"Metropolitan Life"
"Consumer"
"Nyet Nyet Soviet (Soviet Jewellery)"
"Laser Love"
"Moscow Drug Club"
Side B
"Underground World"
"All the Time"
"Hunger, Poverty & Misery"
"Ooh Mama"
"Big Yellow Taxi
BB Gabor was a popular Hungarian-born Toronto musician at the forefront the bludgeoning Queen Street West musical scene, with topical songs criticizing contemporary Western consumer society as well as attacking Communist Russia. Since his family had to flee to England during Hungarian Revolution, his disdain for Russian politics is clear in his music. His self-titled LP was a favorite of alternative radio station cfny 102.1 fm, and BB Gabor was awarded a U-Now award for best male vocalist.
The album spawned three singles (the first three songs of Side A), with "Nyet Nyet Soviet (Soviet Jewellery)" the biggest hit, as a blistering attack on Soviet oppressiveness ("KGB is coming to take me away...They call me a dissident, Well you're better dead than Red"). P.S. 'Soviet Jewellery' means handcuffs.
"Metropolitan Life" is a spoof on the life insurance industry ("You can Survive, but it all Depends") and the challenges of living in a big urban center ("Look around Downtown, everywhere there's Concrete").
"Consumer" is a scathing commentary on modern consumption-minded society. This song has not lost its resonance in 32 years. Listen to these lyric; "Discount prices, people Scrambling, Shoppers' mall is Mesmerized, Pretty Sales Girls, very Charming, their eyes are there to Hypnotize" or my favorite line, "The More you Eat, the More you want, Just look at the Advertising."
Spacey "Laser Love" and the funny bar-song "Moscow Drug Club" with it's great line "Where the Reds play the Blues" also garnered some airplay, making Side A back to back with recognizable gems.
Side B is far more mellow and introspective, from tender homages to his girlfriend "All the Time" and his mother "Ooh Mama" and Joni Mitchell in a jazzy re-make of "Big Yellow Taxi". BB Gabor does not lose his edge, however in the Orwellian "Underground World".
But the heart-rendering standout on Side B is "Hunger, Poverty & Misery". Financial success was to evade BB Gabor throughout his life in Canada, and he could not rise to his satisfaction above his day-to-day existence "I know there's things in Life other than Money: Hunger, Poverty and Misery". The song reveals BB Gabor deepest fear: "My future is Still Undecided, the Razor's Edge Might Still Cut Me Through".
Sadly, this poverty mindset was to plague him throughout his life, and in 1990 BB Gabor was found dead of an apparent suicide. I remember thinking, one year later, on a bright sunny day at the Bambo restaurant in his beloved Queen St West neighborhood, that it was a crying shame BB Gabor just missed seeing Communism fall throughout Eastern Europe and his dreaded USSR. Happy endings were beyond him at that point.
BB Gabor was New Wave pioneer and an original whose music was ahead of its time. I wish we could have heard more from this talented artist, whose short body of work is still relevant and oddly modern in 2012.
John, Thanks for that wonderful reminder of B.B. Gabor'strend-setting contribution to New Wave music from the early 80's. I'm takenback by the clean, modern pop sound that Gabor crafted over thirty years ago. Hardto believe. I don't own a record-player so I'm hoping whoever owns the rightsto this material has the good sense to issue it in CD format sometime soon.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff indeed. I had the pronounced bounty of talking with BB Gabor during a few breaks while band members took a break. He took a liking to me because I mentioned I had read James Michener's Bridge at Andau, which narrated the Hungarian Uprising of 1957. On the few occasions I saw him perform, he always noticed me and sought me out at break times. - Ma Tian De
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. I've been listening to that cassette since I was 8 yrs old although I could not understand all the meanings back then (alsi because French is my first language! Lol). But I always liked his music.I came to enjoy the lyrics later on. Some are still relevant indeed! Too sad that he suicided...
ReplyDeleteThanks for this. I looked up BB and can't believe my ears as I listen to the album and read the comments above. I remember seeing him after work in a Winnipeg beverage room by the airport in about '77 with a sparse audience (it was a Tuesday so hopefully his audience grew over the week), but it was the kind of bar that normally booked cover bands. So BB Gabor was completely unique in that environment - our table was riveted! Others in the bar, not so much - it's as though they couldn't handle hearing anything new at all or couldn't understand what they were hearing. BB stopped at one point, and started talking to the audience, asking if we wanted to hear some Led Zeppelin, or some Rolling Stones, etc., and when in response he got some clapping and shouting, he witheringly told the room what labels those records could be found on. I thought it was a hilarious way of pointing out that - uh, here is some original music, people, listen up, we're not a cover band! But it also stuck with me over the years because there was something awfully sad and maddening about an original artist playing to a completely wrong room and his talent falling on (basically) deaf ears. I sure hope he found his audience, if not that week at the Black Knight, then in a later booking. So sad to find out he died before his time.
ReplyDeleteI had always wondered what became of BB Gabor. His anti Soviet songs went against the grain of the political correctness of much of the Canadian media at that time. I also wonder now if he may have suffered a similar fate to Georgi Markov another Hungarian vocal critic of the Soviet Union who died from ricin injected from an umbrella in London, England years before.
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