Product Placement #26: Sodastream

In the mid-1980s, the school dinner ladies went on strike and so on certain days, everyone had to go home for their lunch. Or was it the teachers? Somebody was striking anyway, and I support them 100% with hindsight, but whenever it happened I had to go to a mate's house. I lived too far away from school - if my mum had driven over to pick me up, then driven me back home, I'd have arrived just in time to set off back to school. So I went to a mate's house. Not a close friend - to be honest, thinking about this now, it's the first time I've thought about him for almost forty years... and the only thing I really remember about him is that he had a Sodastream.

Owning a Sodastream was the height of sophistication from a 14 year old's perspective. You could make your own fizzy drinks using tap water, gloopy syrup and compressed air... just pull that handle down and get busy with the fizzy! Never mind that they tasted teeth-rottingly disgusting - this was cutting edge tech for 1986, and owning one made you the envy of all your friends. Unsurprisingly then, the Sodastream influenced a generation of songwriters... well, these guys, anyway.

Sodastream - Charity Board

Australian indie duo Pete Cohen and Karl Smith were - rather surprisingly - the only band I could find named after this weird Israeli beverage making machine. But there were lots of songs that mentioned said device. Like this one, from an "ebullient, heartfelt indie-folk duo" discovered on the camp of bands...

Pack some wine, a rug and a magazine , 

Sandwiches and a SodaStream 

And know Monday can wait till we get clean.

Stables - Sylvan Weekends

Pull Tiger Tail were a London indie band from the early noughties, which probably throws them into the landfill category. But I've heard much worse...

When will all the waiting end?

Extremes return to life again

Day in, day out, I want caffeine

And all I find is SodaStream

Pull Tiger Tail - SodaStream

Better get into your air raid shelter to keep safe from the next band...

Pray to American Idol

YouTube haircut so in style

SodaStream spray ricochet

In your face like: "It's okay!"

Death From Above 1979 - Never Swim Alone

Next up, a band named after Peter Bowles' wife in To The Manor Born...

Beneath the SodaStream

When you begin to dream

When you said, "Nothing's new"

Made fucking zero sense from you

Joyce Manor - This Song Is A Mess But So Am I  

And now, some Norwegian heavy metal guys, planning their birthday party...

I want my birthday pony yeah

Don't want no race car track

I want to ride the pony back

I want my. I want my

Don't want no pinball machine

I don't want no SodaStream

Come on!

Thulsa Doom - Birthday Pony

Here's a couple more from the deep dive...

Leila - SodaStream

Lizzie Reed - Soda Pop Stream

Never heard of them? Here's someone a little more well known...

I’ve got a cartoon heart and a SodaStream

Baby you and me we’re a young love’s dream

Drinking it down like we know what to do with it

Nerina Pallot - Man Didn't Walk On The Moon

But this guy...? Who knows?

Richard Belton is one of those artists whose work I stumble across from time to time on the tube of you, yet they appear to have no online promotional presence providing any kind of biographical info. It makes me wonder if they're just computer-generated AI nonsense. Even if that's the case, this was the best ode to SodaStream I found during my extensive search...

Peasant water, meet Sodastream

I know the world is dark. The world is mean

Until you light it up from 1 to 3

Then you've been fizzled by the fizzy king

Fizzy water, I'm obsessed just by the notion of it

Fizzy water, they should fill the fucking ocean with it

Fizzy water, now I'm spending all my money on it

Cause fizzy water don't let me down

So many flavours and I don't know why

I wanted water, not a cherry pie

I was a smoker and I know it's wrong

But I was as hydrated as the day is long

Fizzy water, I'm obsessed just by the notion of it

Fizzy water, they should fill the fucking ocean with it

Fizzy water, now I'm spending all my money on it

Cause fizzy water don't let me down 

Hot 100 Countdown: #79

Bit rushed this week, so my apologies if I race through 79s. Some great suggestions for year-based songs, including...


Charity Chic - Tom Robinson: The Winter of '79


(I'll throw in one of my own at this point: The Ataris - Summer '79)


Lynchie - Smashing Pumpkins: 1979


Rigid Digit - Saxon: Denim & Leather with the following lyrics...

"Where were you in 79, when the dam began to burst?"

Well, you probably couldn't hear the dam bursting if you were listening to Saxon.

And another lyrical one from RD - REM: Ignoreland

"They hypnotized the summer, nineteen seventy nine"

Meanwhile, Alyson offered Elton John: Are You Ready For Love ('79 Version)… except, according to my research, Alyson, this would be '76 Version. If you're aware of a '79 version, I can't seem to find it. But feel free to bring it back 3 weeks hence.


Martin has known me longest though, so wins the 1979 award this week with his suggestion: Veruca Salt - Spider-Man '79. Clue - if there's a song with Spider-Man in it, there's a good chance I'll like it. However... that still wasn't my choice for this week.


The Swede offered the only non-year suggestion this week. And let's face it, if you can't have years, then streets are always a good second best... Humble Pie - 79th Street Blues. Let's be careful out there!


Onto this week's winners then, and from my record collection... still avoiding years wherever possible... it was a toss-up between two songs. The runner-up was this...


Cat Stevens - Sun/C79


Here, the 79 appears to be a room number in a hotel where The Cat had an assignation with a somewhat disreputable young lady.


This week's winner, though, was this, from the eponymous debut album - never bettered - by Vampire Weekend. M79 is a bus route in Manhattan...





78 next week, and a couple of obvious non-year suggestions spring to my mind... one of which I suspect will be very popular with some of the usual suspects... but the other might well be my pick.

The Hot 100 Countdown #93

93 'til Infinity was the debut album of the band Souls of Mischief... apparently. And number 93 proved tricky for all of us.

Alyson & Chris both came up with 93 Million Miles by Jason Mraz, an artist who does live in my record collection, but not with this song. I guess it's got something to do with how far away we are from the sun.

Charity Chic offered 93 Degrees In The Shade by Third World, which would have been a pretty good call if I'd owned it. Or if anyone else did, since it turns out the song is actually called 96 Degrees In The Shade. Sorry, CC!

Nobody came up with either of the two 93 songs I do have in my collection though.

I originally thought Do It! 93 by Death From Above might be something to do with the year it was recorded... until my research showed the band (originally called Death From Above 1979, just to confuse matters further) wasn't formed until 2001.

This week's winner though is this... from the charming Sweet Baboo, aka Gwynedd's Stephen Black. The version in my music collection is called Wolfie 93, and if the story Stephen tells in the video is anything to go by, I don't think 1993 has anything to do with it, since he can't have been very old in that year at all. No idea why it is called Wolfie 93 though...



Now... some of you have already given up on 92, but I do have a couple of options to choose from. Any guesses?