Johnny Lunchbreak - Appetizer/Soup’s On

My wife’s packed some West Coast-style rock…

It’s the common story these days: friends form band, make rudimentary demos, nothing happens. Several decades pass, someone picks up on them and decides they deserve to be heard now. Sadly, Johnny Lunchbreak’s tale throws tragedy into that mix. By the mid-70s (after an onish-offish career that began in 1966) it seems that the Lunchbreak were on extended hiatus when mainman Andy Merritt died in a motorcycle crash in 1984, putting paid to bandmate Michael Clare’s belief that they “would continue together… after the turbulence of life during your late 20s and early 30s”. In the early 80s, however, fellow bandmate John Gengras made acetates of the two demo sessions Johnny Lunchbreak cut across 1974/75, calling them Appetizer and Soup’s On. After being accidentally sold, found again, and pressed in a vinyl run of 300, Asterisk (an offshoot of Numero Group, who dedicate themselves to unearthing mega-rare soul and funk) now release them on CD. What do these nine West Coast-influenced rock tracks say of the band? Very little, other than that they were competent, and that maybe playing sporadically in and around Connecticut wasn’t a big enough arena to get them… connected. It could never set the world alight, though, then or now.

Asterisk | 4301-2

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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