Latest / Ridiculous History / X-Rays, Songs and Soviets: The Stilyagi Story

Transcript

X-Rays, Songs and Soviets: The Stilyagi Story · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Ben, I'm Noel, and
0:27
Speaker 1: we are joined with our super producer Casey Pegrum today.
0:32
Speaker 1: And this is Ridiculous History. And I will tell you
0:34
Speaker 1: he is piping a legit mixtape into my headphones right now.
0:38
Speaker 1: I really wish you guys could hear, but we couldn't
0:40
Speaker 1: clear the samples. So it's always the samples to get us.
0:44
Speaker 1: Just for us. You'll have to take our word for it. Uh.
0:48
Speaker 1: Like most people, we're very into music. It's true. And um,
0:54
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you, Ben, have you seen the
0:57
Speaker 1: movie The Bone Collector? The Bone Collector? I feel like
1:01
Speaker 1: I have wait, is this the Is this like the
1:04
Speaker 1: crime film? Yeah? Where is someone paralyzed? You know, I
1:09
Speaker 1: haven't actually seen it, it's just the name makes me
1:12
Speaker 1: think of the topic that we're talking about today. Um,
1:15
Speaker 1: that was a total non sequitur, but that's that we
1:17
Speaker 1: We love non sequitors here on Ridiculous History. But yeah,
1:21
Speaker 1: I love music, you love music. Casey loves music. I'm
1:23
Speaker 1: telling you these samples are on fire. I really wish
1:26
Speaker 1: you guys could hear it, but it's just for us,
1:28
Speaker 1: right And it brings up a pretty good question. Will
1:33
Speaker 1: will segue just a little bit here, which is how
1:37
Speaker 1: far would you go to hear that one song that
1:41
Speaker 1: you really wanted to hear, you know, the thing that's
1:44
Speaker 1: stuck in your head or the um Let's see, you're
1:47
Speaker 1: new your favorite artist puts out a new album and
1:50
Speaker 1: you're like, I gotta get it, I gotta get it,
1:52
Speaker 1: but you can't find it. Or Casey's fire mixtape or
1:54
Speaker 1: Casey's fire mixtape, which is the reason we keep a
1:57
Speaker 1: fire extinguisher in the studio. Now we learned our lesson, Well,
2:00
Speaker 1: let's let's go back far far far far far far
2:04
Speaker 1: far far away, all to the distant past, and not
2:07
Speaker 1: that distant. I guess picture yourself Ben as a as
2:14
Speaker 1: a child in Russia, Okay, okay, And and like you said,
2:18
Speaker 1: you've got this tune, some sort of uh, some sort
2:22
Speaker 1: of little ditty, a jingle if you will, that you
2:24
Speaker 1: just can't get out of your head. You gotta own it,
2:27
Speaker 1: you gotta get a copy on a gramophone record. And
2:31
Speaker 1: in Soviet Russia there were record stores, but a lot
2:36
Speaker 1: of the music that was very popular was forbidden. Oh
2:42
Speaker 1: because you see ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors. That
2:45
Speaker 1: music was Western and at the time, in the years
2:50
Speaker 1: after World War Two, the USSR and the United States
2:56
Speaker 1: or the Western general were in a not a hot war,
3:01
Speaker 1: but a very cold one, a war of ideology, war
3:03
Speaker 1: of hegemony, an attempt to control the hearts and minds
3:08
Speaker 1: of the human species. And the USSR was pretty militant
3:13
Speaker 1: about things that it felt we're decadent or western or
3:17
Speaker 1: violated Communist sensibilities, especially music and art, which they considered propaganda.
3:25
Speaker 1: This means for little Russian Ben, it's going to be
3:27
Speaker 1: really tough to get a record that he wants it desperately, Yeah,
3:33
Speaker 1: desperately wants And as far back a two, the Stalin
3:37
Speaker 1: regime decided that all arts would be subject to censorship
3:42
Speaker 1: and there would be a test applied that would determine
3:44
Speaker 1: whether this piece of art be at music, be a sculpture, painting,
3:48
Speaker 1: what have you. Was quote in service to socialist realism,
3:53
Speaker 1: and this idea of socialist realism, um, it's sort of
3:57
Speaker 1: characterized by the glorified depiction of communist values such as
4:02
Speaker 1: the emancipation of the proletariat, um by means of realistic imagery.
