Polish Sound Postcards (Pocztówka Dźwiękowa)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 เม.ย. 2020
- I’m laying my cards on the table…the turntable. You might have encountered the occasional novelty recording on laminated card - perhaps given away as a promotional tool, inserted in a magazine or on the back of a cereal box. However did you know that in 1960s & 70s Poland, the Sound Postcard was a popular budget format for new music releases.
Links
A video about the Russian Ribs/X-ray/Bones Records • X-Ray Audio: The Docum...
A website about the Ribs - x-rayaudio.squarespace.com
A video about the Polish Sound Postcards • Polish Sound Postcards
Polish Wikipedia Article about Sound Postcards
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocztów...
Links to most of the songs I play clips from are below:
• Chochoły - Skandal w r...
• Violetta Villas- Do Ci...
• Czerwone Gitary - Matu...
• Czesław Niemen - Włócz...
• Czerwone Gitary - Prze...
• Jarema Stępowski - War...
• Sława Przybylska - Dop...
• Nie wierz plotkom - Al...
• STAN BORYS-"BEZMIAR WÓ...
• Taka jestem zakochana
• Halina Kunicka - Mario...
A bit more information added since completing the video.
I have been advised that Postcard records could be sold in Polish newsagents - whereas normal records could only be sold in bookshops.
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---------Outro Music----------
Over Time - Vibe Tracks • Over Time - Vibe Track...
-----Outro Sound Effect-----
ThatSFXGuy - • Six Million Dollar man... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
*There are links to other related videos and music in the video description.*
I remember magazines sometimes putting these in as perforated pages. This was, like, a million years ago :-p You could tear them out of the magazine (carefully) along the perforations and play them. That's one of the reasons they were square. They were usually adverts, but sometimes were including them as premium items for subscribers.
@@HungryGuyStories That is a new one on me, interesting.
@@HungryGuyStories...and in Mad Magazines
@@djhrecordhound4391 Yeah, I think Mad included them. I subscribed to a lot of computer magazines: Byte, Creative Computing, Dr. Dobbs, PC Magazine, etc.
How is it that you uploaded this video two hours ago and yet your comment is six days old?
Oh wow - where do I begin?!
My Dad was Polish, he came to Britain during WW2 and stayed. Some time in the late 70s he got a letter from his family, which happened several times a year, but this one was different: out of the envelope popped a thin amber plastic square, about 6 inches per side, and it was one of these records. It had two songs, both in Polish - "Happy Birthday" and "Roll Out The Barrel" (or Beer Barrel Polka if you prefer), and it was a source of amazement to us. Far from appearing primitive, friends and neighbours were baffled by the idea of a square record!
This was a little while before the coloured vinyl craze of the early 80s (I'm aware coloured vinyl actually goes back to the origin of the 7" single), so a non-black record was also a source of amusement.
I know also that Polish sailors arriving at Liverpool docks knew the novelty factor and would turn up in The Caradoc and offer to trade them for UK vinyl, apart from other Western paraphernalia.
This brings back some very old memories for me Mat, thank you!
8'o)
@@neilforbes416 Indeed. I had a transparent copy of the first LP from Curved Air, and a pink copy of King Crimson's "In the Hall of the Mountain King". Neither was really playable due to static build up. There were a lot of coloured LPs in the 70s, and most were also issued in standard black versions. The problem was that the coloured ones were non-conductive, so the static would quickly build up. Unfortunately my record collection was lost in a move about 20 years ago, as some of those old coloured disks are no quite valuable. The modern formulation has solved the problem I believe as coloured discs have made a comeback.
Seems like that would be the ideal use for these - Sending a bit of home out to the polish diaspora. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the idea, given all these samples were polish music.
@@tarstarkusz Maybe it was more of a British Punk new wave thing to kick off the novelty see 45cat and the lists of coloured and picture discs in 7in format.
Durring comunism era in Poland there was lack od everything - vinyl also. The cheapest way to make vinyl - like product was to press it on a plastic rectangle. I have almost 100 of music postcards and I didn't put It on my new turntable to avoid damaging it. Back in the 80' the first time I've heard Deep Purple or Rod Stewart was on postcards.
Greetings from Poland!
Pozdrowienia z Polski!
Great to get this confirmed by an actual user ;) Thanks!
It amazes me how people will get round things. Interesting.
ediacz Many of these were imported to Ukraine as well, my family back in Ukraine have a small collection of them.
Pozdrawiam.
Greetings from Austria/Vienna!
Fun fact: Bambino was called "
szlifierka" what means "grinder", becuse it was destroying vinyl records. On the other hand the first versions of Bambino had build in tube amp inside and it sounds quite good.
Remove that stylus, solder on a guitar cable to the leads and play some METAL!
„Grinder” stay today. Some turntable are still named after „Bambino” ;)
Bambino mean in italian "kid"
So it's true that player used to destroy records, because Kids in general destroy evrything xD
@@Francesca456 somehow "bambino" is still a popular name for a variety of products. It's indeed Italian, it doesn't have own meaning in Polish.
@Bestia z Wadowic Phrasing!
