It’s So Good That the 90s are Over and are Not Coming Back
Iván Merker had absolutely no time to read the news lately, so he wrote a mini-essay on his love-hate relationship with the 1990s Hungarian music scene.
For some reason, I have been seeing ads for a concert by iconic ‘90s ‘alternative’ rock band Kispál és a Borz. Meanwhile, maybe for this reason, perhaps for another, I cannot get their song, A következő buszon, out of my head.
It is a bloody good song, even after 30+ years. And it was, to be quite honest, a bloody good band at the time. Lyrically innovative, with a unique and instantly recognisable sound, these songs have generally aged well, now emitting nostalgia that was somehow always already present. For example, Emese, about a (real!) mentally unstable woman frequenting a pharmacy in the band’s hometown Pécs, sounds to me not so much as a 1997 rock song, but as a nostalgic pastiche of a 1997 rock song. But in the best possible sense.
Of course, despite the lazy stereotype of a magyaralter (or ‘Hungarian alternative’) genre, Kispál was never an underground act, but rather one of the most popular rock bands in the post-’89 era that seems ‘alternative’ only in comparison to the horrible and yet very enjoyable 1990s dance pop scene. Kispál is the Hungarian version of Oasis, a mainstream rock band with musical roots in the underground scene (was there ever a rock band without musical roots in the underground scene?). But being ‘alternative’ is a key part of the band’s identity, and the identity of other magyaralter bands of questionable alternativeness.
This alternative vibe was, initially, the thing that drew me to Kispál és a Borz, Quimby and Hungarian Radio’s Petőfi channel as a teenager. (This was at a time when Petőfi, a public radio channel was still the outlet of the magyaralter scene, a function it no longer serves but still capitalises on.) You want to be edgy and unique and not follow the mainstream, and what better way to do so, than by listening to immensely popular rock songs from 10-20 years before?
And of course this ambiguous alternativeness is kind of the point. This music is artistic enough. András Lovasi, lead vocalist and lyricist of the band, is famous for his use of enjambment as a lyrical technique, which is unique and, frankly, not a trivial trick to pull. That perhaps their most famous song, Ha az életben, has whole verses without a single syntactically complete line without evidently hurting the song’s popular appeal is a great lyrical achievement. On the other hand, the song is not complex either musically, or lyrically: it is about an early-onset mid-life crisis (Lovasi was only 31 when the song came out), with lines that feel downright corny: ‘We don’t tell women that they are beautiful, they don’t tell us that our dick is huge.’ (The line is better in the original than in my quick English translation – it of course has enjambment –, but you get the point.)
In other words, this is good pop music, but far from the countercultural high point my 15-year-old self imagined it to be. Earlier works, like the aforementioned A következő buszon are less pop and more alternative rock than Ha az életben, but still safely popularly appealing. It has a feeling of being artistically refined and alternative, for the masses.
The evolution of Kispál and that of the other great 1990s Hungarian rock band, Tankcsapda, were for a long time parallel. Starting from alternative rock or punk backgrounds, they managed to create their own style of popular rock music to their late nineties popular and artistic high points, and they continued to release worse and worse songs throughout the noughties. Then, Kispál made the sensible decision and disbanded. (András Lovasi made the not-so-sensible decision to create a new band, Kiscsillag, which is essentially Kispál but worse. The guy turned out to be a one-trick pony.) They reunited for a couple of gigs in the mid-2010s, like a new generation following the patterns of Kádár-era rock bands. Then, in the post-covid era, they made the very questionable decision to come back together. Not for some reunion concerts, but properly, releasing their first album in almost two decades.
To summarise the result: they thought it a good idea to record a song together with popular rapper Krúbi. Has this fusion between hiphop and alternative rock ever worked? It certainly didn’t this time.
But for me, the problem is not that they cannot replicate their 1990s without turning out to be cringeworthy, not even that Lovasi, instead of embracing his well-deserved position as the doyen of the Hungarian alternative scene, seemingly decided that he will not accept that he is past 30. The reason why I fell out of love with Kispál is what they are nostalgic for and what their alternativeness represents.
Starting with the second: unlike my teenage self, I no longer see ‘not mainstream’ as a merit, and equally, I am much more sceptical of how, exactly, a band filling up Budapest’s biggest indoor arena is outside the mainstream. This elitist point, looking down upon ‘mass’ entertainment is both politically problematic and aesthetically untenable.
But more importantly, what is the relevance of Kispál in 2024? Can they say anything about present-day Hungary? Or is it about nostalgia? And if so, nostalgia for what?
And this last point is where my relation to this band bitters. They cannot adequately represent nostalgia for the 1990s and early 2000s alternative and underground scene, because such representations cannot be made in venues such as MVM Dome. This scene was killed by capitalism, in the form of shady businessman masquerading as cool and alternative, managing places like Szimpla (which no self-respecting Budapest resident should voluntarily enter) or Turbina (an okay live music venue, but about as alternative or underground as the latest Taylor Swift album). Nightlife is too big a business now to be truly alternative, with the exception of some politically committed places like Gólya and Auróra, or smaller cafés and pubs which do not see the value of selling out nor the value of masquerading like a ruin pub ca. 2005. But in this nexus, a Kispál és a Borz gig in MVM Dome is firmly on the side of the nightlife capital.
Second, this image of the 90s, with surreal lyrics and cigarette butts thrown off the Acropolis, is certainly nostalgic for a generation of middle-class Hungarians (roughly late Gen X and early millennials), because they grew up listening to it, and no doubt could sometimes relate, as so many rock musicians traded on the universality of human feelings. But this is not an accurate image of 1990s Hungary. This is an image of the 1990s sans economic collapse and with hardly any relevance of the new political freedoms. What the ‘90s were actually like, you are more likely to find in the much-maligned gangster rap scene of the time. Or by listening to Jimmy Zámbó, for that matter.
In Kispál, you find liberal escapism that is still very popular in liberal circles these days. But escapism is something to overcome, not to be nostalgic for. For the point of politics is to change the world for the better instead of creating small circles of freedom. And liberals in any case should be wary of the 1990s, their era of false triumph that grew into the failure of the post-’89 liberal project.
The 1990s are gladly over. Sure, the aforementioned generation, now having the money to spare, will enjoy their favourites playing an arena gig. Have fun guys! But politically speaking, this nostalgia is something to be overcome.
Iván Merker
Auróra is the essence of liberal escapism. Gólya is a place for lifestyle marxism. Feel them unrelated. Real underground places are nonexistent officially. Agree about Szimpla. Mostly similar point of view on Kispál.