Jazz on Bones: X-Ray Sound Recordings

[Dave Monroe]

In the USSR and Eastern Europe in the 1950s
underground night spots would play music pirated from
the west. The only media they had were recorders
etched into discarded X-ray film. I've long sought
some images. Researcher Camille Cloutier pointed me to
these, collected and posted by József Hajdú. Here's
what he says about them:

During the late 1930s and early 1940s the prevalent
sound recording apparatus was the wax disk cutter. As
a consequence of the lack of materials in the war-time
economy, some inventive sound hunters made their own
experiments with new materials within their reach.

I do not know the name of the inventor who first
utilized discarded medical X-ray film as the base
material for new record discs; however, the method
became so widespread in Hungary that not only
amateurs, but the Hungarian Radio made sound
recordings on such recycled X-ray films.

I felt that those X-ray record albums relate to our
contemporary lives in many ways, especially when
considering such terms as 'multimedia' or 'recycling'.
I copied the X-ray films with their engraved
sound-grooves on photosensitive paper and made
enlargements of certain details.

I was quite lucky to find a considerable amount of
similar sound records in private collections. These
are also interesting from the visual aspect. By
utilizing different photographic processes, I created
from them pictures meant to be exhibited in galleries.


In an online paper called  The Historical Political
Development of Soviet Rock Music, Trey Drake, at the
University of California, Santa Cruz offers further
historical perspective on this street use of
technology: 

Owing to the lack of recordings of Western music
available in the USSR, people had to rely on records
coming through Eastern Europe, where controls on
records were less strict, or on the tiny influx of
records from beyond the iron curtain. Such
restrictions meant the number of recordings would
remain small and precious. But enterprising young
people with technical skills learned to duplicate
records with a converted phonograph that would "press"
a record using a very unusual material for the
purpose; discarded x-ray plates. This material was
both plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications
of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed
by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which
is akin to the samizdat that was the notorious
tradition of self-publication among banned writers in
the USSR. According to rock historian Troitsky, the
one-sided x-ray disks costed about one to one and a
half rubles each on the black market, and lasted only
a few months, as opposed to around five rubles for a
two-sided vinyl disk. By the late 50's, the officials
knew about the roentgenizdat, and made it illegal in
1958. Officials took action to break up the largest
ring in 1959, sending the leaders to prison, beginning
an orginization by the Komsomol of "music patrols"
that later undertook to curtail illegal music activity
all over the country.

http://www.kk.org/streetuse/archives/2006/08/jazz_on_bones_xray_sound_recor_1.php

The ways in which the young people dealt with the
attitude of the officials in the Soviets and the
general distaste and ignorance of the older generation
toward their emerging pop culture is interesting and,
at times, ingenious. Owing to the lack of recordings
of Western music available in the USSR, people had to
rely on records coming through Eastern Europe, where
controls on records were less strict, or on the tiny
influx of records from beyond the iron curtain. Such
restrictions meant the number of recordings would
remain small and precious. But enterprising young
people with technical skills learned to duplicate
records with a converted phonograph that would "press"
a record using a very unusual material for the
purpose; discarded x-ray plates. This material was
both plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications
of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed
by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which
is akin to the samizdat that was the notorious
tradition of self-publication among banned writers in
the USSR. According to rock historian Troitsky, the
one-sided x-ray disks costed about one to one and a
half rubles each on the black market, and lasted only
a few months, as opposed to around five rubles for a
two-sided vinyl disk. By the late 50's, the officials
knew about the roentgenizdat, and made it illegal in
1958. Officials took action to break up the largest
ring in 1959, sending the leaders to prison, beginning
an orginization by the Komsomol of "music patrols"
that later undertook to curtail illegal music activity
all over the country.

http://www.powerhat.com/tusovka/tus.ch1.html#howyoung-records

The Jazz-Rock Counterculture is Born

http://www.powerhat.com/tusovka/tus.ch1.html

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