It’s not garage, not really, despite referencing hitchhiking ‘earlier’ than CCR’s “Sweet Hitchhiker” and starting off simply (perhaps too simply as this just sounds like a rip on real garage bands) the next two verses are too dense and elliptical, despite the word count and the use of terms like ‘the hop’ simply rhymed with ‘shop’ and ‘stop’.
You can use all this and still have a song that doesn’t sound right. The term ‘proto-punk’ is useful here as the critic will look at whether There’s a Hitch imagining that it was written in the mid sixties, would have played more of an influence on other seventies genres than punk. If it was taken up at all.
I think it structurally fails for all of its tripping tropes both because it doesn’t meet the brief – whatever wonky wordplay some teenager of the time may have jotted down – nor stand up generally. When you start off with such a base mission statement it’s not wise to drift off in reverie, even if, on decoding the phrase or clause, the reader or listener discovers that you never really went off track. It’s the change in register that throws the song out.
I don’t know where it fits, quite honestly. Too twee for the braggart at the start of the song, too indecipherable for hotblooded teens in automobiles.
Much easier to write and not try to second guess your audience
Things are Back to Normal
I can vouch for the couch in which I slouch Steady the course where's there's nary a stoush Wear what I like or just despite wandering out and tripping the light I can sneak a snack or openly spoon the cornucopia the balanced boon Read all day all I need to say forget the regrets so far away Stay indoors endeared to none who find each other just for fun where nations amass at stations of the crass