Ok, the singer's name is "Alice Bowie"
The vocals sound like Cooper a little, but the music sounds like Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath or Deep Purple but wayyyyy funkier. And there's these triumphant horns all over it. So it kind of sounds like Zappa. But that might be by proxy since it's mid-70s novelty rock...
I would totally listen to whole album by a funky Black Sabbath with shimmering horns. Can xhuxk or skot reccommend something?
Cool trivia from Wikipedia:--Chong states that drums on the song are played by famed international percussionist Airto Moreira.
― jigglepanda.gif (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:19 (fifteen years ago) link
General "Earache My Eye" posting welcome in here as well.
Every time I've interviewed Rollins I've forgotten to ask him about the Rollins Band's cover version of this song (available on the live Insert Band Here: Live In Australia 1990 CD). It's pretty good.
― unperson, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:37 (fifteen years ago) link
I've always liked the Grand Funk callout on 'Let's Make A Dopedeal'
― BlackIronPrison, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:48 (fifteen years ago) link
2 live sampled this joint on "dirty nursery rhymes"
― and what, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:51 (fifteen years ago) link
I think that's why it was in my head...
― jigglepanda.gif (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:53 (fifteen years ago) link
Uriah Heep? just a guess there.
― Dr. Strange taking on Dormammu (Ioannis), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:53 (fifteen years ago) link
whatever Alice Bowie was, it sure invented the Butthole Surfers.
― Simmer 1 Tire Tread or Dead Crow for 15 minutes (Mackro Mackro), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:59 (fifteen years ago) link
I'M SO BLOODY RICH! I OWN APARTMENT BUILDINGS AND SHOPPING CENTERS!
― jigglepanda.gif (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 18:59 (fifteen years ago) link
wiki sez:
"Earache My Eye" is a comedy routine and song by Cheech and Chong which "features" Alice Bowie (one of Cheech Marin's characters).
― Dr. Strange taking on Dormammu (Ioannis), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 19:07 (fifteen years ago) link
Dr. Obvious
― jigglepanda.gif (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 19:13 (fifteen years ago) link
i know, i know... :^(
― Dr. Strange taking on Dormammu (Ioannis), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 20:19 (fifteen years ago) link
This song (along with the Spinal Tap album and Iron Maiden Killers) was key in my transition from being a young hard rock fan, then an actual heavy metal fan.
It's an amazing piece.
Soundgarden also recorded a cover version of this...
― Nate Carson, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 20:27 (fifteen years ago) link
And Korn.
― jigglepanda.gif (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 20:28 (fifteen years ago) link
But at least they got Cheech to sing on it
You're overthinking this. Spoofs of early Seventies hard rock in the mid-Seventies weren't particularly uncommon. At the time the Tubes shtick with Fee Waybill as Quay Lewd doing "White Punks On Dope" probably had higher name recognition. I recall taking my girlfriend to one show with her very disturbed by the rubber cock hanging out of Waybill's silver trunks.
Bill Nelson's BeBop Deluxe definitely took similar liberties with a single, Jet Silver and the Dolls of Venus. But it wasn't very good and was mostly confined to England. By the time he came to the US, he was always being compared to David Bowie's Ziggy character, which hurt him a little, think. Firt album had them looking like Goths, second like a harlequin escorted by two officeers of the Waffen SS, and after that -- suits. It was a joke, man, a joke!
By Welcome to My Nightmare Alice Cooper was more of a parody of himself than anything Cheech could do. Or the Tubes. There were dancing toothbrushes onstage, Vincent Price voiceover, and other stuff suitable for children. Come to think of it, he was probably a parody by the Billion Dollar Babies tour.
And, I'd say by On Your Feet Or On Your Knees, BOC were often delivering spoofs of themselves.
Uriah Heep, on the other hand, never appeared to have much of a sense of humor. Neither did Deep Purple.
― Gorge, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 20:35 (fifteen years ago) link
Ignoring the theatricality (and the misleading "Alice Bowie" moniker) I'd say it's pretty much a pretty good imitation of one of Zappa's mid-70s bands attempting a (typically misunderstood) parody of heavy metal. Edgar Winter did some similar stuff on a few of his records. Possibly Lucifer's Friend too, on one of their horn-drenched later LPs, but I haven't listened to them in so many years that I can't say for sure.
Anybody ever heard the Brecker Brothers' Heavy Metal Be-Bop album? I've always been curious, esp. since it's from 1978, when the term "heavy metal" was far less familiar.
― Myonga Vön Bontee, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 20:47 (fifteen years ago) link
Tubes might have gotten more press, but "Earache My Eye" was a Top 10 single.
xpost
― If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 20:47 (fifteen years ago) link
I always liked "Basketball Jones" better.
― ☑ (Pleasant Plains), Wednesday, 15 October 2008 20:49 (fifteen years ago) link
>>Tubes might have gotten more press, but "Earache My Eye" was a Top 10 >>single.
Having been there, I'd want to see the numbers and what the Top 10 actually was. "Earache My Eye" wasn't on any radio station I was in ear's length of. That said, it might have been one of those things that did well on Dr. Demento.