4:09
Speaker 1: So jazz was prohibited in the Soviet Union until briefly
4:12
Speaker 1: during World War Two, when Russia and America were aligned
4:15
Speaker 1: behind the same cause. But then get to that Chili
4:19
Speaker 1: War that you're talking about. During that the tables turned
4:21
Speaker 1: once again, and roughly from ninety seven to the early nineties,
4:26
Speaker 1: Russian jazz musicians were actually arrested and locked up in gulags,
4:31
Speaker 1: and recordings from American and even British artists were particularly forbidden.
4:36
Speaker 1: They were deemed a fascist or the term mystic came up,
4:40
Speaker 1: which seems like an odd term of abuse. I mean,
4:42
Speaker 1: I think the word mystic sounds like something that would
4:45
Speaker 1: be cool. And speaking of cool, language surrounding this, here's
4:50
Speaker 1: a glimpse into how seriously people in general, let's call
4:54
Speaker 1: them the musical squares of the USSR. Here's all seriously
4:58
Speaker 1: they took it. There was a common catchphrase that that
5:01
Speaker 1: translates to something like today he dances jazz, but to model,
5:05
Speaker 1: he will sell his homeland. Oh my god, that's heavy.
5:09
Speaker 1: I know. Right, Let's let's unpack that. Lets literally like saying,
5:15
Speaker 1: you listen to jazz, you're potentially a trader, right, you
5:19
Speaker 1: listen to jazz. Therefore, whether you are like a degree
5:24
Speaker 1: removed from a spy I think the implication is that
5:27
Speaker 1: this kind of music would cause people to betray the
5:30
Speaker 1: state by infecting them with some sort of like, you know,
5:33
Speaker 1: agenda that was somehow present in jazz music. Absolutely, I
5:38
Speaker 1: think that is absolutely the case, because we've seen the
5:42
Speaker 1: same thing happen cyclically, or I should say similar things
5:46
Speaker 1: cyclically with music in the past, you know what I mean.
5:49
Speaker 1: Like the music that people our age like might horrify
5:55
Speaker 1: our elders, and the music they enjoyed might have horrified
6:00
Speaker 1: they're elders. So there's a weird changing of the guard
6:05
Speaker 1: that occurs. I know, I'm in an interesting spot with
6:07
Speaker 1: my eight year old daughter because the music that she
6:09
Speaker 1: loves doesn't really horrify me as much as it horrifies me.
6:15
Speaker 1: You know, maybe, you know, given a little more time,
6:17
Speaker 1: maybe she'll maybe they'll be like the new Marilyn Manson
6:19
Speaker 1: and she'll get into that, and then all of a sudden,
6:21
Speaker 1: I'll be like, you know, super shocked. I swear to
6:25
Speaker 1: you and most of us she listened to. I'm just
6:26
Speaker 1: shocked at how freaking doll it is. And uh that
6:30
Speaker 1: that is an interesting problem. I have this picture of
6:33
Speaker 1: you know, uh, telling your eight year old daughter that
6:36
Speaker 1: she should listen to more challenging music. I literally do
6:40
Speaker 1: say things along those lives. She there's this one song
6:42
Speaker 1: that she really loved that is literally heart and soul,
6:45
Speaker 1: like from Big Dud and Da Da Da Dada. And
6:49
Speaker 1: I pointed that out to her because she says the
6:51
Speaker 1: song was so great. I'm like, kid, this is like
6:53
Speaker 1: a total straight one to one rip off of this
6:56
Speaker 1: like piano song that every kid learns how to play.
6:59
Speaker 1: But I digree us, Oh well, we haven't. Can we
7:03
Speaker 1: repackage my digression? And absolutely absolutely, because let's say, um,
7:09
Speaker 1: let's say that wasn't just a rip off, let's say
7:13
Speaker 1: was so close that it was almost a bootleg of
7:16
Speaker 1: that song. Facts simile if you will, there we go.
7:19
Speaker 1: We we just did, and we hope we pull it off.
7:22
Speaker 1: Let us know right to us at ridiculous at how
7:24
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com? Can I say one more thing
7:26
Speaker 1: before we pop into the side of the bootleg stuff.
