alisonboston.com

I went to hear Varga Zsuzsa last night on the a38 concert boat. This was the second time I’d heard her with her new band - the Stopsonic - (the first being during Sziget Festival) and I was even more impressed than when I first heard her in her more poppy incarnation last February as part of the Tsunami fund raiser at the Godor Klub.

Stopsonic guitarist Kovács Péter and bass player Horváth Zoltán have taken over writing most of the tunes for Zsuzsa’s lyrics, while drummer Tóth Róbert pounds out the beat. The music is hard and highly danceable. Zsuzsa is a dynamic performer with loads of sex appeal and has been fronting the new band for about six months now. They sometimes gig as the warm up act for manager-producer Prieger Zsolt’s Anima Sound System so I don’t get why when she was supposed to start her concert last night there were only 25 people in the audience.

When she did take the stage - about an hour later - the audience had swelled to about 50; and by the time she finished her show there was a small group dancing at the side of the stage. But the applause for the show this band put on was pathetic.

I don’t get it. So often I’ve sat in concerts in Budapest when the audience has brought a run-of-the-mill act back for two encores - even late at night.

What’s run-of-the-mill in Budapest? Technically accomplished musicians playing the same old, same old.

I don’t think this behaviour is exclusively Hungarian. But I have often remarked that Budapest audiences do like to get their money’s worth in the way of two or three encores. Perhaps last night’s poor applause was a result of the band having started late, and being a warm act for the second band, Gulo Čar a gypsy family from Czech Republic, who most of the audience had come to hear.

For the record: I went back stage during the gypsy act. After Stopsonic, their sound just didn’t cut it. Maybe they would have been better teamed with local rising star Palya Bea? But then who would we bring in from abroad to share billing with Zsuzsa? I would have gone for something like Dubioza Kolektiv from Bosnia - an amazing mix of Bosnian ethno-dub, roots reggae, and hip hop fronted by a female vocalist whose passion and power will bring tears to your eyes. But, as with Peter Podlavics’s previous Diva gig that showcased Berlin import Pat Appleton, backed up by an ad-hoc Hungarian band sharing billing with Hungary’s Toy Division, I was left wondering what criteria are being used to team these acts.