HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN (or How I Kicked Punk)

a music and spoken word performance by Alvin Eng

Through spoken word and songs, Alvin Eng’s acoustic punk raconteur work, HERE COMES JOHNNY YEN AGAIN (or How I Kicked Punk), explores the impact of opium and the Opium Wars on the Chinese Diaspora as well as NYC’s “heroin chic” punk/counterculture. The exploration is through the dual prisms of William S. Burroughs’ character, “Johnny Yen”––immortalized in Iggy & Bowie’s ”Lust For Life”––and his own Grandfather’s opium overdose on the streets of NYC’s Chinatown.