Two weeks ago we posted the “Romantic Traffic” video by the Spoons that was filmed on the TTC subway lines. Today, we found “The Spadina Bus” video by the Shuffle Demons. Urban legend has it that the TTC wouldn’t allow the rapping jazz beatniks onto the bus to film because the tall foreheads didn’t like the lines “I went down to the station/ I didn’t scream or fuss/ but I didn’t have lots of patience/ waiting for that bus/ I reached into my pocket/ to try and find some coin/ but much to my chagrin/ all I found was my groin!”
The video was filmed up and down Spadina Avenue in 1986 and directed by John Gunn and Rob Fresco. The Spadina streetcar LRT was still a decade away from opening (go here for a brief history of the Spadina line). There are some good shots at Spadina and Dundas and outside the CIBC branch at Queen and Spadina. There is a brief glimpse of a streetcar which looks like the old Peter Witt car. I wish the TTC would still use some of those old buses with their gold and maroon colours.
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I like how he says how LRT “is not for me”. Pro bus people. =P
I feel sorry for the bassist. They are walking so fast and he’s just trying to lug it around with him.
Or the squishy-font pre-pixelboard route signage for that matter.
When the “groin” line is said, they’re in the old Chinatown Gardens — all gone now, site of the big huge white Chinatown Centre.
My version of the urban legend has it that the TTC didn’t like the idea of stating the fact that people had to “wait for the bus”. I thought the Shuffle Demons had gone guerrilla-style to do some footage on the bus, but after just watching the video again, my memory serves me wrong. My favorite line is “I want confirmation on my information about my transportation from Spadina station”. Also, after just watching it, I think “On the T-T-T-TTC” is funny. Another notable TTC note from Toronto’s musical past was the Lost Dakotas album “Last Train To Kipling” in reference to Kipling Station.
The Lost Dakotas…and their little plastic cactus with the desert moon hanging from the slats in Spadina station..but I remember hearing them one morning echoing thru the bowels of Wilson station on my way to York, thinking “I know that song. I know that song! What is it?”
It was Back in Black.
=B0)
I don’t know what on earth was so special about a “bus” on Spadina. Maybe if they were trolley buses then okay, but they never were. Another thing is why did they replace the streetcars with buses back in 1948 in the first place? Between then and 1997, those perfectly good, active streetcar tracks were going to waste because no streetcars ever used them. great video though, and because they used nothing but the GM Fishbowls in it, something about them made the whole video and song more attractive.
WHat is so special about a “bus?” I mean a streetcar would be different, but a bus? Come On!
They should have always kept Spadina’s route as a streetcar line. How silly of them to replace one of the busiest routes in the city with buses back in 1948 and let those perfectly good, active tracks and wires along the street go to waste! I’m glad the T.T.C. came back to their senses finally in 1997 when they replaced the bus route with the LRT line. Shuffle Demons, even though you no longer exist either, “the Scarborough LRT may not be for you and me, but the Spadina LRT, let it now be!!
I am thinking of redoing the song and video, but to make it more appropriate for today now that they replaced the bus route on Spadina with the LRT line 10 years ago, I shall call it “The Spadina CAR” instead.
So what do people think of me redoing the song and video and calling it “The Spadina Car?”