A Beatles Bone

It is difficult to comprehend or over estimate the effect that hearing certain Western music such as the Beatles on X-Ray records had on some young Soviet people. In the case of Kolya Vasin, still widely known in Russia as 'The Beatles Guy', it literally transformed his life - he has pretty much devoted himself to the Fab Four ever since.  His apartment in St Petersburg is a temple to them. 

Here is one of his Beatles Bones - painstakingly customised with the faces of John, Paul, Ringo and George.  It maybe the first one he bought but he never plays it - it is too important and has the status of a sacred object for him. The musical score on the disc doesn't appear to be a Beatles tune.

There is more on my encounter with him last year here.

The 'Age of the Bones'

This cartoon shows a scene poking fun both at the Soviet authorities and those involved in the culture of X-Ray records.

The scene is a club or cafe.  Patrons (perhaps the famous 'Stilyagi', or cold-war era soviet hipsters) are interrupted jiving to Rock and Roll by a policeman who has been alerted by an upright, and uptight good communist comrade. The background mural shows a cosmonaut, probably Yuri Gagarin a great symbol of official pride, but in the foreground, sharp dressed flash boys drink western liquor and do shady deals.

On the table are several Bone records but two customers are bowled over by the sight of apparently real actual Western vinyl records - one, Bill Haley's 'Rock around the Clock' (a great favourite amongst Bone buyers) and another unspecified Jazz record. The cover of the latter shows a rather racist parody of a black face (one of the reasons Jazz was banned was that it was often of black or gypsy origin and considered to be low culture).  

Whilst the practice of making bootlegs on X-Rays was largely pioneered by music lovers, selling them could be a lucrative business and therefore attracted its share of spivs. Punters did not always get what they had paid for..

How to Play an X-Ray Record - now

X-Ray records can be played on any conventional turntable although they are nearly all recorded at 78rpm and so should best be  played with a suitable needle.

Like most flexi-discs the quality is usually not good - the grooves are shallow and they deteriorated fairly quickly. The quality being more akin to a third generation cheap cassette than a standard vinyl record.

When I was with Rudy Fuchs, an original Bone bootlegger,  he played me the Al Bowlly song 'Guilty' on a Bone (Bowlly being a personal favourite of us both).  He used a record player from the eighties but even with a weight on the stylus had to continually speed and slow down the turntable by hand to get any half-way recognisable tune from it.

How to Play an X-Ray Record - Then

Here is a typical soviet era portable record player, the "Jubileyniy RG -3", which could have been used to play X-Ray records. It first appeared in stores in 1957 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. There was also a modification - the "Jubileyniy RG-3M" - released in 1960. They were assembled at the Leningrad factory named after the Soviet politician Zhdanov. 

The price of the Jubileyniy RG-3M in 1960 was 590 roubles (the rouble was the re-valued in the late 1992)

Note: The disc shown on the turntable here is a flexi from my collection.  It is very unusual - a Georgian song satirising Krushchev.  The image shows Stalin bonking him on the head with his pipe for messing things up after Stalin had died.

To be found making such an image or song, would of course have got the author in trouble - although probably not with Stalin..

Forbidden X-Ray Music

Music contained on X-Ray records was mostly banned. Sometimes they did contain bootlegged approved songs (sold more cheaply than the versions in the shops) but generally the content was forbidden and from three sources:

• Western music. Rhythms such as tango or styles such as Jazz by artists like Ella Fitzgerald were forbidden as being a general bad influence and sometimes specifically anti-soviet. 
• Russian music made by emigres or defectors such as Pyotr Leshchenko (pictured). Whatever their repertoire, such artists were seen as treacherous and their work inherently anti-soviet even if it had previously been approved.
• Russian music by unofficial artists such Arcady Severnyj.  To officially perform and record,  artists would need to be vetted by the state censor.  Many folk songs or the 'criminal' or 'gulag' songs known as blatnyak, whilst not obviously anti-establishment were regarded as being of low culture and not conducive to the ideals of social realism.

Skeleton Satire

As well as facing punishment if caught, those making X-Ray recordings were satirised by state organs. They were referred to as "pisaki” (literally “writers” or 'recorders" but a pejorative term).  The illustration below is from the book "Bull by the Horns" (1962) by the official poet Yurii Blagoff. It contains verses ridiculing such pisaki, saying something like:

"Musical assholes

Selling x-ray vinyls

For the stomach, samba

And for between the ribs, mamba"

('Ribs' is an alternative to the slang name of 'Bones' for the x-ray records). There are stories of recordings being made which contained voices (possibly official) mocking the listener after a few bars of the forbidden music they had been anticipating.

The X-Ray recordings perhaps had a status something like that enjoyed by illegal drugs today - looked down on as being low culture but secretly enjoyed by a bohemian class. They were traded in a similar way to drugs - by dealers who would lurk in public squares or via private contacts for those in the know.  

Whilst being caught in possession would result in confiscation and punishment such as expulsion from the party, being caught manufacturing or selling could result in years in prison.

Courtesy Sergey Stavitskiy 

Cigarette Burn Spindle Holes

Courtesy Valeriy

The X-Ray plates used for recording were rectangular sheets. They would be cut into a circle shape with scissors. To be played on a gramophone or record player, they would need a central spindle hole.  Often this was made by applying  a lit cigarette - the perfect size.  

Courtesy Yuriy Boyarintsev 

The lower example shown below ('Don't Wake Me' from the opera Werther) has two holes - the second was to keep the plate in place during the writing process on certain devices provided with a second spindle for the purpose.

1940s X-Ray Tutorial

This is an image from a 1940s Soviet Radio Ham magazine called “Radiofront”.  The article describes how to use a homemade attachment to a gramophone to make a recording to a plastic matrix - e.g. a used X-ray plate.  

Soviet amateur radio magazines of the time  often described DIY devices for making such recordings. Usually the articles claimed that such devices would allow radio amateurs to record broadcasts of speeches by the Soviet leaders (Stalin, Molotov, et al) to preserve them for posterity. But instead, the technique was actually used to copy recordings by Pyotr Leshchenko and other banned artists. With the advent of more professional  devices copied or adapted from those brought home as war trophies by Russian soldiers after WWII, such articles disappeared.  

With thanks to Yuriy Gladkiy

Home Made Recording Needle

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Courtesy Yuriy Gladkiy.

Needles to cut the X-Ray recordings had by necessity to be home-made. Here is an example - probably made secretly in a factory or machine shop. 

With thanks to Yuriy Gladkiy