When times are tough, people improvise. And back in 1950s Soviet Union, times didn’t get much tougher. Western ideas and music weren’t exactly popular back then, but banning things just makes people want them even more. Such was the case with music. Getting Jazz and rock ‘n’ roll was hard, and in the absence of tape recorders, sharing hard to find western vinyl was near impossible. But tenacious music lovers improvised with whatever they could find to listen to the music that was forbidden.
It turned out that old x-rays proved to be a reasonable medium to replicate vinyl onto. A “special device” was used to make a copy, and the resulting disks crudely cut with scissors. I can only imagine how bad these sounded — anyone who has heard really bad pressings knows how bad they can be, let alone using some Heath Robinson process to make copies of records. But needs must when the odds are against you.
It just goes to show how powerful music and ideas are, and the lengths that people will go to to hear them.
Link: Junk Culture
This is very cool.
Can’t wait for a supercool hipster to pick it up and make an out of focus video about himself cutting old X-rays…
Heard about these from my parents, who was university students in USSR in the 60’s. And about “I can only imagine how bad these sounded” – I’m pretty sure it sounded like freedom