A month or so later my Sonic Highways record arrived and sure enough, this little piece of cardboard came with it. About the thickness of a paperback cover, you can just about see the grooves if you tilt it in the light. It was clear from the get go that this wasn't something you would be able to play 500 times, I was doubtful you could even play it 5 times with out it ripping or turning to dust. Could this piece of card handle the big, big noise of a song like Roky Erickson's Two Headed Dog?
I decided there and then, I would play it just once. And anyone who wanted to hear it could come along - any excuse for a get together. So that's how the Foo Fighters Flexi Disc Party came to be. A handful of my lovely friends and I got together and had a listen.
I set it up on the record player, switched the speed to 45RPM, put a little coin on the card - very quaint, very fun. The instructions tell you to play the disc at Max Volume - I don't want to boast about my stereo but I was worried that may have caused a little ear bleeding amongst my guests - but we did play it FUCKING LOUD.
I hadn't really considered that wax had a sound all of it's own, but I guess it does because cardboard sounds distinctly different. It's rougher, more grainy, imagine running your finger over the surface of a record and then over the surface of a piece of card. The difference in sound can be compared the same way, shiny verses matt. I don't think I was the only one in the room who was slightly in awe that there was actually (loud) music coming from this thing.
For me the flexi disc had the same vibe of wonderment and anticipation as listening to something new, but also in a new format. I've since found out that discovering something new is part of the heritage and ongoing legacy of the Flexi disc.
The Heritage
Information on the origins of the flexi disc is difficult to verify, maybe not least because 'flexi disc' does not seem to be a standardised format at all. Wikipedia has it that the flexi disc was "introduced as the Eva-tone soundsheet in 1962" where as moremusic.co.uk ascertains:
"The earliest flexis we can locate are from the UK, they play at 78RPM and date from the mid-50s, their existence is pretty remarkable as the old 78 players used heavy needles that would probably carve up a flexi after just (a) few plays"
Go further back again and flexi discs are said to have been in circulation in Soviet Russia as far back as the late 40s. By printing bootlegged jazz music onto old X-ray film, otherwise banned music was available on the underground scene.
None of these reports are necessarily wrong, just that they are possibly talking about different products that could all be described as a flexible disc!
The idea of the flexi disc as a novelty seems to have developed by the 60s, with The Beatles sending out special Christmas flexi discs to members of their fanclub.
Then returning to the Eastern Bloc, there is the curious case of the Frank Zappa flexi disc postcards which were almost certainly 'unofficially' released from the 80s onwards. Some, like the ones from Morgot Records, have the expected pictures of Zappa. But then there also the mysterious "Polish" flexi disc postcards which have a variety of random images that are in no way related to Zappa and which have no indication on who pressed them.
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| Don't Eat the Yellow Snow - Zappa Polish Postcard |
In the meantime, music flexi discs were widely used as promos in magazines before the advent of compact discs slowed their production to a halt by the year 2000. As e-Zine, Moremusic.co.uk puts it:
"By the Mid 90s the CD had usurped the Flexi as the cheapest way to get music on the cover of a magazine, with up to 80 minutes of digital quality music as oppose to 10 minutes of poor quality sound on a Flexi, this was one battle vinyl was unlikely to win! "
The Legacy
Over ten years later, the flexi began a tentative come back with San Francisco's Pirate Press Records firing up production of flexi discs, and heavy metal magazine Decibel offered "loyal subscribers" a chance to "receive a new, ultra-limited vinyl flexi disc bound into the magazine every month" in 2011.
2012 was a notable year for flexi discs, with the format gaining further momentum. On Record Store Day, Domino Records issued an exclusive magazine containing five singles on individual flexi discs. The same year Rookie Mag issued a flexi disc with it's first physical edition.
It will come as no surprise that this is the kind of action that Jack White would want in on and also in 2012, he released a single from Blunderbuss. When I say he released his single, I mean he actually released them into the air. Attached to helium balloons. On flexi disc!
Jack White is an exponent of the ultra limited and this is an identity that that the flexi disc has picked up in its more recent history. In 2013, the above mentioned pioneers, Pirate Press produced a tiny run of flexi discs for just over 200 subscribers of German fanzine PUNKROCK!, while Joyful Noise Recordings (who describe themselves as 'purveyors of interesting media for a variety of artistically-honest, exploratory & often haphazard musicians') ran a series of monthly flexi discs of exclusive tracks which wont be released in any other format. The series was limited to 1000 copies and the exercise was repeated in 2014. Interested in getting the 2015 series? You will have to join the waiting list via the website.
The flexi disc has had a bit of an image change along the way from recycled Soviet X-ray prints, to magazine freebies, to prestigious items of music memorabilia. What once was disposable has now become collectible.
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Joy Division's flexi disc of Komakina states "This is a free record" on Side A and "This record should not have cost you anything, wherever or however it was obtained." on Side B, but these days you can pick one up for a fiver! |
Of course the flexi disc is not about the take over the world but it does seem to have come back from the brink. Thanks for mine Foo Fighters - I really enjoyed it.
