"Earache My Eye..." - Cheech & Chong

Today on eBay I saw my first non-commercial 45 pressing for this song,
ever. A Monarch test pressing for "Earache My Eye!" Over the years, A&M
and their associated labels (Ode among them at that time), had serviced
our station with far more of these items than any other label did, back in
the late 70's/80's. (Columbia was probably #2). Although this 10/1974
chart peaker pre-dates my own pro radio career by a few years, it now
appears that this practice was in effect farther back than I knew. (The
"Sharpie" writing style on it even looks familiar to me. I bet the Monarch
plant receptionist with the best printing got stuck with the awful task of
re-purposing these copies as quasi-promo copies, and having to add the
record's essential details, in longhard, to each one. Hopefully we're not
talking a large number of copies here.)

The (5:17) listed 45 time was also written on this copy. I just bought it. It
was very expensive. But I would've kicked myself if I didn't go for it; I'll
surely never see another. Only one side of the record was pictured. I am
quite sure it will end up as a mono/stereo situation.

It looks like we'll soon be able to 99.99% eliminate the possible existence
a shorter DJ 45 v here, and finally write off anything shorter that was
heard as just an in-house station edit. Once I get it, I'll report back with
confirmation on details. (Although I do now know from a sticker on it that
"Earache..." was this station's #83 song, on their 1974 yearend Top 100!)

Interesting stuff, guys. I'd love to see the pic of the 3:15 side. Can you post it here, or include a link to the ebay item in question. I just looked at the "completed items" section for Earache My Eye and there were 100 45s! (And it seemed like the most recent one was from 4 days ago - and that didn't have any other pics.)

Before Jim gets his 45, anyone want to take guesses as to what exactly was edited out of the short side? I never truly liked the Alice Bowie section of the song, so my own personal copy edits out most of the song (and clocks in less than 3:15).

John (Yah Shure), thanks for pointing out the two other photos on
there!!!!! I know they often do appear. Don't know how I missed them,
other than I had my zoomed my screen to a larger setting (cutting the
small pics off at bottom.) And I was just so totally focused on sorting
through/buying one of these, "Make An Offer" (and someone else already
had)/Buy It Now combo listings. (I much prefer this to a straight auction.
Fair to everyone. If you're hoping for a bargain, take your shot. You may
get it, but there's risk. But if someone else is willing to pony up the full
price a merchant has in mind, then that gets it done, also.)

John, to your point about the (3:15) side of the TP perhaps not making it
out of the TP stage, you're much more familiar with pressing plant
activities than I. But in my own radio travels, I can never recall an instance
where we later got in an "official" promo 45 for a song that we'd first
gotten in as a TP (which happened often), where the official promo wasn't
an exact clone of the TP's audio contents. (Not for A&M, but for Columbia,
a TP would often be on vinyl, whereas the regular promo would be
styrene. For example, I remember we opted to play Boz Scaggs "Miss Sun"
from a vinyl TP, which didn't cue burn, instead of a styrene promo, which
quickly would.) My understanding was that a TP was done to make sure a
new stamper was A-OK, before it was used to press up a batch of singles,
be it promo or stock. (And where in the heck did all those "official"
Earache My Eye" promo copies go, anyway?)

I know now that this merchant is based out of San Diego. So that precious
little piece of vinyl cargo has a long trip ahead, to get up here to CT -
crossing fingers! Jeez! To appear to be finally solving one of our final Top
10 hit long/short promo v mysteries - for me, as a collector, it just
doesn't get much better than this!!!!!!   :)

Edited by jimct

I'll also be very interested to find out what's on that B-side, Jim. I noticed that the Alice Bowie portion runs slightly over 3 minutes. Could it be just the song and the first bit of the skit ("you ruined my record, man, I just bought it")??? Guess we'll find out soon!

EdisonLite wrote: Also, they were a comedy act, so it's also odd they'd edit out the comedy portion of the record. (The rock song portion wasn't supposed to be considered hilarious, was it?)

ISTR the version we played had the rock song considerably
shortened, though it was almost 40 years ago so memory may
be hazy. As I'd mentioned earlier, all our music was on
cart, so what we played could have been a house edit too.