
When the Soviets Banned Rock Music, Teens Used X-rays to Bootleg Records - markmassie
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-hipsters-bootlegged-banned-music-bone-records-180957505/?no-ist
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delinka
The title interested me in that I was curious how X-ray images of records
could be re-rendered as audio or vinyl discs ...

But no! They took old x-ray prints and pressed the records right into them!
It's an excellent idea and one my just-awoken brain could not get to on its
own.

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4ad
I wonder if X-ray images of records _could be_ decoded as audio.

It's been done with regular pictures, there was a really good article about
this that I can't find anymore. However it should be more complicated with
x-ray images as they are a different mapping between the disc and the image.

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lostlogin
For science I'm currently trying to get someone to x-Ray an LP. Let's see.
Direct digital though, let's skip that film screen rubbish.

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drglitch
There is a surprisingly good movie called стиляги about this culture:
[http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1239426/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1239426/) \-
highly recommended for anyone who thinks Brooklyn invented the hipster :)

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _highly recommended for anyone who thinks Brooklyn invented the hipster_

Heh, this reminds me of a few years ago, when my cousin was visiting us from
Russia, and was absolutely ecstatic to meet my friend who looked very much
like a hipster stereotype.

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ommunist
Well, that was probably the case in Leningrad and maybe Moscow, but definitely
not the rest of the USSR (1/6th of the world's land at that moment). And the
situation was not that grave. There was even a magazine printed as blue
plastic LPs called Krugozor, with rock bands. I owned a collection of many
rock bands on tapes, and no one chased me for that. There was completely
otherer problem - Soviet music was banned in the US, you could not buy LP of
Pesnyary anywhere in the US.

~~~
pvg
Krugozor/Kolobok are from the mid to late 60s, after these things were first
invented and traded in the 50s.

[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Грампластинка#.D0.9A.D1.83.D1....](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Грампластинка#.D0.9A.D1.83.D1.81.D1.82.D0.B0.D1.80.D0.BD.D1.8B.D0.B5_.D0.BF.D0.BB.D0.B0.D1.81.D1.82.D0.B8.D0.BD.D0.BA.D0.B8._.C2.AB.D0.9C.D1.83.D0.B7.D1.8B.D0.BA.D0.B0_.D0.BD.D0.B0_.D1.80.D1.91.D0.B1.D1.80.D0.B0.D1.85.C2.BB)

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ommunist
Pink Floyd are the 70-ies, if memory serves. I had tape of the Dark Side of
the Moon in 1977. That is a bit late, yes, but could any US resident claim
ownership of the 1976 Belarusian single of the year in 1980?
[http://youtu.be/0rHjakawG8M](http://youtu.be/0rHjakawG8M)

~~~
pvg
What does that have to do with the article? It sounds like a classic case of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)

~~~
ommunist
The article claims the hunger for American bands among the Soviet teenagers
and describes the exotic method for satiating it. I only pointed that
situation was more complicated. There were 'voices of freedom' and
anticommunism from one side and propaganda from the other. And yes, thank you
for the link. Just this week I suggested Mr Simmons - the black American cyber
cop is better to leave the US if he wants to land a better professional
future.

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will_pseudonym
Such a neat story! I think the history of the underground market for music,
movies, and games is fascinating. I'd love to work on a book about it.

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kevin_thibedeau
> While the vinyl sheets used to print x-rays were much flimsier than records

I doubt the Soviets were making X-rays on vinyl. They would be using acetate
like the rest of the world. The record industry was also still using shellac
based media in the 50's. Vinyl was not a "thing" back then.

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setpatchaddress
Off by one decade. Shellac compound -> LP changeover occurred in the 50's in
most of the world.

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kevin_thibedeau
Late 50's. Vinyl wasn't common until the 60's.

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a3n
Information wants to be passed around.

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beeswax
slightly OT but: 1) the whole article reminds me of A Clockwork Orange and 2)
all those Eastern Europe Warez Collections that found their way to
central/west Europe in the early nineties. If it wasn't for 3DStudio 3/4 on
DOS, I think my visual/spatial thinking would be way worse, making it even
harder to wrap my mind around view/projection matrices etc.. edit: typos

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lucaspiller
As soon as I open the page on iOS it redirects to an unrelated advert. This is
why I use an adblocker on my PC.

