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Continuing down the Eastern European punk rabbit hole I’ve been exploring for the past however long, let’s head to Hungary for my staff pick this week:
Nagy Feró És A Bikini: Hova Lett... LP (Start, 1983)
This LP sat on my want list for a couple years, long enough that I couldn’t remember much about it when I finally laid hands on it. I couldn’t even make sense of the artist’s name… what is the relationship between Nagy Feró and Bikini? Is this a split record? A collaboration? Something else entirely?
After giving it some thought, I remembered the route via which this record landed on my want list. Some years ago, Jonah Falco (of Fucked Up, Career Suicide, and a zillion snappily-written record descriptions for labels like Beach Impediment and La Vida Es Un Mus) was on the old What Are You Listening To?podcast / show. As one of his picks, he held up this sleeveless 7” from a Hungarian punk band called Bikini. I don’t think Jonah knew much about the record, but he said it was cool, and the combination of Jonah’s recommendation and my interest in eastern bloc punk prompted me to look up the single and listen to it. Of course the single got added to my want list (no luck yet… one hasn’t sold on Discogs since October 2024), but I guess I also liked what I heard enough to follow the links and explore the rest of Bikini’s discography, which is extensive. I added this LP, Hova Lett…, to my want list and saw plenty of copies on Discogs for less than $10, but always from European sellers. I hoped to find a copy on my travels in Europe, but I never did. Fast forward to a few weeks ago and a copy popped up for $12 from a US seller. The buy button was smashed with a quickness.
I had totally forgotten what the record sounded like, but I’ve been spinning it a bunch since it arrived. I’d call Hova Lett… a very energetic art-punk album bolstered by excellent playing and top-notch production. One of the few English-language reviews I found had this to say about the record: “Side A ends in the middle of a drum solo, this way a 3 minute song is cut into 2 parts. Yes, that's intentional. It says a lot about the album.” I’d respond by saying yes, I agree, but it doesn’t say everything about the record. There is a little bit of obtuseness / obnoxiousness, but most of the record is new wave-ish, sometimes leaning towards ska (think early XTC) and at others more riffy and rocking a la Tubeway Army. There are a few moments that are quite unexpected, like the strange medieval melody in “Ótyi-tyótyi - Ping-pong,” which sounds like something Hobbits would play on a pan flute as they’re marching through the shire. But there are also parts that are straight up ripping, like the second track, “Maradj Már.” This track is the only one that’s hardcore fast all the way through, but there are a handful of other moments on the album where they speed up to this ripping tempo. With the great production and the singer’s similar voice, these songs remind me of Mushi-era Stalin. If you’re reading this Jonah, check out “Maradj Már…” it’s even better than the two songs on the single.
As I prepared to write my staff pick I did some research that helped me understand a little more about how Hova Lett… fits into its context. First of all, the artist name: Nagy Feró is the leader of the band, so it’s an Iggy & the Stooges / Jesse & the Rippers-type situation where the band’s frontperson is so charismatic they get top billing. (Incidentally, you may also see his name written as Feró Nagy… in Hungarian (as in a lot of Asian languages) it’s conventional to put a person’s surname first and their given name second, so sometimes they flip it around to follow our name order convention.) Nagy Feró appears to be one of the prime movers of the Hungarian punk scene, having formed the band Beatrice, who released a cassette called 78 in 1979. I only found one song from that tape on YouTube, but it’s cool, with a chunky riff and quite aggressive vocals. Feró left Beatrice in 1982 and formed Bikini, releasing Hova Lett… in 1983 and then leaving Bikini (who continued on without him), eventually reforming Beatrice as his main project, which appears to still be active. I poked around the Beatrice and post-Faró Bikini material that is available online, and while I found a handful of cool moments, it seems like Hova Lett… is the moment where they really leaned into the energy and aggression and made something that might properly be called punk rock.
Judging by his Wikipedia page, Nagy Feró seems to be an antagonistic, polarizing frontperson in the Johnny Rotten mold. In the 70s, he referred to himself as "A Nemzet csótánya" (which translates to “roach of the nation”). That sounds pretty cool, but it also sounds like (as with so many other punk contrarians) he has also been associated with right-wing politics. In the 90s, he was a member of a Hungarian political party called the “Hungarian Justice and Life Party,” which sounds pretty bad. While Faró left the party in the 90s and claimed political independence, after a series of dissolutions and mergers the Hungarian Justice and Life Party was subsumed into something called the “Our Homeland Movement,” which appears to be one of the evil far-right, nativist political groups that have sprung up (and often seized a great deal of power) all over the world in the past several years. Bummer.
That’s all I have about this one. See you next week!