Mark On The Bus

Album: Check Your Head (1992)
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Songfacts®:

  • Running just 1:05, this song really is about Mark on the bus.

    Mark is Mark Nishita, who started playing keyboards with Beastie Boys for their third album, Check Your Head. Brought in by their producer, Mario Caldato, he quickly became very comfortable working them, and would even sleep in the studio from time to time. He put together this song one night, which recounts his journey on a city bus, and the band discovered it when they came in the next day. He's the only credited writer on the song and did all the singing as well.
  • According to Ad-Rock of Beastie Boys, Nishita was "drunk as a skunk" when he made this song. He wrote in the Beastie Boys Book: Even though he wrote and recorded everything, and we had pretty much nothing to do with it... it's one of my favorite songs we ever made."
  • The "You should sleep late man, it's much easier on your constitution" vocal at the end is Bill Murray from a bit he did with the comedy troupe National Lampoon called "Mr. Roberts #1." It aired on the National Lampoon Radio Hour in either 1973 or 1974 and later appeared on a 1977 album called That's Not Funny, That's Sick!

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