Cheech & Chong aim to "Get it Legal" at the Michigan Theater
“Dave?.....Dave’s not here!”
“No, man, I’M Dave! I’ve got the stuff! Open up!”
“Dave?.....Dave’s not here!”
That was my favorite. Well, it was 1 of my Cheech & Chong favorites, back in the day, when I was a mere teen.
Cheech Marin, left, and Tommy Chong
My other fave was the mock radio-public-service announcement, when Tommy Chong’s stoner character, instead of sticking to his script, just became unhinged and tore into everyone who was opposed to legalizing pot, blurting “Well, you’re all f-----! ”
Everyone has their own favorites — even 30-somethings who hadn’t even been born yet in the early 1970s, when Richard “Cheech” Marin & Tommy Chong first staked their claim to being the high priests of stoner comedy.
At the time, they pretty much had the market cornered. In the early ‘70s, no one else was so focusing on routines mostly based on 2 guys being in such a ganja-induced stupor that their obtuse musings turned out to be so hilarious — at least, to some people. And, of course, those zoned-out musings were even more hilarious to listeners who had just smoked a big spliff themselves before listening to the duo.
Cheech & Chong’s act ran its course in the mid-‘80s, after 9 albums and 8 movies (which, to be honest, became increasingly more predictable and less funny). The 2 went their separate ways, with Chong taking a recurring role on “That '70s Show,” while Marin turned up in TV shows like “Nash Bridges” and the movie “Tin Cup”.
But they reunited in 2008-’09 — working together again for the 1st time in over 25 years — for their “Light Up America” tour, where they mostly reprised their old bits. That tour did big business, so they’ve hooked up again for the “Get it Legal” tour, which comes to the Michigan Theater on Saturday, April 3 — the first Saturday in April, traditionally the date of the marijuana-legalization rally "Hash Bash" on the University of Michigan Diag.
“We had an amazing time last year reconnecting with each other and our fans in a way that felt like it was part of our DNA, we were meant to be together,” said Marin in the prepared statement announcing the current tour.
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On this tour, added Chong “we are looking forward to doing more classic material that people haven’t seen for years and years, performing more of our songs and introducing some new bits. We’ve had material brewing separately for the past 25 years.”
Naming the tour “Get it Legal” is the duo’s response to the renewed attention being paid to marijuana laws, in the hopes of raising awareness on the topic. For the tour, they’ve even partnered with the Marijuana Policy Project, a marijuana policy reform group. It’s their way of commingling comedy and activism — to bring attention to what they think is genuine damage being caused to peoples’ lives by the current marijuana laws — which have often resulted in shockingly long prison sentences for mere possession charges.
“Want to make a change? Come to a Cheech and Chong show,” added Chong, who was arrested and actually did a 9-month prison sentence in 2004 just for selling bongs. “It’s time to get it legal, before it’s too late.”
One of the shows from the ’09 leg of the “Light Up America” tour — a date in San Antonio — was filmed by the Weinstein Company and will be released on April 20 as “Cheech & Chong’s Hey Watch This.”
Watch the "Hey Watch This" trailer:
But back to their humor. The early ‘70s, with the counter-culture stoking on all cylinders — which of course included the ingestion of copious amounts of consciousness-altering substances — really did create the perfect, smoking cauldron for brewing up Cheech & Chong’s heavy-lidded riffs on drug culture.
Many of their bits got heavy airplay on rock radio during that era, but many others leaned fairly heavily on profanity or sexual references for their punch lines. So, more Cheech & Chong fans of the period probably listened to the duo’s cannabis-stoked humor via 8-track players than on the radio.
In addition to the ones cited previously, some of their more popular bits — and the most-frequently recited by fans — were “Ralph & Herbie,” “Earache My Eye,” “Let’s Make a Dope Deal” “Trippin’ in Court,” “Sister Mary Elephant,” “Blind Melon Chitlin” and “Basketball Jones.”
Listen to Cheech & Chong "Earache My Eye":
Many old fans and showbiz types were surprised, though, when the duo got back together for the ’08 tour, because there was a time when considerable acrimony had passed between the 2, and they’d gone long periods without speaking to each other. In fact, when Entertainment Weekly interviewed Marin for a story on Chong in ’05, the 2 weren’t speaking, and, as the writer remembered it, Marin “spent half the time saying what a genius (Chong) was, and the other half saying he was a d---.”
When reminded of that in an ’08 EW story on the “Light Up America” tour, Marin laughed, and said “Nothing’s changed! Actually, he’s less of a d--- now. More of a genius. We’re like 2 halves of a treasure map. You can’t access that treasure unless you put the pieces together.”
Because of the push to relax marijuana laws — and with the recent passing of laws legalizing medical use of marijuana — Marin and Chong both feel that their material is now more relevant and topical than ever.
“The recreational use of it is what's kept it illegal for a long time — any excuse to stomp on people's freedoms,” Chong recently told the Boulder Weekly. “We're really close to legalization, and I think that (for) everybody concerned, we've gotta keep pushing it off the cliff. We got it up to the top, now we just gotta push it over and really get it legal, instead of this don't-ask-don't-tell approach.”
Marin, in the Boulder interview, described the current state of marijuana in America as being “quasi-legal” — but he also feels strongly that legalization is “getting closer all the time. You can walk down the street of just about any city smoking a joint, and nobody's gonna hassle you. It's ridiculous that it's not legal. Sometimes our country has this puritanical element about it that just pops up like a mutant gene.”
Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music and comedy for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.