How Music Was Smuggled Into Soviet Russia On X-Rays
by Ivan Farkas
I sometimes feel like there's too much music nowadays; just countless songs and even genres, whose loss we would never miss. But in Soviet Russia (I promise I'm not making that joke), people risked their freedom for their favorite song. Or really, any song that wasn't state-approved — and many of them arrived by way of etchings on used X-rays.
Music from the West was understandably outlawed, but so were most compositions that didn't glorify farmwork or nationalism. Even folkloric tunes were banned if they didn't inspire national pride of the right kind. Especially frowned upon were the Blatnaya pesny, or "criminal songs," that highlighted the crappiness of daily Soviet life. And if you wanted to record your own stuff, you had to be a member of the composers’ union, which was an invitation-only type of thing.
But X-rays offered an ideal combination of characteristics: They boasted nice plasticity, were easy to etch, and even easier to transport. Plus, there were a lot of them, because hospitals were constantly throwing them out lest they become a heaping pile of flammability. So they were scavenged from the trash or bought illegally at the back doors of radiology departments.
The result was that one could purchase audio X-rays on most dimly lit street corners. You may not have bought the song you actually wanted, and you’re certainly not getting sparkling sound quality. But what you did get was a distraction from your daily gruel and toil. And soon you'd buy another, because they wore out quickly.
Also called "bones" or "ribs," they endured from the late 1940s to the 1960s. They originated post-WWII when a man brought a "war trophy" back to Leningrad: a recording lathe. This was basically an illegal music ripper that could physically carve a track into an alternate surface, which could be played just like a record. And of course, this being one of the bootlegiest times in one of the bootlegiest countries ever, people copied the machine itself. And thus, "Rock Around the Clock" invaded the iron side of the Iron Curtain.
The crappy quality didn't detract from anything, either. In fact, a low-quality version of a forbidden thing turns out to be more titillating than a high-quality legal thing. Which ... think about that for a minute. Next time you're vibing to your favorite tune, ask yourself: Would I risk getting sent to a Gulag for this? Would I die for “Mambo No. 5?”
