#72: Earache My Eye by Cheech & Chong
Peak Month: October 1974
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #9
Peak Position on Cashbox Top 100 Singles chart ~ #4
YouTube.com: “Earache My Eye”
Lyrics: “Earache My Eye”
Spoken word skit: “Earache My Eye”
Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin was born in 1946 in Los Angeles. His nickname “Cheech” is short for chicharron (which is a dish generally featuring fried pork belly, or fried pork rind). In a 2017 NPR interview, Marin attributed the nickname to his uncle: “I came home from the hospital, I was like a couple of days old or something, my uncle came over and he looked in the crib and he said [in Spanish], ‘Ay, parece un chicharrón.’ Looks like a little chicharrón, you know?” Cheech moved to Vancouver, BC, in September 1967, to avoid being drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Thomas B. Kin Chong was born in 1938 in Edmonton, Alberta. Growing up in Calgary, Chong stated in an interview, “when I was 16 but probably just before they were going to throw me out anyway.” He played guitar to make money. “I discovered that music could get you laid, even if you were a scrawny, long-haired, geeky-looking guy like me.”