You would think, "Why would that mambo be regarded as something worth forbidding?" And it led to a different world, really, a world of freedom, not obviously anti-Soviet. I mean, talking to people who bought these records when they were young - even the tiniest thread of melody, of this forbidden sound, was so exciting. But that didn't seem to matter, in some ways. Listening to some of these, the quality's actually not bad considering how they were made. They'd go home and put it on and it could have been anything, and they were like, "Yeah, that's Bill Haley. So there's lots of stories about people buying these records, and they may not have even known what "Rock Around the Clock" sounded like. We did hear a funny thing, which was that if you asked for a particular song - say, "Rock Around the Clock" - and the dealer didn't have it, quite often they would say, "Yeah, I've got that," and they would go in the corner and write "Rock Around the Clock" on one of their other records and give it to you. These records were bought and sold on street corners, in dark alleyways, in the park.
It was a bit like dealing or buying drugs, actually. People who came into his shop observed what he was doing, and, as is the Russian way, they "bootlegged" his machine and made their own machines. That war trophy was what's called a recording lathe: It's like a gramophone in reverse, a device which you can use to write the grooves of music onto plastic. Petersburg - Leningrad, as it was then - a guy turned up, and he had a war trophy with him. The Second World War is over but a much colder war has begun, and in the Soviet Union a lot of culture was subject to a censor, whether it be art, paintings, architecture, film.
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What can you tell us about how they figured out how to do this, and how widespread this practice was? I found all these things out by discovery, and went from there. It plays at 78 - that was the first thing to find out - and it's only one-sided, as well. They've got a groove on them it's often very faint because it's very shallow. If you see these things, they've got a hole in the middle. Well, the thing is, it looks like a record. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below. He's collected his findings in a new book called X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone, and he joined NPR's Michel Martin to talk about it. So I started to dig, and that has led me on a very strange journey."Ĭoates is now an obsessive of what is nicknamed "bone music" - makeshift LPs etched into used X-rays, which were playable on a turntable and provided a fitting disguise for their contraband contents. But I brought it back to London, and I was fascinated by it.
"They guy whose stall it was was a bit dismissive - I think he wanted me to buy something else. "I thought, 'Is that a record? Or is it an X-ray?' I picked it up, and it seemed to be both," he recounts. Petersburg, he was strolling through a flea market when a strange item caught his eye. Stephen Coates, the leader of a British band called The Real Tuesday Weld, happened on this secret history by accident. But a few industrious music fans managed to find another way.
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State censorship was in full effect in the Soviet Union, and sneaking in, say, an American rock record was close to impossible. Western music may have been changing the world in the 1950s, but if you happened to be in Russia you were out of luck. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title X Ray Audio Author Stephen Coates
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