Buffalo Tom
Sodajerk
Good Morning!
Today we’re listening to “Sodajerk” by Buffalo Tom
Buffalo Tom’s “Saving Grace” was my onramp to the band. One of the older guys on my block had a copy of 1992’s Let Me Come Over and played it on one of those drives to nowhere we all used to take. I was hooked. I quickly made a copy and wore it out soon after. That cycle repeated more than once.
So when Big Red Letter Day was released the next year, it only made sense that I immediately grabbed a copy. The album opener and lead single “Sodajerk” was my favorite on the record, and I’d never get too much further into the record. Play rewind, play rewind. It also saw a sprinkle of fame, being featured on the TV show My So-Called Life and later in a few commercials.
This being the 90s- and music- there was plenty of debate about the song’s meaning. In those days, the level of discussion ranged from trash-talking to downright Talmudic, with each line being parsed.
Dear reader, I’ll leave it to you to decide what the song may or may not be about. For me, it’s about having to endure an absolute shit job- a right of passage many of us have to endure. In my case, I worked in a high-end grocery store that never missed a chance to tout its progressive values while simultaneously having us agree in writing that we’d never be paid more than minimum wage.
Where managers scrambled to curry favor with indifferent wine moms several income brackets above them. A lot of my day was spent being “corrected” on how to bag groceries by people, even though I was quite good at it. I still am— I’ve raised two kids loading airplanes. It’s the same principle. All of that is a long way ‘round to say that when Bill Janovitz sings, Form a line here/I think I’ll die here/These people nauseate me, it resonates.
Maybe you can relate?
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Released on February 11, 1993, on Beggars Banquet, Big Red Letter Day—one may argue—presented Buffalo Tom in their most cohesive, most melodic, and more lyrically mature and contemplative disposition. However, listening to the preceding albums, one could also say that it was simply an improved and slightly more polished version of its predecessors. Whatever the real case may be, Big Red Letter Day still served as Buffalo Tom’s golden ticket to the competitive Alternative Rock scene in the 1990s; and the seemingly bright feel and resonance of both the vocals and the instruments in the songs that it contained certainly reflected the vibrancy of Alternative Rock music around the time it was released.
Click here to read the retrospective.
Listen:
“Sodajerk” by Buffalo Tom | Big Red Letter Day, 1993
Click the record to listen on the platform of your choice.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this track!
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
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Ah, yes, the grocery clerk life (I lasted two weeks).
I've always loved this song as well - it's like a great lost Replacements number. When I was in my corporate real estate days, I often had to head up to our Boston office. Most of our locations named their conference rooms after local neighborhoods, but not that one. Instead, they were all named after local bands, which included Dinosaur Jr., Buffalo Tom, and your guy, J. Geils (Band). I obviously appreciated this, except the boardroom was called 'Aerosmith.' Woof.
I remember hearing this on the radio, but for whatever reason never bought the album back then. Didn't dig in until about 10 years ago. Anyway, great song, album, and band.