How Rock N Roll Came To Russia

I was reading and I came across this fascinating bit of rock n roll history first ya might wanna give a listen to these couple of minutes of the Elvis Presley Song “Heartbreak Hotel” I’m sure you know the song and I’m sure you will listen to it and think WOW That’s what they had to listen to?

That recording was made onto a discarded X Ray and its quality is quite good considering how it was done.

Now here is the story behind that and other recordings. And it all happened in my lifetime.

Long before cassettes, computers, recordable CDs, and Bit Torrents, sharing music with your friends wasn’t easy. This was particularly true of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, where citizens were forbidden to even own entire categories of music, specially jazz, rock and roll and rhythm and blues. There was only one record company, Melodiya, and being state owned it echoed government policy towards music. “Musicians such as these, who have plunged to the depth of musical decline, do not deserve a place on Soviet records.”

One thing you can count on, where there is a demand for something, and a chance to make a profit, there will be a way.

Outside Russia, it was possible to buy or rent a portable record cutting machine, a heavy suit case sized device that would cut a custom recording on a record blank. These machines became pretty popular during World War II, when soldiers separated from their families could send and receive disks as talking letters, but could also make personal recordings so they could hear themselves (usually for the first time) talking, telling jokes and singing.

Needless to say these record cutting machines were not available in the Russia, where even typewriters were difficult to come by. Both were seen as a way of spreading unauthorized personal and political expression, an unwelcome activity in a police state. but the something happened that briefly opened up the Russian borders and brought some of the outside world to its citizenry: World War II. Germany attacked Russia.  When the Red Army and the Russian Winter battled the Nazis to a standstill, Germany eventually pulled back.  The Red Army pushed forward pushing the Germans back into their own border and using the opportunity to occupy and seize eastern Europe.  Suddenly Russian farmboys were being exposed to the alluring temptations of big cities like Krakow, Prague, Zagreb and Berlin.  They weren’t exactly London, Paris and New York City but to a Russian they may as well have been:  Things like stylish clothes and other consumer goods. So were exciting new kinds of forbidden music from the West, like Big Band, Jazz and R & B.

Pretty soon, musical recordings were being smuggled into Russia hidden in soldier’s gear, to be played on home phonographs…quietly so the neighbors wouldn’t turn them into the secret police. Some of the more enterprising soldiers returned with more dangerous and outrageous contraband: The recording machines they bought (or took as spoils of war) from the local population.

But there was a problem: The machines required a blank disk for every record made. Once their initial supply ran out the Russians were out of luck. The blank disks weren’t available in Russia, threatening to make the machines useless. But Russians were used to shortagesof almost everything and they got good at converting whatever they could scrounge into what they needed. They focused their efforts into finding something cheap and plentiful that might be useable as a recording medium.

It had to be soft enough to accept a cut from a vibrating needle. After experimenting with foils, glossy cardboards, sheet metal, and who knows what else. Someone finally found a solution, in hospital trash bins.

Nobody knows who first came up with the idea that a discarded X Ray might make a good record, they were certainly plentiful, hospitals discarded them regularly so people could pick them up for free or buy them from others who did for just a few kopecs.

These used plastic sheets, though flexible were thick enough and firm enough to hold the etchings of the recording machine.  The sound wasn’t great and the tended to warp and didn’t last a long time but they were cheap and better than the alternative, which was no music at all.

The records became known as “Bone Rock” or “Rib Rock” they first required cutting the sheets into circles with a hole at the center long before Heavy Metal and Goth made skulls and bones a staple of rock imagery Russian rock fans were buying one sided recordings of John Coltrane, Elvis, Buddy Holly and The Platters decorated with X-Rays of skulls, ribs, hips and bones usually selected and centered for the best visual presentation.

The relatively few voice recording machines looted during the war weren’t enough to keep up with the demand for bootleg music.  the loose network of record makers known as Roentgenizdat labouriously made an estimated 3 million records, one at a time, during the 1950’s and 1960’s. According to accounts from Russians photograph salons got in on the act too, buying machines to cut “audio postcards” for customers then using them at night to copy records.  Black marketers also figured out that they could turn two phonographs into a duplicating  machine by playing a record on one and routing the audio into the other with a heavy arm adapted to scratch the vibrations into the blank.

A huge underground market developed. Records generally came marked with a cryptic number, but no names of songs or artists, which helped avoid incrimination if discovered by the authorities. The music was pretty much whatever the bootleggers could get their hands on.

One reliable source of contraband records was Finnish and Swedish sailors, who were allowed to dock at the ports of Lenningrad and Riga. Popular in the 1950’s were Little Richard,  and Bill Haley and the Comets from the USA and British acts like Tommy Steele and Johnny and the Hurricanes.  In the 60’s it was the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Motown.

In addition to being what the people wanted the records were also cheap.  An official disk from the state record company cost 5 rubles, a weeks worth of lunches for the average working man in Russia. A “Rib Rock” recording cost only one ruble, the equivalent of skipping a single lunch.

It took the a while but finally the authorities got fed up and cracked down. First they put out their own Rib Rock recording that would start like the music then launch into a tirade about the listener being anti-Russian. In 1958 it became illegal to even own a “Rib Record”, producers and sellers were arrested and sent to work camps.  People continued to listen to the records though because they felt like it was worth the risk.

In the early 1970’s “Rib Records” started becoming obsolete, as the rest of the world began discovering “cassettes”.   The Soviet Union went a different direction and reel to reel recorders began being available in record stores.  The sound quality was far better and it was easier to make copies for friends, additionally they could record shortwave radio broadcasts from Radio Luxembourg and other Western sources that were no longer being “jammed” by Soviet Authorities.

X Ray records are an interesting bit of Rock N Roll History that no doubt is very similar to the history of porn here in the USA.  Again as with prohibition, the War on Drugs, and countless other policies the bottom line is that if people want it, they will get it.  A market will emerge to supply it and the government will sooner or later have to accept that the people want it and will get it.

It’s hard to believe that in this day and age of modern technology and advanced understanding of human nature and sociology we still don’t get it.

Ok that’s it for the educational part of our programming…..hope y’all found this as interesting as I did.