7:28
Speaker 1: There was actually even an element of this censorship that
7:34
Speaker 1: allowed for Russian born artists to be blacklisted as traders
7:39
Speaker 1: like you just said, or dissidence um under the Soviet regime,
7:44
Speaker 1: and it was really easy for that to happen because
7:46
Speaker 1: it pretty much just took getting on the wrong side
7:49
Speaker 1: of the government. And this is actually even still happening
7:51
Speaker 1: to this day. Artist Robbie Williams, you don't remember from
7:54
Speaker 1: I think was it take that he was in like
7:56
Speaker 1: a boy band, and then he had this millennium he
7:59
Speaker 1: reportedly ready to an article and a digital spy that
8:01
Speaker 1: I found, was banned from performing in Russia after he
8:05
Speaker 1: released a song called Party like a Russian that apparently
8:09
Speaker 1: made some little jabs at at Putin. Soay, they still
8:13
Speaker 1: take that stuff pretty serious. And and the band Pussy
8:16
Speaker 1: Riot also got imprisoned for a counter cultural or counter
8:20
Speaker 1: government protest. Yes, so they definitely are not playing around
8:25
Speaker 1: even to this day in the former Soviet Union. So
8:30
Speaker 1: here we are in the fifties and the younger kids
8:35
Speaker 1: right with a their version of let's call them hipsters
8:38
Speaker 1: to set this up. Uh, they want this music, but
8:42
Speaker 1: this music is banned. And without going too far into
8:45
Speaker 1: other stories, I think we can all say that prohibition
8:49
Speaker 1: doesn't work as well as its supporters wish it would
8:53
Speaker 1: definitely not. I like to think of these Russian youths
8:57
Speaker 1: as Beetnix. Yeah, a job doesn't seem o the word
9:03
Speaker 1: beat Nick would have to come have some sort of
9:05
Speaker 1: Russian origin anyway, because you know what is it Boris
9:09
Speaker 1: and Natasha the no good Nicks, uh robot Nick. Yet
9:14
Speaker 1: it seems Eastern European or even Slavic. There. Here's the thing.
9:19
Speaker 1: When you banned something, especially amongst younger kids, right, especially
9:25
Speaker 1: if they're if they're teenagers, and they see banned things
9:28
Speaker 1: is cool, then the first thing that happens is a
9:31
Speaker 1: demand if it didn't exist, comes into being. And this
9:36
Speaker 1: is where these kids begin to unite. And they called
9:40
Speaker 1: themselves the still Yagi, which I know sounds like a
9:44
Speaker 1: super cool specific type of subgenre vampire, it really does,
9:48
Speaker 1: but this is still pretty cool. Well wait a minute,
9:50
Speaker 1: what what was it? What were the names of the
9:53
Speaker 1: vampires and that kind of middling vampire show and FX
9:57
Speaker 1: that Gil little Toro did. They were called the Strain.
10:01
Speaker 1: It was called the Strain, but they were called the Sky.
10:05
Speaker 1: Yeah that was good, But yeah, I mean, the heart
10:09
Speaker 1: wants what the heart wants, right, So like these hip kids,
10:12
Speaker 1: they wanted their damn records, and the still Yaggy, as
10:16
Speaker 1: he said, kind of banded together. That means style hunters,
10:20
Speaker 1: by the way, to which I think is interesting. And
10:22
Speaker 1: this youth movement was so obsessed with like modern trends
10:25
Speaker 1: and culture, and a lot of the stuff that was
10:27
Speaker 1: brought back by returning soldiers who had been able to
10:30
Speaker 1: experience modern culture broad and this communist crackdown created this
10:36
Speaker 1: thriving black market. But how you know, when that stuff
10:40
Speaker 1: is scarce, what happens? Prices go up? Yeah, through the room.
10:44
Speaker 1: These are kids. They can't afford to pay those kind
10:46
Speaker 1: of prices for for their record discs, you know, And
10:50
Speaker 1: as a result, they were trying to find any other
10:55
Speaker 1: way to access these records because not only would the
10:58
Speaker 1: price be super high, but availability would be very low. Right,
11:02
Speaker 1: So even if you did have the exorbitant amount of
11:05
Speaker 1: cash needed to get uh, the latest Elvis Presley record,
11:09
Speaker 1: which was, you know, a hot commodity at that time,
11:13
Speaker 1: the black market might just be sold out to sold
11:15
Speaker 1: out or like, as the supply diminishes, those prices are
11:20
Speaker 1: just gonna go up, up up. But luckily, in nine uh,
11:25
Speaker 1: there was an invention called the telepuncing recording lathe, and
11:28
Speaker 1: it kind of blew this whole problem wide open. The
11:31
Speaker 1: recording lathe actually allowed an audio signal to be fed
11:35
Speaker 1: into this machine and then a lathe which is like
11:38
Speaker 1: a like almost like a cutting tool kind of that
11:42
Speaker 1: it actually cuts grooves into a plastic material that you
11:46
Speaker 1: can then play back on a standard record player. Right,
11:51
Speaker 1: and so this guy named Stanislav Philo opened a little
11:54
Speaker 1: shop where he charged a nominal fee to allow customers
11:59
Speaker 1: to make little voice recordings onto plastic discs, kind of
12:02
Speaker 1: as a bit of curio tourist trap kind of deal.
