There are hands, wrists, feet, legs and skulls -- each one a document of long-forgotten human suffering. But mostly there are ribs. Overwhelmingly so. Image after image of human chests, translucent white bones set against a black background.
X-rays were Russia’s primary method for diagnosing tuberculosis – a trend that would would continue until at least 2000. And in the 40s and 50s, such scans were mandatory. Hospitals, naturally, had little use for the documents after diagnosis. They were, in fact, almost immediately discarded, due to their flammable composition.
Not long after the conclusion of the Second World War, however, pioneering Polish refuge Stanislav Philo discovered that the objects could be acquired easily, on the cheap and comfortably smuggled out inside of a shirt.
Legality, of course, was another question entirely.
Philo relocated to Leningrad in 1946, along with a Telefunken record lathe he’d liberated from Germany during the war. With the device came a simple money-making scheme. Residents could record short voice snippets and have them pressed into vinyl – a rather impressive novelty in mid-40s Russia. After hours, the lathe served an altogether different function.
It’s difficult to say whether Philo was first to discover that the soft, pliable nature of X-rays made them – if not ideal, then at least suitable media for pressing records. But he is credited with popularizing the phenomenon around the USSR’s second most populous city.
With the Soviet government cracking down on Western influences in the post-war beginnings of geopolitical tensions with the U.S. and its allies, possession of English and American music became a criminal offense. And songs pressed onto discarded X-rays became a much sought after black market item. The recordings were alternately known as “bones,” “bones music,” “jazz on bones,” “music on ribs” or, simply, “ribs,” after the most common motif.
Sound quality varied greatly, but was, largely, awful. The structural integrity only allowed for music to be pressed on one side. Designed to be played back at 78 RPM, there was only space enough for around five minutes per pressing, which largely meant they maxed out at a song apiece. The spindle holes in the center were said to have been created with a lit cigarette.
Labelling, meanwhile, was spotty, at best. Bootleggers were known to simply write the wrong song on a record to fool desperate buyers. But neither inferior audio quality, nor inaccurate labeling deterred music fans, who might spend up to a month’s salary on the contraband. The phenomenon continued for decades, through massive cultural shifts in popular western music, housing everything from Ella Fitzgerald to Elvis to Bill Haley to the Beatles.
Leningrad’s best known bootleggers, the Golden Dog Gang achieved some manner of professionalism, creating picture discs with a second transparent layer designed to mimic western records. They also switched to 33 RPM, allowing for more music to be fit on an album, albeit at lower quality. The pair were thrown in prison for selling records in 1950 and released following Stalin’s death in 1953, only to wind up there again a few years later for the same charge. It was a common fate among bootleggers.
In 1958, a law was passed, formally banning what authorities called "a criminally hooligan trend.”
Sources:
In Soviet Russia, Forbidden Music Was Smuggled on X-Ray Records https://www.vice.com/en/article/evdewp/soviet-russia-forbidden-music-x-ray-records
Bones And Grooves: The Weird Secret History Of Soviet X-Ray Music https://www.npr.org/2016/01/09/462289635/bones-and-grooves-weird-secret-history-of-soviet-x-ray-music
'Music On The Bone': Examining Forbidden X-Ray Records Of The Soviet Union https://www.wpr.org/music-bone-examining-forbidden-x-ray-records-soviet-union-0
A Short History of Bones https://www.x-rayaudio.com/x-rayaudiohistory