Heavy Friends
Saturday February 15th, 2025 with Heavy Ben
In Memoriam - 2024 (Part 5)

Part five in the annual Heavy Friends series that pays respects to the departed. Thanks for listening. We eulogized 197 artists. Part one December 21 https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/410/68103.html Part two January 4 https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/410/68327.html Part three January 11 https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/410/68517.html Part four January 18 https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/410/68634.html Pictured: Tom Shipley and Mike Brewer, 1971 Mike Brewer (1944 – 2024) was a folk rock musician who opened for The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield in the 1960s, then formed Brewer & Shipley, who had one unlikely hit about being too stoned. They performed "One Toke Over The Line" during an encore when they ran out of songs to play and the record company president asked them to record it for an album. The song hit the Top 10 in 1971. The Federal Communications Commission issued a statement warning to radio stations about promoting drug use. For some, the lyrics evoked the Christian belief of salvation and had a gospel feeling ("Waitin' for the train to come home, sweet Mary" and "One toke over the line, sweet Jesus") without comprehending the drug reference to the word "toke". The song was performed in 1971 by Gail Farrell and Dick Dale on the Lawrence Welk show! You gotta see it to believe it. Welk commented, "There you've heard a modern spiritual by Gail and Dale." https://youtu.be/t8tdmaEhMHE Brewer remarked, "The Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, named us personally as a subversive to American youth, but at exactly the same time Lawrence Welk performed the crazy thing and introduced it as a gospel song. That shows how absurd it really is. Of course, we got more publicity than we could have paid for." (to embiggen the show icon, right-click and choose "Open image in new tab")