12:06
Speaker 1: But there's the real success from this came from a
12:09
Speaker 1: different use of the lafe. He used it to make
12:12
Speaker 1: copies of this forbidden music. So it's like pre pre
12:18
Speaker 1: pre pre BitTorrent napster pirrating, you know what I mean. Absolutely,
12:24
Speaker 1: And there's there's another material problem that comes in here.
12:27
Speaker 1: So now we finally have the technology to uh to
12:32
Speaker 1: reproduce these recordings, but we're missing something very important and
12:37
Speaker 1: that is vinyl. There's still no vinyl because the material
12:41
Speaker 1: that he had access to probably had to be special ordered,
12:44
Speaker 1: expensive and not readily available as well. Wasn't something that
12:48
Speaker 1: you could just get at a department store. So the
12:51
Speaker 1: still Yaggi got creative. Yes, these style hunters began get
12:56
Speaker 1: this digging through dumpsters, not stinny dumpsters, hospital dumpsters, and
13:02
Speaker 1: they weren't just looking for you know, um, medical waste
13:06
Speaker 1: or weird shoes or something. So we have proto Russian hipsters,
13:10
Speaker 1: pirrating music and dumpster diving right on the same story.
13:13
Speaker 1: History doesn't repeat, but it sure does. Rhyme man. And
13:17
Speaker 1: they were looking for scrapped X rays because X rays
13:23
Speaker 1: were made using thin vinyl sheets, so like X rays,
13:27
Speaker 1: like literally like I go in with a broken collar bone,
13:29
Speaker 1: they run an X ray and me they have to
13:32
Speaker 1: throw it out because of laws actually that were meant
13:36
Speaker 1: to protect against fire hazards, because this material is up
13:39
Speaker 1: with stacks and stacks of like dusty X rays stuff
13:42
Speaker 1: can go up in a blaze, you know, So they
13:44
Speaker 1: had to regularly put them out to the trash. And
13:48
Speaker 1: the STILLAGI got wise to it and basically had a
13:51
Speaker 1: supply chain for these bootleg copies of recordings. So it
13:56
Speaker 1: was actually a pair of customers of Philo, the guy
13:58
Speaker 1: we talked about, the made the recordings guy by the
14:01
Speaker 1: name of Boris Tiger and Russian Bagaslavsky. Uh. They somehow
14:06
Speaker 1: managed to like cobble together their own version of this
14:10
Speaker 1: Lafe cutter through like random spare parts and god knows what,
14:14
Speaker 1: but I guess they and were able to like look
14:16
Speaker 1: at the design of it and figure out a way
14:19
Speaker 1: to make their own, which I think is incredibly entrepreneurial
14:22
Speaker 1: and and and interesting. Um, and this has spawned this
14:24
Speaker 1: entire cottage industry. Yeah, I like that phrase cottage industry.
14:29
Speaker 1: There they would duplicate recordings onto the x ray itself,
14:34
Speaker 1: the x ray sheet, and then they would have to
14:36
Speaker 1: trim the disk by hand, and for me, this is
14:39
Speaker 1: one of the neatest parts. They would burn a hole
14:41
Speaker 1: in the center so you could put the record on
14:44
Speaker 1: a record player with a cigarette. You can see this
14:48
Speaker 1: process online if you would like, uh, in well, numerous
14:52
Speaker 1: fan recordings right on YouTube. But it's also in the
14:56
Speaker 1: opening credits of a two thousand eight cult film called
15:00
Speaker 1: Still Yaggy. And this whole cottage industry, I guess, for
15:03
Speaker 1: lack of a better term, I had a name it was.
15:06
Speaker 1: It was called the x ray press or hopefully I
15:08
Speaker 1: can do this right, Rowant Gennis Dot. That was pretty good.
15:12
Speaker 1: You're not bad, right, And you know you can actually
15:15
Speaker 1: find these things today. Um, they're pretty rare and you know,
15:19
Speaker 1: kind of counter to what their intent was quite expensive.
