WEBVTT - Who Pressed Records onto Human X-Ray Vinyl?

0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:05.320
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:12.360
<v Speaker 1>Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. Creating your favorite music

0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:15.160
<v Speaker 1>these days is as easy as creating a playlist, But

0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:19.480
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't always that simple. In the nineteen fifties, teenagers

0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.200
<v Speaker 1>in the Soviet Union had to go to backbreaking lengths

0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:26.200
<v Speaker 1>to listen to popular music, literally cutting records upon images

0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:28.880
<v Speaker 1>of a broken arm, leg or rib in the process.

0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.920
<v Speaker 1>Let's unpack that. In the years after World War Two,

0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.159
<v Speaker 1>the USSR took exception to music and art that seemed

0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:40.640
<v Speaker 1>too flagrantly individualized for its communist sensibilities, and this meant

0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:43.680
<v Speaker 1>that it was nearly impossible for Soviet teenagers to buy

0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.960
<v Speaker 1>the same vinyl records of Elvis or Ella Fitzgerald as

0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:50.400
<v Speaker 1>their counterparts in the United States and Western Europe. Aside

0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.239
<v Speaker 1>from a few expensive copies on the black market, The

0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.560
<v Speaker 1>music craved by the still Yaggi or style hunters in

0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:00.520
<v Speaker 1>their teens and twenties was elusive, but as with other

0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.600
<v Speaker 1>attempts at prohibition, a ban on music did not mean

0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:06.399
<v Speaker 1>that there wasn't a demand for it. The still Yagi

0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:10.000
<v Speaker 1>were particularly interested in rock and roll in jazz, though

0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.160
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't just Western music that caught the eye of

0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.480
<v Speaker 1>the sensors, music that people had grown up with. Anything

0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.800
<v Speaker 1>considered subversive was subject to bands, and so when they

0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:22.840
<v Speaker 1>wanted to share their beloved music with others, a few

0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:28.160
<v Speaker 1>industrious teens pressed the records that they could access onto vinyl. However,

0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:30.959
<v Speaker 1>vinyl was a scarcity, and that's when one of the

0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:35.160
<v Speaker 1>ingenuities of a generation kicked in. The Still Yaggy scoured

0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.800
<v Speaker 1>hospital dumpsters for scrapped X rays and used these thin

0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.919
<v Speaker 1>vinyl sheets to create bootleg records. Using a disc cutter,

0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:45.880
<v Speaker 1>they duplicate a recording onto the X ray, trim the

0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.080
<v Speaker 1>disc by hand, and burn a hole in the center

0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.160
<v Speaker 1>with a cigarette. The same process was illustrated in the

0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:53.960
<v Speaker 1>opening credits of the two thousand eight Russian film Still Yaggy.

0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:59.320
<v Speaker 1>The recordings, imposed over X ray images of skulls, arms, legs, ribs,

0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:03.840
<v Speaker 1>and other bones quickly earned the nicknames bone records, bone music,

0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:07.920
<v Speaker 1>and simply ribs, and spawned an entire cottage industry that

0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:11.800
<v Speaker 1>included distributors known as the x ray press. Today, the

0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.520
<v Speaker 1>records are so rare that they're curated into books and

0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:17.960
<v Speaker 1>exhibits displayed in museums and the very few copies still

0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.440
<v Speaker 1>being found are sold to private collectors for hundreds of dollars.

0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:26.200
<v Speaker 1>During the height of bone recordings popularity, Soviet authorities attempted

0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.320
<v Speaker 1>to squash their distribution, going so far as to dispatch

0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:33.560
<v Speaker 1>informants posing as record buyers, and some bone records distributed

0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.399
<v Speaker 1>were undercover bait and switches supposedly created by the authorities,

0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.400
<v Speaker 1>containing only a few bars of music before stern voice

0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:45.080
<v Speaker 1>would utter dire pro government warnings. By the nineteen sixties, however,

0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.520
<v Speaker 1>the need for bone records waned because of loosened restrictions

0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.680
<v Speaker 1>and the advent of other recording devices like real to

0:02:51.760 --> 0:03:01.120
<v Speaker 1>real tape recorders. Today's episode was written by Laura L.

0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.639
<v Speaker 1>Dove and produced by Tyler clang Or. More on this

0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.919
<v Speaker 1>and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuffworks dot com.

0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:09.720
<v Speaker 1>Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts

0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.680
<v Speaker 1>for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:14.519
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.