Now appearing in the lounge at the Budapest Holiday Inn: the Tóth Bagi Band, performing a selection of blues standards and originals in a dance-floor-ready style, sure to please locals and visitors from around the world. Happy hour from 5-7 PM – all appetizers half price. Don’t miss it! At least that’s what these two releases by Hungary’s Tóth Bagi Band sound like. Another Blues World consists of their versions of well-known tunes like “Strange Brew”, “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “The Thrill Is Gone”, and “Cocaine”, and while I can’t really fault the musicianship, I can’t see why anybody would choose to listen to it. The guitar playing is the highlight, but even the best string-slinging can’t make up for the stock keyboard sounds and mediocre vocals. Kell, hogy hazudj features (as far as I can tell) original music, but the overall style is the same, with a slight hint of fusion to it. These are pretty decent players, and Bagi himself is a good guitarist, but the lack of anything original to the style makes it hard to recommend to anyone but the most die-hard of Hungarian collectors.

Jon Davis