CHEECH AND CHONG

This was probably one of the very first albums i bought for myself. Much like the writer from Dangerous Minds wrote, i surely did not even understand a good potion of the humor, but the parts that i did had me laughing for days! There were other songs Cheech and Chong made over the years that were equally as impressive, but Basketball Jones got a certain notoriety that's lasted for a long time.

Basketball Jones was a song/routine/character from Cheech and Chong’s 1973 Los Cochinos record. The original album cover had a secret compartment where you could see how they smuggled pot, sandwiched in their car door. I bought this LP at a garage sale when I was about ten and just starting to get into comedy albums. I only half understood the idea of “drugs” at the time, I’m pretty sure, so I can’t imagine a Cheech and Chong album made much sense to me at that age. But I loved the routine “Basketball Jones” by Tyrone Shoelaces & Rap Brown Jr. H.S.” and would go around singing the musical part of it like ten year olds do. The song is about teenager Tyrone (as in “tie your own”) Shoelaces and his love of basketball sung in a falsetto voice by Cheech Marin. It’s catchy as hell, but small wonder, dig the backing band: George Harrison, Klaus Voorman, Carole King, Nicky Hopkins, Tom Scott, Billy Preston, Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector and Michelle Phillips.

This cartoon has made some impressive Hollywood cameos over the years, in Robert Altman’s California Split, Hal Ashby’s Being There and in the 70s underground comedy Tunnel Vision.