15:22
Speaker 1: So I was actually able to find a couple of
15:24
Speaker 1: listings on eBay and and and like discus. I think
15:28
Speaker 1: I found one on disguise maybe, but they're you know,
15:30
Speaker 1: upwards of three bucks, which is actually lower than I
15:32
Speaker 1: would have thought. So you know, if you want to
15:34
Speaker 1: get a piece and become a bone collector yourself, UM,
15:38
Speaker 1: take a look. They're out there to be to be found.
15:40
Speaker 1: And they sound really neat. They sound really neat. Now,
15:44
Speaker 1: technically the audio quality is is going to be poor.
15:47
Speaker 1: We just want to establish that. But you were also
15:49
Speaker 1: encountering a piece of forbidden history. Well shall we hear
15:53
Speaker 1: a couple of clips of this uh poor quality forbidden history.
15:57
Speaker 1: That's a great idea, casey, if you would by I'm
16:04
Speaker 1: back waiting when you got never work land beaby way
16:14
Speaker 1: to too cross and so there it is. No how
16:36
Speaker 1: would you describe that sound when you when you first
16:39
Speaker 1: heard it, Well, it's super evocative for me. I mean
16:42
Speaker 1: I'm a vinyl fan in general, but when I hear
16:45
Speaker 1: like old jazz or that kind of like tinny recording quality,
16:49
Speaker 1: then you hear it mixed with all those pops and
16:51
Speaker 1: clicks and the hiss of like everything and like I said,
16:54
Speaker 1: because you're making this on a material it wasn't really
16:56
Speaker 1: intended for, it's also going to sound like extra raw. Um.
17:00
Speaker 1: It kind of gives me goose bumps a little bit.
17:02
Speaker 1: It's a little bit uh ethereal and kind of spooky. Agreed. Agreed.
17:06
Speaker 1: It's sort of the auditory version of the feeling I
17:11
Speaker 1: get when I see old film which has still all
17:14
Speaker 1: the all the contaminants and all the junk on the
17:18
Speaker 1: on the cells. There's a laundry list of reasons why
17:23
Speaker 1: these recordings were imperfect. First, the quality degraded with each
17:28
Speaker 1: play of the bootleg because the lathes could only etch
17:33
Speaker 1: shallow grooves into these into these sheets, and this meant
17:37
Speaker 1: that they were in permanent. People would call it jazz
17:41
Speaker 1: on the bones. This is so full of cool phrases.
17:44
Speaker 1: Because they were impermanent, because each play would degrade the quality,
17:50
Speaker 1: the demand for their production skyrocketed even higher. So I
17:55
Speaker 1: gotta say, I'm pretty sure somebody at the hospital eventually noticed.
18:01
Speaker 1: I mean, they may have found out about the X
18:03
Speaker 1: rays because of a hook up inside the hospital. So
18:08
Speaker 1: at this point, Filo does not have a monopoly anymore
18:11
Speaker 1: by any means, you know, because all you have to
18:14
Speaker 1: do is have an existing bootleg recording from somewhere else
18:18
Speaker 1: on actual vinyl and then go to the nearest hospital dumpster,
18:23
Speaker 1: not get caught, and uh hang out with your friends
18:26
Speaker 1: who can teach you how to do this. So there's
18:28
Speaker 1: there's almost like a hidden culture here operating under the
18:34
Speaker 1: eye of the U. S. S R. Well, it's interesting
18:35
Speaker 1: because I think of like Russian culture and youth culture today. Um,
18:40
Speaker 1: there's a whole scene of super young Russian kids that
18:45
Speaker 1: make these insane YouTube videos or they go up onto
18:49
Speaker 1: like really really really high skyscrapers like a night and
18:52
Speaker 1: break into empty buildings and like hang off the edge
18:55
Speaker 1: and stuff. So like I feel like in a way,
18:56
Speaker 1: that's kind of a continuation of that like badass kind
18:59
Speaker 1: of punk space rat of like we're gonna do what
19:01
Speaker 1: we're gonna do, and you know, we love what we
19:04
Speaker 1: love and the government be damn. That's like living in
19:06
Speaker 1: a regime like that almost forces you to have to
19:09
Speaker 1: kind of like be a bit of a of a badass,
19:12
Speaker 1: right and a bit of a daredevil. You have to
19:14
Speaker 1: succeed with some daring do And I really love that
19:18
Speaker 1: you mentioned the modern meme of climbing and taking those
19:21
Speaker 1: incredible selfies because one of the things the photographers do
19:26
Speaker 1: is they don't just try to get to the place,
19:28
Speaker 1: They try to recreate a specific like trope or seeing
19:32
Speaker 1: you know, somebody hanging out of a window, somebody wearing
19:35
Speaker 1: the same outfit doing the same selfie at the top
19:38
Speaker 1: of the same crane. So it is I think the
19:42
Speaker 1: best word to describe it would be badass. These, in
19:48
Speaker 1: contrast to the prohibitively expensive actual on vinyl used to
19:55
Speaker 1: make records, bootleg records, the bone records, these bootlegs on
20:01
Speaker 1: X rays would cost between four to six roubles. That
20:04
Speaker 1: was about the price of a of a typical lunch. Uh.
