Let me be the first to introduce you to Soda Sandwich, as I suspect no one outside 1995 remembers them.
Working at a college radio station gives you a few perks. Record companies often call and ask if you'll be willing to play an album and if so, they then send a couple of preview copies. If a big-name band passes through town, there is always a chance that they'll mix and mingle with an educational institution. Also, most importantly, you get to promote and encounter the local music scene. A college or university located in (or near) a large metropolis is bound to experience an area band looking for promotion and proving to a record company a radio station played their music. Any radio station.
As program director, I always tried to promote the area musicians. I thought it good public relations to take an active interest. Hopefully, the musicians could return the favor down the road, such as complimentary tickets to a show as an on-air giveaway.
One of my first encounters with the local scene was in 1995. I was still working on the news but now filling in for various music positions. One afternoon, working in the station office (or what we referred to as the music library), a rag-tag group of people arrived. It was a group of two or three men and a woman. Another student director who had seniority welcomed them in, and they soon revealed they were the band Soda Sandwich.
The group provided us with a handful of CDs, one for putting in rotation and the others for giving away on the air. They stuck around a while, we listened to a few tracks, and they signed autographs for the lucky few present. My CD insert reads, "To Rick: Thanks for helping us out. We appreciate you! David Foy." I have no idea who Rick is. Or David Foy, for that matter.
I have vague memories of the group after this, except they left that day with the suggestion we play the song 6 O'Clock News, as they felt it might fit our format best. That afternoon, we played it for the first and only time, as our faculty advisor wasn't too keen on the station broadcasting the word shit. Shortly afterward, someone from the band called, thanking us for giving the disc a spin. The music director explained 6 O'Clock News would likely not air again with the profanity. They apologized, forgetting the song included the word. Still, we kept the disc in rotation.
After this, though, I don't know whatever happened to either the disc or the group. From what I recall, the woman – who may or may not have been someone's wife and the band's promotion director – called a few times, somewhat angry we weren't playing more of the album and may have even come up to the station requesting the return of the remaining discs. The station probably gave away any remaining when we emptied the music library's archives.
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6 O’Clock News
(Vernon R. Hutchinson)
Soda Sandwich
From the album Plugged, Unplugged and Sideways
1995
Well the 6 O’Clock News...
It gives me the blues
Cops caught lying like they always seem to do
Aid’s [sic] victims lie dying ,the world’s dying too
The president can smoke but not inhale
But it’s jail for me and you
Baseball on strike...
Not enough millions to play
A boy took a gun and blew his daddy away
UFO’s have landed but the government won’t say
Dead baby lying in a dumpster, now who’s
Gonna pay...who’s gonna pay?
Just a typical day in the good old U.S. of A.
6 O’Clock News
It’s the same old shit
Everyone is so angry and nobody fits
Tune in tomorrow, more death, chaos and destruction
Guaranteed.