Bone records, punk music

[abraham]

Inspired by the old fucks sharing memories of shows I didn't exist for, the what was your first record thread, the war in Ukraine, and going to my first show in 2 years.

I started learning about music, mostly by unsupervised wandering on the internet. It was a strange time anchored in my memory by 9/11 for whatever reason. I remember hanging around reading totse, reading about bomb making and having a weird feeling I shouldn't be there. Napster and limewire were expanding friends' music collections but I didn't know what I wanted to listen to. Many blogs didn't embed songs but instead had mp3s files to download then listen to.

One of the most fascinating blogs was a guy who collected Soviet and post Soviet punk music. It was a window into a scene I didn't know anything about. For 5? 15? 20? bucks you could get a shipment with a random assortment of bone records. Would you know any of the bands? Of course not. Would they be good? I don't think that was the point. Did I have a record player? No. Did I trust sending money to a stranger on the internet and having a package mailed to my parents? Fuck no, there was anthrax in the mail. Did I even have a way to send money? Probably not. So I never got them.

What are bone records? Black market records made on x-ray film, Also called music on ribs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribs_(recordings)

Medical X-rays, purchased or picked out of the trash from hospitals and clinics, were used to create the recordings. The X-rays were cut into 7-inch discs and the center hole was burned into the disc with a cigarette. According to Russian music critic and rock journalist Artemy Troitsky, "grooves were cut [at 78rpm] with the help of special machines (made, they say, from old phonographs by skilled conspiratorial hands)"; he added that the "quality was awful, but the price was low, a ruble or a ruble and a half." The disks could be played five to ten times.

Stephen Coates found some and got really into researching them. And created the x-ray audio project. There's a blog here that's a pretty interesting look into another space. https://www.x-rayaudio.com/x-rayaudioblog
And an interview with him. https://032c.com/magazine/x-ray-audio
And I guess they made a documentary.




So, some Ukrainian punk. The cios:


Bezlad:

[Flyoverland Captive]

Strange music is my passion; this is awesome. Thanks for this.

[abraham]

Strange music is my passion; this is awesome. Thanks for this.

Last night I figured out one of the places I looked at was TAM89 records. They don't have a site any more but some of it is on archive.org. If you want a place to look for strange music it at least gives you a ton of names.

Tian An Men 89 or 天安门 89 唱片, is a punk rock label mostly operating out of France (has also operated from Uganda, Abkhazia and other places) that specializes in limited-edition vinyl releases from Asia, The Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union. Releases are distributed worldwide through DIY networks.

Tian An Men 89 Records was created in 1993 for the purpose of releasing punk music from parts of the world where, due to financial reasons, civil wars, or lack of record factories, there is no possibility for the bands to release their music on vinyl.

This 08 interview with Luk Haas who ran the label is fascinating. https://www.maximumrocknroll.com/bla...am-89-records/

From: http://musicruinedmylife.blogspot.co...-1990.html?m=1

The Pravda line on on punk went like this; "The music and lyrics of punk rock provoke among the young fits of aimless rage, vandalism, and the urge to destroy everything they get their hands on. No matter how carefully they try to clean it up, it will remain the most reactionary offspring of the bourgeoisie mass culture." That meant that punks weren't just getting marginalized in the Soviet Union but were getting threatened, harassed and even institutionalized. (A story I once read on these broad Internets had it thusly, "In in the former USSR, records were commonly homemade using discarded medical x-rays. These records, nicknamed "Bones", were usually inscribed with illegal copies of popular music banned by the government. They also became a popular means of distribution among Soviet punk bands; in addition to the high cost and low availability of vinyl, punk music was politically suppressed, and publishing outlets were limited".)

This picture from that blog is worth reposting here.