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Disc: $10.00 The Band of Desperate Men--Britt Dean, Doug "Doc" Oster, and me as Clay Spurs perform my country, blues and rock "n" roll tunes with a hand from Allison Adams. Ai Yihou, the only Mandarin Pop doo-wop song in captivity is caught live at Eddie's attic.
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Download: $0.99 When the blues got your number, it's guaranteed they gonna call; blues don't need no phone book, they read the writing on the wall.
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Download: $0.99 . . .I will sing to you an endless song, and if you will follow me along I will love you with a love so long
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Download: $0.99 The only Mandarin Pop doo-wop song in captivity performed live at Atlanta's premier music club
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HarmonyHarmony (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 Red Campbell takes your lines--tenor to my baritone; and if you closed your eyes, you might never know. But I get confused: if it's not you then how can I be me? Still I move my mouth and the sords come out in Harmony. . . .
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Panty HosePanty Hose (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 A Florida country boy falls for the woman in the ad for panty hose that's been comin' over his TV
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Let Go of My HandLet Go of My Hand (multimedia download)
Download: $0.79 A song Britt wrote for his children, but it's about all of us
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Download: $0.99 You keep movin' on 'cause no one knows your mind, but tell me why you would throw away my offer to stay with a man who wants to try. . . .
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Desperate MenDesperate Men (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 Theme song for the Band of Desperate Men
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PeacePeace (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 Old Enough to Know Better--Allison Adams, Britt Dean, Doug Oster, and me--sing our hope, our wish, our prayer. We refuse to go where we're led--tell all rulers we choose instead to live in peace.
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Listen Miz' TwitchellListen Miz' Twitchell (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 Old Enough to Know Better--Allison Adams, Britt Dean, Doug Oster, and myself--sing about Miz' Twitchell and the gals at the Baptist Womens Tea who are sick and tired of all this namby-pamby stuff on the radio. The kids are out of hand, so we got ourselves a band. And you can dance to the music we play.
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Ai Yihou LiveAi Yihou Live (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 Old Enough to Know Better performs Ai Yihou, one of my mandarin pop songs, in this live track. The quartet of Allison Adams, Britt Dean, Doug Oster and yours truly sings a wide range of doo wop, bluegrass, old English, and rock 'n' roll. But this tune gets the most requests.
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Disc: $10.00 Larry Schulz—Shu Lairui—is a veteran rocker and devotee of Chinese poetry and philosophy. His Mandarin Pop songs combine tunes built around the tones of Mandarin Chinese and English rhymes with lyrics that come out of poems and folk songs, life and love. The 11 CD tracks include "MamaHuHu," Duibuqi, I'm Sorry," "Ai Yihou, After Love," and all the other Mandarin Pop tunes available individually on lulu.com and shown with the same cover.
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Print: $14.91 Download: $3.47 Historian David Sutter spends his time buried in a library of ancient I Ching tomes until the day he spirits away a curious manuscript and gets romantically involved with a ghost. Clues from the book and the ghost lead him into the maelstrom of the Cultural Revolution in search of the lost cauldron of Yu, whose power can create a new dynasty and bring down Chairman Mao’s communist regime. But the Chairman will not go down without a fight, and he wants the cauldron, too. So the haunted scholar becomes a demon warrior at the Gate of Ghosts.
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Xin JingXin Jing (multimedia download)
Download: FREE For many years, I've chanted the "Xin Jing, Heart Sutra" and learned much from its few lines. In Taiwan, I often got up early and listened to the nuns at their matins in a nearby temple. Each one intones her own line (occasionally covering a yawn with her prayer book) paced by a drum, “wooden fish,” and tiny cymbal. And every once in a while they all come together in a few moments of splendid harmony before drifting back into parallel monotones. I've taken their harmony and drum pattern and added bass and overdrive electric guitar to my vocals.  Download for Free |
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Download: $0.99 The tragic story of Tang Minghuang and Yang Guifei is the stuff of a bittersweet Scotch-Irish ballad. I translated Bo Juyi's famous lyric "The Song of Everlasting Regret, Chang Hen Ge" to have the same kind of hypnotic multi-verse structure as “Barbara Allen” or “Down by the Banks of the Ohio,” and I used the lovers' vow of eternal inseparability as the chorus. In the original, a Daoist hermit goes in search of the lady's soul. I've made him a poet (think Li Bo who was a favorite at court until he insulted the emperor’s main lady) to fit another movie idea.
