A brief history below. Or, if you want to see the pretty stuff, head to the Menu top right!
The wonderful world of the flexi disc has been around awhile and served as a great promotional tool for companies, mainly from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. However, these frivolous flexible freebies have an interesting past and appeared in the East and West for different reasons.
In Hungary during the war years in the 30’s and 40’s, music lovers had to be creative as raw materials were in short supply. Quite who discovered the use of X-rays as a means of creating a music platter remains a mystery, but the flexi disc was born. It wasn’t just the homegrown amateur using this method of transferring sound to X-rays, but it is known that the Hungarian Radio also made discs to “play-out”.
During the Communist years in Russia, the populace relied on bootleg routes through the Eastern Bloc for their fill of the latest Western tunes. However, these tunes were expensive and in short supply, and erm….illegal. The bright young things soon got to grips with the technology needed to reproduce sounds on discarded X-rays. These were named “Bones” for obvious reasons. The underground roentgenizdat (Russian for X-ray / Self-publisher) were soon distributing these illegal tunes at a fifth of the cost of a regular records. Plus, you could get “the latest” sounds that were banned by the State. These bones were flexible enough to be rolled around the arm, inside a sleeve and away from Government’s disapproving eyes. Life span of these bones were limited and quality dubious, but some new music was better than none. By 1958, the roentgenizdat were on the authorities radar, and by ’59, the main culprits were locked away – a national purge was put on this illegal activity.
As history has shown, music is a great leveller where politics is concerned and by the late to mid sixties, the “bones” recordings were still being made and sold by and for avid fans. The Beatles were one of many Western bands that built a huge, if not underground following in Russia. They were seen as Western propaganda by the authorities. Bones pressings continued right up to the end of the oppressive regime in Russia with many Punk bands finding a voice through the flexible disc.
So, you thought the disposable frivolous flexi as a gimmick? Well, it gave thousands access to new music, thoughts and political ideology. The populace were dancing to a new tune – literally.
On the other side of the world, in 1929, an American created a synthetic resin called Durium. This resin was ideal (at the time) for creating records, and also formed cheap give-away card-backed flexis, From the 1950’s, the West and Far-East were creating flexi discs as cheap promotional tools for anything and everything that was being sold; seasonal goods and tourist tatt, food, in fact, virtually every type of consumer product had its’ flexi disc. Ad’ men saw it as an inexpensive tool to promote the goods of the day and a huge variety of products have used the flexi to woo the consumer – even the throbbing behemoth of the porn industry!
Eva-Tone was the major player in the US, licensing to Lyntone in the UK in the 60’s. Other major companies were Flexi Records Ltd., Disc Communications, Sounds For Industry, Sonnopresse to name a few. Virtually every country has its’ own flexi’ manufacturer. This site generally features UK releases.
This small piece of plastic is a fascinating window on social trends; political, musical and cultural. They are an audiophiles nightmare as the quality is seldom good (although flexis of the 2000’s are better), but as a window into the soul of society, they deserve better. They are the unsung heros of the 20th century, designed to be consumed and thrown away.
The following pages are split in to bite-sized categories. We mention the “High Fidelity” factor of how best to present these. We’ve generally gone for Subject, manufacturer, age. Many flexis can fit into several categories, so we’ve tried to put them into the most obvious. We’d rather do this than present a rather dry pictorial list. Somewhere here will be a list of discs that are in the collection and we will aim to produce a list of the major UK producers. In time, we may get a little adventurous and spread our wings.
The All Vinyl Experience has been part of;
BBC Radio 4 Wonderful Weightless World of the Flexi Disc https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sgbcr
Contributor to Jonny Trunks’ Wobbly Sounds – A Collection Of British Flexi Discs book on Four Corners Books https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/wobbly-sounds/
The first vinyl release on The All Vinyl Experience label is here theabstracts1978.bandcamp.com