20:08
Speaker 1: And not every record came from those two guys who
20:12
Speaker 1: started what they called the Golden Dog Gang. Many people
20:17
Speaker 1: were accidentally buying records that only had a few seconds
20:20
Speaker 1: of music. How infuriating is that? How angry would you
20:26
Speaker 1: be if you're thinking, oh, yes, my new Elvis record
20:30
Speaker 1: and then you hear the opening riff and that's it
20:35
Speaker 1: bait and switch right there, man, I'd be enraged. Enraged, Yeah,
20:39
Speaker 1: that's a good word for it. These also led to
20:42
Speaker 1: the development of a dance tradition. Uh, different dances. There's
20:47
Speaker 1: one called the Hamburg style, the Atomic style. Can do
20:50
Speaker 1: a little Hamburg Style for me right now, and then
20:52
Speaker 1: I'll describe it to the people I cannot. I would
20:56
Speaker 1: feel like I am culturally appropriating their struggle. Okay, do
21:01
Speaker 1: you like how just because I didn't know it was thanks. Uh.
21:06
Speaker 1: The thing about these dances is they had little to
21:10
Speaker 1: almost no connection to dances in the United States. Instead,
21:16
Speaker 1: this is fascinating. I would want to learn one of these. Uh.
21:20
Speaker 1: They represented the still Yagi's opinion of how they thought
21:24
Speaker 1: Americans might be dancing to these things. So it was
21:28
Speaker 1: just kind of like they was using their imagination, yeah,
21:30
Speaker 1: to like blindly impersonate or do an impression of their
21:33
Speaker 1: idea of American dancers. Interesting, and there are a couple
21:37
Speaker 1: of layers there, you know, No, it really is. I'm
21:39
Speaker 1: I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around it.
21:41
Speaker 1: So it's like they were fascinated by American culture. You know,
21:44
Speaker 1: I can think of a good example. What is there's
21:45
Speaker 1: this rapper named Young Lean, Like we've talked about Young
21:48
Speaker 1: Lean before and I believe he's Swedish um and he
21:53
Speaker 1: kind of approximates like you know, Southern trap hip hop music,
21:58
Speaker 1: but like his lyrics or something lost in translation, Like
22:01
Speaker 1: he's a really interesting rapper, but there's something about like,
22:04
Speaker 1: while trying to approximate this thing but not really speaking
22:07
Speaker 1: the language, what comes out the other side is somewhat
22:10
Speaker 1: evocative of the thing, but it's also like its own
22:13
Speaker 1: thing and really kind of strange and interesting. And I
22:16
Speaker 1: really like that. Yeah, it's fascinating, you know. I I
22:19
Speaker 1: love that this conversation did range into a mention of
22:24
Speaker 1: Young Lean. Oh yeah, Ben, this is you know that.
22:26
Speaker 1: That's what we do on Ridiculous History. We just kind
22:28
Speaker 1: of go where the where the ridiculous rabbit may lead,
22:32
Speaker 1: and today it led to Young Lean. And I'm gonna
22:34
Speaker 1: quote you just a line just he says what I'm
22:35
Speaker 1: talking about. He says, uh, I got an empire of
22:38
Speaker 1: emotional squad. Seem me cruising, cruising in my go kart.
