Two Gallants (band) the pair decided to just make music together, plugging Stephens' guitar into Vogel's bass amp in order to play bass lines with melodies. The name Two Gallants was chosen after a short story of the same name from James Joyce's "Dubliners", as both were reading the book at the time and the name "seemed obvious". With Stephens on guitar, harmonica, and lead vocals and Vogel on drums and vocals, Two Gallants began playing house shows around the Bay area and busking outside BART subway stations, particularly the stop at 16th and Mission. Two Gallants released their debut album, "The Throes",
The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants part were largely taken from literary and oral traditions and as such contain supernatural materials (what "Bamboo-Inquiring Master", possibly Shi Yukun himself, described as "the occasional strange and bizarre event"). In comparison, the second part exclusively represents Shi's creative genius and is devoid of superstition. The 1879 novel does not complete by the 120th and final chapter, instead, in the final page the readers are referred to a sequel book titled "The Five Younger Gallants" (小五義), which was said to be "close to a hundred chapters". In 1890, a novel with that title was published by another Beijing publisher, Wenguang