Earache My Eye
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Earache My Eye is a comedy routine and song by Cheech and Chong which "features" Alice Bowie (one of Cheech Marin's characters). It first appeared on Cheech & Chong's Wedding Album (1974) and later on the greatest hits collections Cheech & Chong's Greatest Hit (1981), and Where There's Smoke There's Cheech & Chong, a double-CD anthology from 2002.
Cheech And Chong also lip sync to the recording (with Chong behind the drum kit instead of guitar, which he played on the original recording) in their first movie Up in Smoke (1978). This piece is considered to be one of the greatest novelty audio pieces of all time, and has been featured repeatedly on the Doctor Demento radio program.
"Earache My Eye" consists of a comedy skit intro, followed by the song. In the opening skit, Tommy Chong plays a punk high school student with an attitude. At the beginning of the piece he's snoring. We hear an alarm clock, and then Chong wakes up noisily. He starts up a heavy metal record, with Cheech Marin singing the lyrics as if he were an Alice Cooper clone. His dad (also played by Cheech), then barges into the room, scratches the record, and orders his son to get dressed and go to school. The son complains about an earache, prompting Dad to exclaim, "Earache my eye, how would you like a butt-ache?" He then gets even snottier, provoking Dad to swat him with a belt. When he ridicules the spanking as painless, Dad then whips him into sniveling, outward compliance, which lasts until Dad leaves the room, and he puts the record back on.
The song was also released as a single in 1974, containing the musical portion of the song as the B-side. The single version appears on Cheech & Chong's Greatest Hit.
[edit] Influence
The musical portion of "Earache My Eye" has been covered by many bands, ranging in styles from heavy metal to rap. The comedy-metal group Scatterbrain covered the song on their album "Here Comes Trouble". KoRn released the song as a hidden track at the end of "My Gift To You" from their 1998 album Follow the Leader, using a clip of Cheech Marin singing the song's riff in the movie Up In Smoke.
Alternative rockers Rollins Band and Soundgarden both covered the song, and the rap group 2 Live Crew used a sample from the song on their 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be. The Canadian power trio Rush have used the song's signature riff live, to end "The Big Money", (whose album version ends with a fade) on the live album A Show of Hands. Toronto's instro-sludge kings Electric Magma have also used the song's main riff in the song titled "The Chong Song" which appears on the 2007 release titled "Coconut Bangers Ball".
Gov't Mule covered the song at the Vic Theatre in Chicago, Illinois on April 15, 2000 with Brodie Hutchinson, soundman, performing the spoken word portion and this is available as a Classic Muletracks.