22:41
Speaker 1: I'm war Hoo, I'm warhol, I'm warrior when I'm in
22:44
Speaker 1: Mario Kart. Okay, there's a there's a rhyme scheme. There's great. Yeah, Okay,
22:50
Speaker 1: check it out. Let's thinking and Young Lean, if you're
22:53
Speaker 1: enjoying the show, let us know Yeah, he's really into
22:55
Speaker 1: Arizona iced tea. That's another thing about Young Lean. But
22:58
Speaker 1: just to wrap this up, there's a really cool connection
23:01
Speaker 1: to between these bootleg bone records and something that was
23:04
Speaker 1: really popular in the sixties and seventies, which was cereal
23:07
Speaker 1: box records. So like you know, life cereal or wheaties
23:10
Speaker 1: or honeycomb um or fruit loops or whatever would have
23:14
Speaker 1: in the box a forty five rpm record that you
23:18
Speaker 1: cut out literally with scissors and it's on cardboard. So
23:21
Speaker 1: it just goes to show like the material determines probably
23:25
Speaker 1: the fidelity and like the longevity the life of the
23:28
Speaker 1: you know, the record. But you could do it on cardboard,
23:32
Speaker 1: you know. It's just really interesting. I would never have
23:34
Speaker 1: thought that that was the case, and this is it
23:36
Speaker 1: opened my eyes to all sorts of weird thing. Maybe
23:38
Speaker 1: you could do it on you know, would you could
23:41
Speaker 1: probably make a wood record? You can, I'm sure you
23:43
Speaker 1: could quite possibly. Yeah, And again, as you said, it
23:46
Speaker 1: may just it will have you know, it will have
23:49
Speaker 1: inevitable effects on the quality. Was interesting too. And you
23:52
Speaker 1: listen to a record if you turn your receiver off
23:56
Speaker 1: your amplifier and you just stick your ear down, you
23:58
Speaker 1: can actually hear this sound of it just through the needle.
24:01
Speaker 1: So it's this is literally like the music is encoded
24:04
Speaker 1: into these grooves and you can faintly hear it just
24:07
Speaker 1: by listening to the turntable cartridge. So that's that's fascinating
24:11
Speaker 1: in and of itself. And there's this other you know,
24:13
Speaker 1: we're seeing this other world that exists again relatively independent
24:20
Speaker 1: of the authorities, that there were systems of their own. Slang,
24:24
Speaker 1: of course, a chuvak, by the way, as male still
24:27
Speaker 1: yagi chuvika is a female still yaggy. I found the
24:32
Speaker 1: list of the terminology, so I know we're still in Uh,
24:36
Speaker 1: we're still in Russia several decades ago because we haven't
24:39
Speaker 1: traveled back to the present yet. We gotta get better
24:42
Speaker 1: at that, and they we're gonna get left behind. I
24:44
Speaker 1: propose we I propose we travel back to the safety
24:47
Speaker 1: of the studio. Alright, we're back, and luckily it looks
24:53
Speaker 1: like I am uh no longer a little boy. But
24:56
Speaker 1: I've learned a valuable lesson about the history of music.
25:00
Speaker 1: Uh uh. We know now that we have the benefit
25:03
Speaker 1: of looking back from the present day seventeen is we
25:06
Speaker 1: record this, we know that The authorities were intensely aware
25:12
Speaker 1: of the stileagy, going so far as to send informants, snitches,
25:16
Speaker 1: rats to the bootleggers to pose his record buyers. But
25:20
Speaker 1: we know by the nineteen sixties, restrictions began to loosen.
25:24
Speaker 1: This was after the death of Stalin and the advent
25:28
Speaker 1: of other recording devices like real to real tape recorders
25:33
Speaker 1: began to make bone records less crucial to this. To
25:39
Speaker 1: this cultural war waged through music totally, like you know,
25:43
Speaker 1: because that's when you went out, Like speaking of because
25:46
Speaker 1: you know Casey's Fire mixtape, but still banging in my
25:49
Speaker 1: ears right now, I sound a little distracted. Why I
25:52
Speaker 1: just got that beat, Casey, I don't even know what
25:54
Speaker 1: that is. Um. But yeah, like you know, when I
25:57
Speaker 1: was a kid, I would actually, uh, please don't come
25:59
Speaker 1: after me, FCC or whatever. Um. But I used to
26:03
Speaker 1: exchange smashing Pumpkins bootleg cassettes with people through the mail.
