Monday, April 29, 2024

No Spitting On the Bus - The Steve Gibbons Band

No Spitting On the Bus - The Steve Gibbons Band
3:32
Down In the Bunker, 1978
Written by Steve Gibbons

This song begins with a Bo Diddley riff and schoolyard chant, then eases into a comfortable country rock groove, with Gibbons yelping out the lines in a Dylan-like cadence.  This is a novelty song with one joke: the bus driver demands no one spit on the bus.  "But it don't matter what you feel / You can beg you can borrow or steal / But as long as I'm holding the wheel / I don't want no spitting on the bus."  The verses, however, have a social-political literacy, however shallow, that elevates the song out of punchline territory.

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