
X-Ray Audio: Soviet-era bootleg audio recordings - obilecantrem
https://www.x-rayaudio.com/
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shrubble
Vladimir Vysotsky was a popular singer during this time period and while the
state run music publishing house did not publish his music, it was still
widely available in this format.

E.g. a quote from

[https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vladimir_Vysotsky](https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vladimir_Vysotsky)

"This was also the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's
book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could
hear Vystotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window.
Unable to completely ignore his musical phenomenon, Melodiya did release a few
of his songs on disks in the late 1970s, which, however, constituted but a
small portion of his creative work, which millions already owned on tape and
knew by heart."

~~~
malkia
Vladimir Vysotsky is my father's favorite singer. He (ex military from
Bulgaria) used to go an train with soviet forces every summer (in some
desert). But pretty much he grew up anti-establishment, listening to rock,
heavy metal, and illegal vysotsky recordings (the ones soviet government would
censure).

One summer he came back with casette and some authentic recordings from him,
but then my sister decided to sing Michael Jackson and have recorded her own
singing over the casette :) - so it's all lost, but he's able to find now lots
of material.

It's interesting, how he really loves russian culture, was military, but
despised communist, and oppressive regime. To this day he plays (maybe even
now) the IL-2 sturmovik game, where with his german, russian, ukranianian,
bulgarian and other buddies re-enacts the World War II period in flight (he
was in the Air force, and I'm glad that he was never ever to become a pilot
(due to his vision), as lots of folks from his age died in these planes, some
fathers of kids I was in school...)

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dang
Related from 6 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20221047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20221047)

2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14939295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14939295)

2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10724639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10724639)

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ixtal
Music on bones... Now it sounds like a joke, but for some people, who were
thrown to jails for selling this stuff on Soviet's black market, it sounds
literally.

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ge96
wow had to check out the site to understand literal x-ray plastic things cut
into circles then used to record audio like a record huh

