A Good List Goes a Long Way: 2019 Edition

Sometime halfway into December I realized we are approaching the end of a decade (or not, depends on how you count it) and felt maybe I should do some sort of a roundup/celebration. Then immediately also realized that I have, in spite of what I consider a decent memory, no clear recollection of what I…

How a Lute Creates the World- Josef Van Wissem @ A38

The boat shimmers in the distance, neon reflections over the Danube on an eerily balmy October evening. I always feel a thrill when I get off the tram at Petőfi Híd, Budai hídfő- the name itself has become synonymous with intimations of happiness, hours of respite from the madness of our world, swaying on the…

A Tale of Two Franks: Best Concerts of Sziget 2019 Part One

It all began with me not really being able to tell the ‘two Sziget Franks’ apart, making silly jokes along the lines of the bands being called Frank Turner and the Sleeping Rattlesnakes and Frank Carter and the Rattled Souls. Then, absolutely out of the blue, a friend who’d loved Frank Turner very much passed…

A Case of Scandi Happy Sad:Peter Bjorn and John @ A38

For a Saturday night with a fairly well known act, the crowd was somewhat scarce, which plunged me into an analytical mood over my beer. It may be the price of the ticket, which was above the boat’s general average for a band that has not been very much in the limelight lately. The tour…

When I Grow Up I Want To Be Neneh Cherry

In an anecdote I sometimes tell my younger friends to amuse them, a considerable part of my late childhood and early teens were spent in front of our TV set, in a sort of limbo. I would turn on MTV and wait for songs I liked. The songs that came in between were marginally interesting…