Yesterday László Ipacs, one of the founding members of the legendary Vágtázó Halottkémek (Galloping Coroners) died at the age of 65. I never heard them play in concert. I only began listening to them and reading about them last February—and slowly found my way to recordings that include the original lineup. One of these is the exhilarating album A Halál móresre tanítása from 1988. If I put that together with descriptions of their live shows, I can start to imagine what it might have been like to be at one of their concerts during the Soviet era, when no such thing was allowed and no one else was making music like this.
The founding guitarist, Sándor Czakó, is the father of Cz.K. Sebő; Platon Karataev sometimes covers “Halló mindenség.” That, along with “Élő Világegyetem,” “Nincs más megoldás” and “Hunok csatája” are some of my favorites so far, but there’s lots more to hear.)
The loss to Hungary is profound. The Galloping Coroners did what no one else had done before and no one to my knowledge has done since. All three founding members were physicists and musicians. They had no fear, at least no visible fear. They took to the stage (starting in 1975, I think) and played ecstatically until the police broke the concerts up. Clubs that allowed them to play would get fined. Clubs invited them anyway. According to legend, they were used to playing extremely short shows—because they would always get halted by the authorities—but one night, no one interrupted them, and they suddenly had to improvise. The resulting concert ended up influencing their music to come.
It wasn’t just their daring onstage that made them stand out (in my understanding), but their defiance of typical divisions between academic and popular pursuits, between classical, punk, and other music, and between who knows what else.
The band went through lineup changes over the years, but it could never have existed without the original members, whose music still offers hope of a beautiful, soulful outspokenness. I am sorry that one of them is gone.
Photo courtesy of Recorder.blog.hu.
I made some additions to this piece after posting it.
Take Away the Takeaway 