26:08
Speaker 1: The mail. It was the whole thing. You'd meet people
26:09
Speaker 1: on message boards and then you would like you would say,
26:12
Speaker 1: I've got this one, you know, Okay, I've got this one,
26:15
Speaker 1: and then you'd exchange and there'd be no money would
26:17
Speaker 1: change hands. It was literally this like internet marketplace, you know,
26:21
Speaker 1: that was all based on like I've got something you want,
26:24
Speaker 1: You've got something I want. It's on this disposable medium
26:26
Speaker 1: that everyone can get there. There became like standards. You
26:28
Speaker 1: had to have the Maxel cassettes. I can't remember what
26:31
Speaker 1: the exactly, but it was very specific and they always
26:35
Speaker 1: they I found about this thing called filler, where like
26:38
Speaker 1: whenever there was room at the end of the cassette,
26:40
Speaker 1: they would just fill it with whatever, like cool you know,
26:42
Speaker 1: fire mixtape they had and when they wanted you to hear.
26:45
Speaker 1: So I actually learned about a bunch of cool new
26:46
Speaker 1: music through the filler on my Smashing Pumpkins bootlegs. And
26:52
Speaker 1: and that's a little something about me. That's pretty cool.
26:55
Speaker 1: That's neat fact. I didn't know that before. Uh. I
26:58
Speaker 1: do want to say that Despy, the tactics of the
27:02
Speaker 1: Soviet government at the time, and despite the repression involved
27:08
Speaker 1: in the country at the time, the still yagy, I
27:11
Speaker 1: would argue, succeeded. And now you can find these records,
27:15
Speaker 1: these bone recordings, in museums, as you said, you can
27:19
Speaker 1: find them in private exhibits. You can even if the
27:22
Speaker 1: spirit so moves you participate in the in this historic
27:26
Speaker 1: movement by going online and buying one on your own.
27:30
Speaker 1: But as you said, it's somewhat strange that these things
27:34
Speaker 1: were built to be affordable and accessible. Yeah, And I
27:38
Speaker 1: actually was just digging out on eBay and there's quite
27:40
Speaker 1: a few for sale here and they look so cool.
27:42
Speaker 1: Then one of them is a Beach Boys I get
27:44
Speaker 1: around U x ray roun Gun film Bones record Rare
27:47
Speaker 1: SI or best Offer, and then we have one it's
27:51
Speaker 1: just instrumental jazz piece x ray ruin gun film Bones
27:54
Speaker 1: Record to twenty nine. And this one looks so cool.
27:58
Speaker 1: It's like just you know, it's like that with this
28:00
Speaker 1: to grette burn in the middle, and it's cut out
28:01
Speaker 1: sort of irregularly shaped because you know, these were page
28:05
Speaker 1: shaped and they had to be cut out in the discs,
28:06
Speaker 1: you know, hand by hand. But it's leg you to
28:09
Speaker 1: close up on someone's like stern um like ribs on
28:12
Speaker 1: the side. It looks like a like something from like
28:14
Speaker 1: the Nine Inch Nails album art or something like that.
28:16
Speaker 1: But there are quite a few of these on eBay
28:18
Speaker 1: and they're not that crazy expensive. There's sixty five dollars
28:21
Speaker 1: for this one. It's a USSR one side X ray
28:24
Speaker 1: record from fifties Bill Haley and the Saddleman Icy Heart
28:28
Speaker 1: seventy eight RPM. It's interesting too, because I wonder if
28:31
Speaker 1: they're all seventy eight's. Here's a t Rex one mark
28:34
Speaker 1: bowl and t Rex for seven bucks, so not not
28:39
Speaker 1: cheap and available. Yes, available, And do exercise caution when
28:45
Speaker 1: you buy, well, when you buy anything online, but when
28:47
Speaker 1: you buy these online, because some of the Bone records
28:52
Speaker 1: were undercover bait and switches created by the authorities, so
28:55
Speaker 1: you don't want to get your saddlement record that you
28:58
Speaker 1: paid UH a hefty amount for. And then here the
29:02
Speaker 1: first few bars of music, and then here a very
29:05
Speaker 1: angry and stern Russian voice giving you government warnings. Would
29:10
Speaker 1: lecture is cold blooded. I know it's sore, but if
29:17
Speaker 1: you have experience with this piece of musical history, we
29:21
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. You can find us
29:25
Speaker 1: all over the internet wherever you find your favorite podcasts,
29:30
Speaker 1: and you can email us directly. Right, we are ridiculous
29:33
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, and we're all over
29:36
Speaker 1: the usual social media channels and whatnot, But we really
29:39
Speaker 1: just hope you join us again for the next episode
29:41
Speaker 1: and what more, appropriate way to end this exploration today.
29:45
Speaker 1: Then with a little ultra music, little bone music. Drop it,
29:49
Speaker 1: casey a m. He led at him.