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Download: $0.99 "Wine, Pour Out a Fantasy" starts with Li Bo's poem about falling asleep drunk, waking to find himself covered with fallen petals, walking the moon’s reflection along the riverbank, and feeling totally alone. “The birds have returned to roost, and there aren’t many people about, either.” Then I shift to a rock chorus that is the way I'd sing about his celebration of drunkenness in an American night club. At 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, he’d find a handful of hearty partyers ready to join in: “Sing me to sleep and dance in my dreams.”
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Can Do Neng ZuoCan Do Neng Zuo (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 "Can Do" is the work song sung by the building gangs in the no doubt never-to-be-made movie "The Great Wall of China." Of course, there weren't many happy workers at Qin Shihuangdi's Great Wall. But in the movies, history is irrelevant, and everything works out OK—even for slave laborers.
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Download: $0.99 When I lived in Taiwan, my landlord was the gu zheng dulcimer master and guitarist Su Chao-hsing. We performed together around the island, and he taught me the Taiwanese folk song (taken from a Japanese folk song) "Qingren zaijian." I love the tune and the funky way it drops a measure at the end of the verse. I've translated it "My love, when will I see you again?" and I've also added a chorus based on a line from Li Bo that carries the theme back into the poetic tradition of parting at the river's edge and wondering when, if ever, our paths will cross once more.
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MaMaHuHuMaMaHuHu (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 "Mama Huhu" is my favorite Chinese phrase. “Horse-horse tiger-tiger" means "so-so" or "It's OK, but it could be better." I used the horse and tiger in their role as Chinese horoscope signs: the fortune teller said our signs matched up and so did the placemat in the Chinese restaurant (where we Americans delight in figuring out the animal for the year we were born). And the fortune cookie, too. But our relationship turned out mama huhu, a pain in the pigu. Life is a zoo.
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So Near, Yet So FarSo Near, Yet So Far (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 The melody for "You Jin You Yaoyuan" comes from a traditional gu zheng dulcimer piece. I like the way it works through a distorted Stratocaster. I don't think there's an exact Chinese equivalent for the English "so near, yet so far away," so I made one up for the title line. In the Chinese chorus, the "weaving maid, zhih nu" and the "cowherd, niu lang" are two lovers--two stars, actually—who are fated to gaze at each other across the narrow band of the Milky Way. So also am I forced to look over the little stream that separates us—a driftwood soul who takes small consolation from the candle you light in your lonely window.
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Look Up, My LoveLook Up, My Love (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 A couple of years ago a Hollywood producer (for real) asked me to write a scenario on the building of the Great Wall of China. Naturally, I wanted the movie to have a signature song. "Look up, my love; see the moon, know I'm watching it too" is an idea from the Tang poet DuFu, but I've used Li Bo's best known poem as a counterpoint to my English lyrics. The movie was never made, of course. But it did lead to my first "Mandarin Pop" tune.
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After Love Ai YiHouAfter Love Ai YiHou (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 "After Love," I'm confident, is the first Chinese a cappella doo-wop song. I wrote it some time ago and translated it for this track. Picture a quartet of Chinese guys with D.A. haircuts snapping their fingers on a street corner in Philadelphia circa 1958. “Ai yihou,/ Ai yihou,/ Xianzai yidian ai yihou. . . ./ Wooo-hoo.”
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Download: $0.99 Laozi's Dao de Jing changed my life. I read it in college, and it was the first book that said what I really believed. "Do nothing and nothing will be left undone." “The further you go, the less you know.” “One who speaks does not know; one who knows does not speak.” Those are reggae thoughts, too. So here's Laozi in a reggae setting.
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DuiBuQi I'm SorryDuiBuQi I'm Sorry (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 I saw an article in the newspaper about how difficult it seems to be for Chinese politicians to say "I'm sorry." It's hard for all of us. But it works, and maybe this song will help someone get the words out.
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MaMaHuHuMaMaHuHu (multimedia download)
Download: $0.99 "Mama Huhu" is my favorite Chinese phrase. “Horse-horse tiger-tiger" means "so-so" or "It's OK, but it could be better." I used the horse and tiger in their role as Chinese horoscope signs: the fortune teller said our signs matched up and so did the placemat in the Chinese restaurant (where we Americans delight in figuring out the animal for the year we were born). And the fortune cookie, too. But our relationship turned out mama huhu, a pain in the pigu. Life is a zoo.
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A Tiny Trace of YouA Tiny Trace of You (multimedia download)
Download: FREE read the story that goes with "A Tiny Trace" at http://www.webook.com/shortstory.aspx?p=e28b48fed0564d8c9e2d86848f22d2fb&sit=c61b5ac23a1c42ad86f90782c523c37d Download for Free |
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