― Gorge, Thursday, 16 October 2008 05:19 (fifteen years ago) link
It got airplay in eastern Virginia, where I was. I was just old enough to buy the single.
― If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Thursday, 16 October 2008 05:40 (fifteen years ago) link
Then we agree to differing experience.
― Gorge, Thursday, 16 October 2008 05:54 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh I love this song. It has a punk simplicity and glam sort of attitude but with a heavy metal when heavy metal was funky thing going on that is just awesome. I would like to see chuck write a confusing paragraph on this song.
― filthy dylan, Thursday, 16 October 2008 06:11 (fifteen years ago) link
Doesn't Michael Jackson parody this on the "Black or White" video intro?
― Mark G, Thursday, 16 October 2008 06:51 (fifteen years ago) link
Also, I'm not up on Heavy Metal much, but that Led Zep song about "gonna make you dance gonna make you move" is quite similar
― Mark G, Thursday, 16 October 2008 06:52 (fifteen years ago) link
George, I remember hearing "Earache My Eye" - or at least the little skit that precedes it - TWICE in one day, on the car radio while travelling with my parents. I would have been about 6-7; radio station was almost certainly CKLW in Detroit/Windsor.
― Myonga Vön Bontee, Thursday, 16 October 2008 07:25 (fifteen years ago) link
I used to hear this on Radio Luxembourg's USA Chart rundown. Wasn't it number one? Or am I way out?
― Mark G, Thursday, 16 October 2008 08:21 (fifteen years ago) link
running this for a happy crowd tonight and whoa had never realized josh brolin in inherent vice is kinda doing stacy keach in this
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 21 April 2019 06:32 (four years ago) link
sorry to use an ilm thread. it's the only up-in-smoke-specific one i think
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 21 April 2019 06:34 (four years ago) link
or not rly i guess. anyway.
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 21 April 2019 06:38 (four years ago) link
an EARACHE my eye, how would you like a buttache?
― Fash Gordon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 15 December 2022 16:10 (one year ago) link
iirc in my schoolyard c. 1974-75, when we were communicating almost entirely in Cheech & Chong quotations, we knew and admired Alice Cooper but hadn't heard much Bowie except the Young Americans singles, so we would not have perceived his relevance to the sound of "Earache My Eye"
― Brad C., Thursday, 15 December 2022 16:35 (one year ago) link
You get a goddamn job before sundown, or I'm shipping you off to goddamn middle school with the goddamn Finkelstein shit kid.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 15 December 2022 17:17 (one year ago) link
*military school. Son of a bitch.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 15 December 2022 17:18 (one year ago) link
The song was released as a single in 1974 and reached #9 on the Billboard charts and #4 in Canada. In Chicago, it topped the charts at the powerful and influential Top 40 radio station WLS (AM), holding the #1 position for one week in September 1974, in the middle of an eleven-week run on the station's top 40 airplay charts. The song also reached the top spot for one week on the West Coast's biggest Top 40 radio station, Los Angeles' KHJ-AM. The B-side, "Turn That Thing Down", features the remainder of the musical track from the point of Marin's monologue about his wealth, without the actual dialogue, complete to its conclusion. It is possible to assemble the full-length version of the song by editing the two sections together. The version featured on Cheech & Chong's Greatest Hit fades out before reaching the skit as it appears on the single and the Wedding Album LP.
Once the song hit its peak on the charts, radio station managers and owners, especially the AM stations, pulled the song off the air following multiple complaints. Phone calls and angry letters came from parents, teachers, psychologists, clergy, principals, school administrators and counselors. Complaints stated that this song mostly appealed to junkies, dropouts, drug addicts and drunkards as well as students playing hooky from class, giving them a bad model for their behavior. Those who opposed the track threatened to boycott the stations unless the song was permanently withdrawn. "Oldies" station AM 1110 KRLA banned the track, and some radio managers threatened to fire any disc jockey who played it. Sponsors threatened to pull their advertisements unless the song was completely removed from playlists. The AM stations threatened to fire any radio station employees who accepted requests or discussed the track on the air.
― sleeve, Thursday, 15 December 2022 17:23 (one year ago) link
my father made us a Dr Demento compilation as kids, including this song but he edited out the part about 'turn around and bend over' 'WHAT YOU GONNA DO you pervert?', which I didn't realize was in there until I was an adult.
― Fash Gordon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 15 December 2022 17:41 (one year ago) link
Uriah Heep, on the other hand, never appeared to have much of a sense of humor.
Mick Box's contributions to the Metal Britannia documentary suggest otherwise.
― Gulf VAR Syndrome (Tom D.), Thursday, 15 December 2022 18:26 (one year ago) link
em knows whats up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56KYMMGudcU
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, 15 December 2022 18:35 (one year ago) link
Or "Framed"
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 15 December 2022 18:37 (one year ago) link
Purple have a winky, "it's all just in fun" lyrical approach a lot of the time, though no-one would call them comedians.
― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 15 December 2022 18:39 (one year ago) link
a friend ended up with a cassette of "cheech and chong's greatest hit" in high school and for some reason we both thought "earache" was a spanish word that we didn't know so we pronounced it "air-ah-che"
― joygoat, Thursday, 15 December 2022 18:43 (one year ago) link