Just Like The Real Thing: Coming to Terms with Bootleg Vinyl - Vinyl Me, Please

By A Mystery Man Writer

Last updated 13 May 2024

Just Like The Real Thing: Coming to Terms with Bootleg Vinyl - Vinyl Me, Please

Bootleg records have rarely been as rebellious or pure-intentioned as the x-ray vinyl of Soviet Russia, but illegal pressings share a common purpose driven by different types of black market demand. In the broadest sense, bootleg records come in two forms: illicit knockoff versions of official releases and unofficial r
Beginning in the 1940s and throughout the ‘60s, listening to American music in Soviet Russia was a defiant act of consumerism. The music itself—popular recordings from Lionel Richie, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and more—was banned, written off as subversive to the state, and the method of consumption was correspondingly sketchy. Stephen Coates, a British author and composer, grappled with the peculiarly fascinating black market for bootleg records in his 2010 hardcover book X-Ray Audio. Russian bootleggers pressed songs onto used x-ray film, a material with the unique properties required of a vinyl alternative: soft enough for grooves to be carved, firm enough for grooves to hold their shape.The forbidden songs were pressed onto leftover images of bones—a hand here, a section of a tibia there—like incidental picture discs borne out of necessity. It’s a dramatic, alluring story about the hunger for music. And while it’s an extreme case, the story of Russian “bone records” offers up a weighty microcosm: people go to great lengths to listen to music they’re not supposed to.

Roundabout Records

Just Like The Real Thing: Coming to Terms with Bootleg Vinyl

This 3-LP set (originally released in 2003 and now long out of print) includes 22 highlights from the mythic first leg of Bob Dylan's groundbreaking Rolling Thunder Revue and serves as a companion piece to the new film 'Rolling Thunder Revue - A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese'. Packaged in a slipcase and including a 64-page booklet with liner notes and extensive photography.