Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Christmas with Box Lunch

Here is another band who made it onto "Johnny Sizzle's Entertainment Watch." This video is from Christmas 1991. Box Lunch is like a really low-budget Iron Maiden. The bass player faithfully follows the lead guitar player in most of the songs, and the singer kinda looks like a cross between Axl Rose and Bruce Dickinson. However, I couldn't imagine either one of them writing a goofy song like this:



Yes, it's a heavy metal song about Eggnog. Here's the lyric sheet in both English and French:



With the exception of the extremely silly Eggnog song, Box Lunch actually wrote some decent stuff. The singer wasn't fantastic, but the hooky choruses made up for his extremely repetitive singing style.

Within three years, Box Lunch got themselves a record deal. Now, here's how they fuck it all up...

They got rid of great songs like "Eggnog" and every other song they performed on that Johnny Sizzle episode, they booted out the singer (the bass player took over on vocals), they wrote some shitty new songs, made some cool artwork, photocopied it, and stuck it on the album cover. Then, they gave it a retarded, unmemorable album title, and mass produced it through a little company called "En Guard Records".

Thus, "The Rock Box, The Pebble Pusher, A Pitbull" was born:



I'm not shitting you, this is what the album cover looks like on the glossy insert paper.

When I bought this album last summer at a garage sale for $1, I was quite anxious to hear it. After listening to a few songs, I shut it off. With songs such as "Begginnerring Boss", "2 Chord Jazz", and "2 Chord Twang", you know you're going to shut it off before reaching the end.

The album sucks camel balls. If you don't believe me, click here to listen to "Ern's New Vocation" from the CD.

I have no clue when Box Lunch disbanded, but judging from how terrible this album is, it probably wasn't too long after it was recorded and released. It's a shame they didn't make this album when they were at their tightest back in 1991 when "Eggnog" was destined for the.... well, not the charts, but at least it was interestingly stupid.

If you want to hear the more serious side of Box Lunch (and emphasize how crappy their album was), here's another track from the Johnny Sizzle episode (audio only)

2 comments:

. said...

Eggnog is a cool song.. too bad the band turned sucky as you say... I'm curious to hear more of Box Lunch, sounded like one of those fun bands ...bass player looked too serious, despite his smiles, so I can see him kicking the singer out...

Anonymous said...

I don't know, I've loved this album since I found it back in the late 90s. It has some really great tracks.

Box Lunch - The Rock Box, The Pebble Pusher, A Pitbull