Tiredness can kill

I don't sleep well. I am usually quite tired. Someone once told me I might have sleep apnoea, although I might just be generally snoring. I definitely do that, as my lady often tells me!

Anyway, as such the era of the energy drink is a blessing to me.

Assisted by my 'focus group' of bassplaying energy drink addicted ladies, here is a list of energy drinks I can recall trying and some tasting notes:

Red Bull - The daddy of the modern energy drink, and a taste I quite like, although others are less impressed. Quite what that flavour is I'm not sure, vaguely fruity I suppose. One of my bands runs on this.

Red Bull Sugar Free - no thanks. It needs the sugar.

Rockstar (black) - big can, taste like a slightly cheaper Red Bull, which it is.

Rockstar Mango (orange) - lovely, I could drink it all day

Rockstar Guava (purple) - also quite tasty. Rockstar seem to be going for Rubicon's market.

Relentless (brown) - Nicer than Rockstar, less nice than Red Bull and slightly less effective IMHO.

Relentless 'Tropical' (i.e. mango) - again lovely, I'm not sure If I could pick between the Rockstar one and this.

Relentless Berry - a tasty alternative to the mango ones, tastes a bit like Fruli but without the alcohol.

Pussy - truly very odd, tastes a bit herbal, not particularly nice, only bought it for the amusing name.

Euro Shopper energy drink - ewwww. 35p, only when desperate and poor.

Blue Charge/all supermarket ones - again not particularly nice, certainly not if drunk warm. I've lumped all the supermarket ones together as they all seem to taste horrible warm, but tolerable cold. Not unlike Carling in that respect.

V - quite nice actually, an interesting alternative.

Purdey's - lovely, like a non-alcoholic wine. The silver version doesn't have any caffeine in but is my favourite of the two.

mad Chinese thing i forget the name of in a square bottle - tasted like treacle in an ashtray, made me feel very odd. possibly toxic. Tiny bassplayer 'the one with bleach'.

Red Devil - just a cheaper tasting Red Bull. Inoffensive.

Red Rooster - about the same as Red Devil

Irn Bru 32 - A true contender, tastes like slightly concentrated Irn Bru, which can only be a good thing.

Any of the 'shots' - all terrible, make me feel sick, and slightly too wired after a few minutes. The really strong ones give me the shakes.

Lucozade, whilst generally good (original or purple for me) doesn't really count anymore, although they do caffeine versions which are quite nice, there's a lemon flavour one I've had more than once. However the 'Alert' shot is as horrible as the others I've tried.

Zen Republic - I vaguely remember drinking this. Odd flavour, contains about 10 million ingredients. Says a tiny bassplayer: "It's nice, I have only seen it in Holland and Barrett."

Also the guarana herbal drinks (also Holland and Barrett. - tiny bassplayer says: "they send me loopy, thus...they rock!"

Shark - Says taller bassplaying friend - "Come to think of it I've only seen it in Northern Ireland. It is like Red Bull with a strange chemical aftertaste, and left Wayne's brother Denver completely wired for 48 hours, although he is not the caffeine connoisseur that I am."


Conclusion: Red Bull is the standard by which all others are judged, but the mango flavoured ones are also good.