Throwback Thursday Tales: For about 9 years, starting in about 1986, I was the keyboard player in the Paul Janz Band. Paul was (is) a great songwriter and wonderful singer. We did several albums and had a few gold records in Canada, which would have meant that they achieved Balsa Wood status in the US. We toured all across Canada a few times, and it was a great experience getting a leg up on the next level of this thing called show business. Recording albums in LA, tour buses, the whole shebang. Good times. We were part of a TV special for the CBC in 1987 that was filmed at the old Expo Theatre, a few months before it was torn down. Co-hosting the special was Fred Latremouille (sp?), a stalwart Vancouver broadcaster, and none other than Tommy Chong. There was a script, but Tommy chose to largely ignore it and improvise, and as rehearsals went on, poor Fred was becoming visibly exasperated, as Tommy would never say the same line twice . Tommy just smiled and plowed onwards... The Expo Theatre had a series of small trailers that were used as dressing rooms, and as the cast of this TV special was large, and dressing rooms were at a premium, I was shocked and delighted to find myself sharing a dressing room with none other than Tommy Chong. Now in my younger and stupider days, I was known to be a fan of certain herbal remedies, and on that day I just happen to be in possession of a very large brown paper bag of leafy shake form another friend of mine who was, shall we say, horticulturally inclined. It was very humble to say the least. Nonetheless, I seized the opportunity, cleared my throat, and said Uh... excuse me Tommy, Ive been a big fan of yours for years, and I would love the opportunity to do a number with you. He replied with his trademark Far out, man!, and enthusiastically went to work rolling a Louisville Slugger sized number that took 5 Zig Zag papers to construct. Im not exaggerating. He lit it up, and took a few good hauls off this monster, and very generously proclaimed Not bad, man.... Now keep in mind that this was happening in a very small trailer. After a few back and forths, a thick cloud hung in the air, and after 5 minutes, you could barely see the far wall of the trailer. I was living in a Cheech and Chong movie! By now, the monster baseball bat was about half done. Suddenly, alarms started to go off, and I panicked! We had set off the smoke alarm. I locked the door to our dressing room. Security guards were running around outside trying to find the source of the alarm. Tommy could give a shit about all the mayhem, and sat back in his chair, casually smoking. Then the guards started pounding on our door, yelling to see if everything was OK. I thought to myself okay, my career is over as of now.... I had no idea what to do. I looked over at Tommy with a questioning look. He took a huge toke, slowly exhaled another massive cloud, and calmly uttered Tell the security guards if they wanna come in, they gotta bring their own dope, man.... He kept on smoking. We never did let the guards in. They eventually went away...
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 17:01:53 +0000
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