LIVE  ROCK  CRITIC  54

  TO HELL WITH TRUMP AND THE TRUMPLIKE : BACK TO THE PAST:  

                  I am diverging from the posted purpose of this blog, to review and criticize.         

I remember attending a few garage band sessions in Kitsilano Vancouver in the late sixties. There were musicians who later ran the band Prism and the most successful Lavin's blues bands and many other Vancouver rock bands. I played harmonica through fairly large amps til I got my 1951 Fender Super Amp and added a Hammond reverb and a Fender Princeton with a huge air mounted bass speaker in it. I had begun to play guitar in 1966, so as to be able to play at parties. Later I began to play harmonica again, I had my uncle Connie's chromatic Hohners when I was four or five years old, he was dead, WW II. I had aspirations to write. I saw the musicians and the bands as far more interesting prospective writing material than ordinary life, I took up harmonica so as to be able to join and play with Rock and Roll bands and have something interesting to write about. Specialized musical skills are required to accomplish this goal. 

I was able to run around Vancouver and for a short time London England performing the original music and arrangements of Rock and Roll bands by approaching them before they performed demonstrating my harmonica skills and getting to perform with them.  No David old friend and worshiper of Tony and the really crappy Vaqueros, oops quiet now Lindon .  Dave Sundquist called harmonica performances  "playing along", he thought the locked in never varying repetition or rote learned riffs was the real skill in music. Like hell, it starts when Tony boy could not jam with the pros at my Surrey music room, I overheard the first group of musicians say, " How does  Lindon completely change those riffs to a new tune with harmonica?" Tony could never even " play along", he was one of the only jam session (Yale for one) hosts who could not fucking jam at all. Perhaps he learned how to by the time he hosted the Blue Grotto in Kamloops  but I never heard or saw that happen. ( I organized the Space Jams, 1972 to  1978,  at first just reprise jams, but eventually original music live writing sessions at the shack on the farm in Richmond BC, and another egg carton lined shack in Surrey. !974 I moved to Crescent Island, River Road, the last and best years. The all wood living room, dining room, drawing room and the atrium opened up with pocket doors, designed to hold balls, home of the Space Jam, Sundays at the Burr Mansion, now moved to Deas Island Park in Ladner BC.)

 The pros told me a lot, including:  Standing outside Long & a successful musician tells me as he gets  into his corvette convertible, "When you get to the recording studio you better be able to jam, the producer will change everything, even jump in with instruments he plays, your songs will change." It is not great to play the fluid sound bed of blues, almost nowhere to go.  I  replaced the likes of bass, drums, rhythm, with a robot Kurzweil midi filer. I created a multitude of Robot Choir back up fluid sound beds with, never make a mistake, rote musician box. The twin Kurzweils have less brain than a modern toaster, completely require someone else to be creative , original, but can they ever repeat the songs they are trained to play, like clockwork. ( Do you know that the Roland GR series synthesiser guitars I play, can send midi signals to the Midi Filer operated Kurzweils and modify aspects of their rote performance including adding drum rolls and comping variation.)

 Dave, not just playing along, I could exercise the same control as the Roland Synth Guitar has over Keyboards over any band I was playing with. Tony described this on one of the only occasions when I played with one of his bands,(The Lamplighter, Vancouver) as: Fighting for his life on stage as I latched on to the second guitar player vocalist and as the vocalist rhythm guitar described took the band off into outer space. I have never got to do that before he said, of course not under band leader Tony Robertson.

 I brought the band right back home to the root of the tune when I was done.  This is what I did, interesting, transporting, extemporization with soaring leads and smoothly delivered to the vocalist when done, right in the groove.   I was hoping to create a music career for myself that was original, exciting and made money. Always practiced , with perfectly functioning harmonicas and amplifiers, I was dressed in silk shirts and proper matching pants and shoes, I did an hour dance practice nearly every day. I could handle the big PA systems as well.  I was trying to show how well I could play and dance.  In London at the Hundred Club on Oxford St.,  up in Camden somewhere,  at The Roadhouse, at The Swan on Fullham Broadway, at The Wag in Soho.  I played with Irish Bands at Mollys , one of the Irish Rovers said, here in Victoria, You have played at Mollys! I argued politics there with an IRA spokesman as my friendly opponent, I thought blowing up tube stations was an irrational attack on the infrastructure of the proletariat. London Transport  at Charing Cross and Oxford Tube Station was blown up that week.  

 I  had to fly out of London, ex-wife and police created emergency. Charlie Watts had invited me to come and play with his jazz band at the Jazz Club in London,  yeah, sure, play along.   

 

How did I disappear from the music scene, I flew back to BC because I was phoned in England, your ex-wife has RCMP, CRD animal control,  Bailiffs and the crazy cop Officer Mohammed at your house trying to seize it and take the animals away. I am all over the internet with blogs and cartoons about this. The Police, bailiffs and sheriffs were driven off by a couple of Pender Island girls. I have to pay taxes to support all of those parasites, but when it comes to my support requirements the authorities criminally hamper me.  (CC Canada) RCMP contacted police in several cities as revenge! US immigration was told that I was a suspicious and dangerous un-convicted criminal, Collard must be charged. ( Yes, so they can criminally forensically psychiatric hold me for two months and seize my house, sell off my musical equipment . They held me five days once, never guilty but have to be stopped.) The Police are so ridiculous: One of them said as they raided my rural home, what do you do, you just go crazy and playÉ.Then that becomes crazy to them and they start hunting you everywhere.   I would collapse and throw up from fear of being jailed as I attempted to leave here,  I stopped driving to Victoria or Vancouver, certainly did not leave the country again, I have stayed alone on my rural acreage alone just about ever since. 

My latest efforts are on Youtube. There are a couple of pages of how to access my work, Lindon Collard.com gets my website up. The accessing of video by phone has placed a data charge in the way of free viewing, wi-fi can be free, computers access material for no additional cost. Youtube now links material so that one cannot click on a video and be in the channel exclusively, this has interfered with multiple access when in a channel, I will reconfigure my website if possible so all videos in a channel can be directly accessed, I hope.