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| Svívbajok ellen, kisasszony, szedjen tangót! Various artists, Pepita LPX 17734 Made in Hungary, 1982 |
Charlotte Harbor Exhaust on Tamiami Trail is the garage I bring my car to when there's a problem with it I can't fix. It has happened too often in recent weeks. There's a little thrift store right up the street from it. It's called the Thrift Depot and I wrote about it last week, and the week before that, in respect to some Hungarian records I picked up there. So when I had to wait again a few days ago while my car was being worked on, I knew that they wouldn't have any new records at the Thrift Depot but I went nevertheless. All Hungarian records I had picked up on previous visits were really nice, and I knew there was one more I had left behind and I was going back for it. I didn't buy it last week because of the cheesy cover: How can a record with such a hideous cover be any good? Anyway, it was still there, as a matter of fact it was in the exact same spot I had left it a week earlier, right in front of one of the five rows of records situated on the floor. I spotted it the very moment I opened the door of the store. I inspected it before I forked over my dollar bill and it was fine. It was in good shape, dedicated in pen on the front cover (I would however not consider this a signed record), and that was all I could tell about this record because all the texts are in Hungarian (or Magyar). When I got home, not feeling too good because I had just spent more than a year's worth of my thrift store records budget, I immediately played the record, and all was good. As if I had gone to a doctor, just for him to a put a stethoscope on my back and tell me nothing was wrong with me. I kinda knew nothing was wrong but I needed his reassurance. (No, I don't look anything like that doctor or patient on that sleeve. I sort of look like the cross between the two of them, but older. Put her hair on him, shave off his moustache, and add a decade or two worth of age, then you've got an approximation of what I look like. I once had a very detailed dream featuring myself in a situation in Hungary around the time of the second world war. If there exists such a thing as reincarnation I surely would have been a Hungarian in my former life.) The record is full of songs that are tangos (I could have deducted that word from the Hungarian title) that sound like they could have been recorded in the late fifties or early sixties. It's a beautiful record and I picked for this week's "Song of the Week" the 4th song from side A: Ne Szólj! by the singer Mária Mezei. Almost every song could've been chosen, that's how good it really is, but since I have this tradition of posting songs sung by singers named Maria, I opted for this one.
