Remembering 2024’s Music Losses: Mike Brewer

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During the month of December I had to update this list twice. I don’t like people being on an obituary list, and I really don’t like updating it and moving someone off because someone else died. This hasn’t even made the monthly list yet. Here’s today’s music loss from 2024. Mike Brewer Maybe it’s appropriate that this happened now, so we can explore American history. Not “ancient” history, but just 54 years ago…in my lifetime, and in the lifetimes of a lot of you. Mike Brewer (right, with beard, in the screenshot) and Tom Shipley were folk/rock singers. In 1971, opening for Melanie (who also died last year), they debuted this cute little song about smoking marijuana. The song was a hit with the audience; and, when they released it as a single, it was a hit with listeners. There were two people, however, who were vehemently opposed to the song: Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. Normally no big deal, as every song has haters. However, these two happened to be the vice president and president. Agnew went as far as to order the Federal Communications Commission to pull the license of any radio station that played the song. The FCC issued a warning about playing “pro-drug” songs. (You can go back to the early 1900s and find “horror stories” in newspapers about the “evils of marijuana”…or just follow @Scarred4Lyfe on Facebook. ) Agnew went as far as to say, on national television, that Brewer and Shipley were “subversives to America’s youth.” Nixon put them on his “hate list.” I mention all of this for you who might be leery of the upcoming administration change. Agnew was forced to resign as VP two years later; the year after that, Nixon went down. The song remained. The song? “One Toke Over the Line.” Mike Brewer Born April 14, 1944, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Died December 17, 2024, Branson, Missouri (illness) (age 80) The classic “One Toke Over the Line”: