Not Only Can Hungarians Rock, They Can Rockabilly

The dance floor is a frenzy of couples hanging on tight in a whirl of swing and jive steps while Szappan slaps his double bass and Cactus, lead singer of The Prison Band, thrusts his hips and seduces the microphone with "Striptease Boogie." In the song's last crescendo of snare and feel-good guitar riffing, "Kid" dips his girl, her plaid, pleated skirt flaring, and kisses her hard on the mouth. He swings her back up and takes her under the arm of his black leather jacket as she smoothes her Betty Page fringe. They clap and catch their breath, and Kid steals another kiss, his high pompadour outlined by the pink rays of a Saturday Budapest sunset.

Cactus shouts out a thanks in Hungarian to the crowd of greasers, rockers, Teddy boys and rockabilly babes who flocked to the recent "Overdrive Rock'n'Roll Fesztivál," held at Kincsem Park, Budapest's best-known horse track. The two-day event, sponsored by the American Car Club of Hungary, featured a line-up of Hungary's most popular rockabilly bands, including Mystery Gang and the Rockin' RockCats.

Since its birth, rock and roll has evolved into a dizzying array of scenes and styles. But the original, rebellious allure of rockabilly - a once-daring fusion of hillbilly boogie, swinging country and traditional blues that rocked the youth of 1950s America - has held its own as a music subculture, and is continually embraced by new generations of youth, including more than a few in Hungary.

Once the Prison Band finished their set, I asked Kid, a 19-year-old from Budapest, why he liked rockabilly. Short on English, he blurted out, "Rebel!"

But at least for Kid, it's an unusual kind of rebellion. He told me that his interest in the music and its accompanying scene was sparked by his parents, who listened to rockabilly when he was, well, a kid. It may have been hard or impossible to find Western rockabilly records during Hungary's Soviet era, but the music seeped in, mostly via bootlegs and radio waves.

When Hungary's ambassador to the United States, András Simonyi, made a well-publicized appearance several years back at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, he described how he and his brother used to listen to an old Bakelite radio at night that picked up Western music shows on Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Radio Luxembourg. But some local rockabilly fans who grew up during the Communist era recall first hearing the genre via less "underground" channels.

Les Thunders, the 35-year-old bassist for Mystery Gang - arguably Hungary's most popular rockabilly band today - said he listened to the rock-and-roll roots program on Hungarian National Radio in the 1980s. When his parents gave him a Sony Walkman for Christmas in 1984, he made a rockabilly bootleg.

"I listened to the walkman every night," he said after a recent show at the Gödör Klub in downtown Budapest. "One night, I dreamt about two guys playing 'Rock Around the Clock,' and this dream has come true."

In fact, Marshall Lytle, bass player for Bill Haley and The Comets - whose 1954 hit, 'Rock Around the Clock,' had played in his dream - scrawled his autograph on Thunders' upright when he came to Budapest in 2003 as part of The Comets' reunion tour.

Duna Rocks: A Hungarian greaser gang at the Overdrive Fesztival (top of article); "Kid" goes in for the kiss; Mystery Gang plays the Gödör; The Prison Band breaks out at Amigo's

Hungarian rockabilly enthusiasts have carved out their space on the Web, starting with The Rockin Board, an active "Magyar swing, rock and roll, rockabilly, psychobilly forum." Mystery Gang, The Prison Band and countless other start-up groups have their own sites and band profiles on MySpace. And the portal rockabilly.lap.hu offers dozens of links for people interested in the local rockabilly scene.

According to Roy Williams, the 60-year-old founder of the British rockabilly label Nervous Records, the popularity of rockabilly and other forms of "roots" rock 'n roll behind the old Iron Curtain can be credited in large part to the Comets, who got a lot of Cold War airtime on Radio Free Europe.

"[I] have met people from these [Soviet bloc] countries who were also listening, and got into rock-n-roll and rockabilly via Bill Haley," Williams told me via e-mail. "I even met the leader of a Bill Haley and The Comets 'clone' band from Latvia, and we had a good laugh to think that we were both listening to the same radio station years ago."

Those with the resources at the time did more than listen. Hungária, led by the legendary Miklós Fenyő, was one of the first rockabilly-inspired bands to earn widespread popularity in Hungary. Riding on the wave of the rockabilly revival in Europe that developed in the early 1970s and continued into the 1980s, Hungaria went on to release such hit albums as "Rock and Roll Party," "Hotel Menthol" and "Arena," which translated the rockabilly sound into Hungarian. Hungaria guitarist Tamás Bartha went on to play for Locomotiv GT, an internationally successful Hungarian rock band formed in 1971.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain, Hungarian rockabilly fans could finally join Europe's larger rockabilly subculture, which has remained an important music scene through the decades and, ironically, may be stronger today than its American counterpart.

Arjan Deelen, manager for American rockabilly artist Robert Gordon, said Gordon has performed five major tours in Europe in the past two years.

"Tours of this magnitude would quite simply be unfeasible in the US or anywhere else, where the scene is very splintered," Deelen said via e-mail. "Countries like Spain, Sweden and Finland have a thriving rockabilly scene, with frequent shows, many good new bands, and active record labels that are very interested in investing in new talent. Rockabilly is alive and well in Europe."

That includes Budapest. A quick flip through weekly program guide PestiEst will generally reveal at least one rockabilly show, and if it's not a Hungarian band, it's a rockabilly band visiting Budapest from somewhere else on the continent. Amigo's and Lucky 13 are the capital's leading rockabilly hot spots, but I've seen rockabilly acts at hard rock club Wigwam as well as hipster hangout Sark Presszó.

Revolving around the shows is a burgeoning Hungarian rockabilly scene. It's not just a bunch of old, wannabe greasers. The scene is fresh and young, with more teens getting turned on to it all the time, sprinkled in with veterans and a few curious yuppies. There are even stores in Budapest like SunsetStar and Ticci dedicated entirely to rockabilly-inspired fashion.

The scene was in full bloom at the Overdrive festival, with a bustle of rockabilly fans ogling vintage American cars, the obligatory Elvis impersonators, and vendors selling rock-and-roll trinkets like oversized belt buckles saying "Son of a Bitch," "Welcome to Fabulous Sin City Nevada," "Rebel: The South Will Rise," "Everything's Bigger in Texas," and "Love Sucks." Teenage girls wearing American flag skirts bopped to the Jerry Lee Lewis Memorial Band*. Rockabilly families dragged along kids with pompadours and one adorable toddler sported a shirt that said "Rockabilly Girl." Young, stylish greasers sauntered by the stage wearing Gabardine jackets, white T-shirts, Levi's and brothel-creeper shoes. They flirted with rockabilly babes dolled up in Middy hairdos, bright lipstick, halter tops and tight capris, or sweetheart dresses.

A 22-year-old wildcat named Michael told me it took him 20 minutes to style his pompadour. He was wearing an unbuttoned blue, plaid shirt with a white, "wife-beater" tank underneath. His Levi's were cuffed to show off his bright red Converse sneakers. He said he was learning how to play slap-bass boogie and dreamed of going to America.

"I've heard lots of music - punk, rock-n-roll, reggae - but I heard rockabilly and I said, 'I like this,'" he told me. "It's a life-feeling. It's original. Rrrrrrrrrrrock and rolllllll! It's cool, ok?" Then he swaggered away with a Borsodi beer in his hand, which he had occasionally spilled on me while we were talking.

"Dice Dave," 22, said he got into the scene as a teenager and has his own rockabilly-inspired band called the Virgin Porn Stars. "My mother and father used to listen to this music," he said. "Rockabilly, it has a fever. The scene is getting alive."

A lot of the fans at the Overdrive festival could summarize why they liked the music and the scene with similar one-liners like "It's my life," or "It's a feeling." The lead singer of the Rockin' RockCats, Pepax, chose one word to describe what happened when he first heard rockabilly: "Dynamite!"

"The rockabilly feeling affected my soul," Szaba, a 29-year-old Mystery Gang fan I met at the Gödör Klub show, told me. "When I heard this music, I started to dance. It makes me move. The 50s in America was a great period. That was the highest point of America. That was the shining star. Everybody was happy. This music represents America's best era. That's why I like it."