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An Amazing BBC ‘Bootleg Report’ from 1971

April 10, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I previously wrote about bootleg culture in the age of streaming and reminisced on the simple days of CD bootlegs sold in my own record shop. Now my pal Kenn Richards — via his essential Research {Curation} Reduction newsletter — alerted me to this 14-minute BBC documentary from 1971 examining the bootleg scene in London at the time. Holy cats, this is wonderful.

The video features incredible quotes and contributions from Led Zeppelin manager Peter ‘no one heavier than me’ Grant, ‘The’ Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon who prefers to be in a bag. Also, it’s so quaint how the guy who manufactures bootlegs and the other guy who sells them (at a Virgin Records, no less) are so open and casual and like ¯_(ツ)_/¯ about it.

Here’s some bonus content from the same year: Neil Young discovering bootlegs of his own work in a Los Angeles record store. Watch the guy behind the counter — his uncomfortable body language as Young starts flipping through the bins is priceless.

Filed Under: Items of Note Tagged With: Bootlegs, Documentary, Email Newsletters, London, Los Angeles, Pink Floyd

Music On The Bones

December 22, 2015 · Leave a Comment

The latest Fugitive Waves podcast discusses the fascinating history of Soviet ‘bone records’:

Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, ingenious Russians began recording banned bootlegged jazz, boogie woogie and rock ‘n’ roll on exposed X-ray film salvaged from hospital waste bins and archives.

“They would cut the X-ray into a crude circle with manicure scissors and use a cigarette to burn a hole,” says author Anya von Bremzen. “You’d have Elvis on the lungs, Duke Ellington on Aunt Masha’s brain scan — forbidden Western music captured on the interiors of Soviet citizens.”


Listen to the podcast here:

Fast Company:

These records only played on a single side, and the quality was low, but they were extremely cheap: A single disc only cost about one ruble on the black market, as opposed to five rubles for a two sided-disc. And it was subversive. According to Artemy Troitsky’s 1987 book Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia, they often contained surprises for the listener: “Let’s say, a few seconds of American rock’n’roll, then a mocking voice in Russian asking: “So, thought you’d take a listen to the latest sounds, eh?” followed by a few choice epithets addressed to fans of stylish rhythms, then silence.”

Soon, an entire underground network of bone music record distributors popped up, called the roentgenizdat, or X-Ray press. Analogous to the samizdat that reproduced censored publications across the Soviet bloc, the roentgenizdat was soon distributing millions of Western records.


Here’s a great TED Talk on X-ray bone records where Stephen Coates asks the question, “What would you risk for the sake of music?”:

And here’s a lively debate over on Discogs.com on whether bone records should be included and cataloged on the site.

Filed Under: Items of Note Tagged With: Bootlegs, e0e0e0, Music History, Russia, Soviet Untion, Vinyl

8sided.blog

 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

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