ the Flannel (1991) |
| “Could This Be Magic” | Van Halen | Women and Children First (1980) |
Selected Highlights
Some extemporaneous musings about the songs and how they wound up on the soundtrack.
“Theme” by Moondog
If you’ve seen The Big Lebowski (1998), you’ve already heard Moondog, one of the greatest outsider artists. The Coen Brothers used his compositions, including “Theme” and “Stamping Ground” (from his 1969 self-titled album).
For several years, I only listened to Moondog during my nighttime solo walkabouts.
“Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)” by Van Halen
One of the few songs in my repertoire that I could play without a cheat sheet, so I opened or closed with it many times.
“Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” by Crystal Gayle
One night, I did a country rock theme for some friends who requested it, but never showed up, so it was just me, the bartender, and his wife for the whole fuckin’ night. We agreed that the best song of the set was “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” by Crystal Gayle.
“The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” by Prince
A solid one out of three gigs, nobody would show up, like, not one person walked through the door between 8:00 and 10:00 pm. As I said, Wednesdays were so fuckin’ unpredictable. It really depended on what was happening around town. There were a few nights when the bartender and I opened and closed the joint together, just the two of us all night!
I would play “Dorothy Parker” when it was just me, the bartender, and his wife, and segue into “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon, so they always thought it was just a really long version of the latter.
“Naxalite” by Asian Dub Foundation
In Year of the Dragon, at the end of Chapter 3, “Where You Stumble, There Lies Your Treasure”, I got a ride home from Hualien with my buddy Hamilton. The main highway tunnel through the mountains to Taipei was closed, so we had to drive all the way around the coast. Hamilton played nothing but Asian Dub Foundation, including Rafi’s Revenge, on the car stereo throughout the four-hour trip. By the time we got home, I had a case of Stockholm Syndrome.
“You’re More Beautiful Than a Rose” by Akira Fuse
I played guitar for a Japanese vocal group, and this was my favorite Japanese song in our repertoire.
“Kimi wa Bara yori Utsukushī” (Japanese: 君は薔薇より美しい; lit. ’You’re More Beautiful Than a Rose’) is by Japanese singer Akira Fuse from his ninth studio album, Survival: Ai Aru Kagiri Kimi wa Utsukushī (1979). A light pop toe-tapper, it’s about a man who reunites with a woman who has blossomed to be more beautiful than a rose.
“Point of Know Return” by Kansas
I was just talking about Kansas in Get Their Greatest Hits. I went down a K-hole on this band. They have three good songs. This is one of them.
“I Won’t Stand in Your Way” by Stray Cats
Some nights, nobody in the bar spoke English except me, the bartender, and his wife. A group of travelers from Japan steamrolled into the bar one night, just a minute before my second set. They were all sharply dressed, and a couple of dudes had a rockabilly vibe.
The bartender said, as a joke, “Play some Stray Cats!” and I already had this one dialed in. I wound up doing “Stray Cat Strut”, “Rock This Town”, and “Runaway Boys”, too. After the set, one of the Japanese ladies saw me at the bar and said, “Stray Cat! So good-ah!”
“Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates
Man, I never stopped listening to Hall & Oates. They’ve always been cool in my book. I’d play “Rich Girl” whenever the audience started to lose interest, and I swear to God, it always brought them back.
“Prehistoric Dog” by Red Fang
I saw the video and heard the song at the same time, and I fell in love with this stoner rock band from Portland.