Fun fact - do you know why some of the sound postcards have their corners cut off? They were used as guitar picks :)
DIY ethic at its best :)
Fun alternative fact: MacGyver was actually Polish. He changed his name from "Gywrowski" when he became a US citizen.
Lol!
@@mondegreen9709 !
@@mondegreen9709 damn i never knew that
@@mondegreen9709 Source?
Czesław Niemen sounds best even on a sound postcard. Thank you for this episode. You have many fans in Poland.
True that! Greetings from Kraków, Poland! I'm a great fan of this channel!
Some good fokin Polish music
Villas też ok
Which ones were czeslaws niemens? You all seem to agree and I’ll most certainly will give him a listen just at the moment don’t know who you’re talking about
@@radrat920 4:33
Wow. Im Polish and I've been living here my whole life, and I never knew these existed!
must be born after 80's passed
@@eskwadrat Yup.
I am born in 86. I have heard of them, they are mentioned in one of the greatest Polish songs ever "Autobiografia" by Perfect, but i have never seen any. Thanks for this video!
Też
Same
Me as a kid: watching programs about future technology
Me now: watching programs about past technology
At what point did we pass ourselves, for a brief singular moment living precisely in the now?
That reminds me of a show that was on the ABC in Australia, it was called Towards 2000, and then later it was called Beyond 2000.
In communist Poland, government record companies had exclusive rights to vinyl records. However, sound postcards could have been made by craftsmen (this is how small private producers were called). Later, public institutions (often these were not record companies but book publishers that could not legally make vinyl records) also produced sound cards.
Interestingly, the private ones may often not include the name of the producer so it would be difficult to determine how much they earn on this production.
Fascinating
I wasnt expecting seeing polish music postcards on this channel. Nevertheless few information from my parents who were using them back then. So the way you have played it (on the regular record as base) is the way it was done. The postcards were to soft to play them on their own. The ones you have are mostly "official" ones made by regular phonographic companies therefore they mostly contain Polish music. As they were much, much cheaper than regular record, they were popular among teens, who coldn't afford proper ones. The western music ones were produced by small private companies (back then only very small private business was allowed in Poland) by coping the track from imported/smugled record or from radio.
Dało się je jak najbardziej odtwarzać bez podłożenia płyty, odtwarzałem ich mnóstwo w ten sposób. / It was absolutely possible to play them on their own, without a record as a base. I played a lot of them that way.
@@0raj0 Depends on the record player. Some of them have very soft pads so records will grip better. They will skip without something hard under them, like record.
I met a guy at a party, very elderly. He used to play in a Beatles cover band behind the iron curtain! Tapes would be snuck across the border, and the songs would be learnt by ear and played at secret concerts. The illegal fans of western music, buying the bone records were I believe called стийлаги, or 'Stylagi', and were risking jail for their outlandish westernised tastes. When rock n roll came out finally, it was in the 80's, where as I understand it the church were pressing pop music on vinyl?!??! I cant explain this, but my friend gave me a stack of USSR vinyl like the beatles classic 'evening of difficult day' you might recognise ;) I wish I could attatch pictures and show you how bands like led zep and the rolling stones were packaged for the USSR audience! I lived in the Ukraine for a while, so Ive absorbed a lot of their culture. In fact I have a house full of things that would be gold for you to review on the channel, and I live in the Uk, so if your looking for new stuff to feature I could drop you an email if your interested! :)
Email him. Please. From one Ukrainian to another, he needs to see this.
@@kwirro Thanks! I really will :) btw, did i get anything factually wrong there? A lot of stuff I heard through somebody translating, so I may have mis-understood some things!
@@SamHarrisonMusic Don't think so!
Thanks :) Specibo! Or Diyaku!
I have a russian copy of „Sticky Fingerd” but its written „Стики Фингерс» 😂
My family used to send these to friends and family just for a bit of fun - they were cool at the time, and this was before the internet and also, not many people had phones in their homes so writing to each other was much more common. They sent whatever was popular or what they liked - no politics involved! And btw regarding the copyright issues, until the early 1990s, Polish Radio would regularly announce to its listeners when it would be broadcasting an entire album live so you could get your tape recorders at the ready and get the whole album on tape for free! Most of the time it was the only way to get hold of these albums because they weren't generally available.
Fascinating
Thanks for the great stuff!
I was supposed to episode myself.
I remember these posts cards, my parents listened to that.
Especially that postcard about the Warsaw taxi driver caught my memory ...
Greetings from Poland.
reduktorze, koniecznie potrzeba twojego odcinka o pocztówkach !
Polish Techmoan ;)
@@Nefrusz man no moan
@@polishautistic2137 moan no man
Those sounded a million times better than I was expecting
I know. Given the lack of proper materials, it's pretty high fi.
@@CaveyMoth They hardly have any real protection measures and so they degrade and deform overtime (hence all the crackling) and aren't expected to be good after several years. It's a miracle they still work at all.
P.s. the main thing about these was the price. You could get records in Poland back in the day, it's just that they were expensive (and more so the record players needed to play them properly). Musical postcards, on the other hand, were a cheap and cheerful way of listening to music hits (domestic or otherwise) on your cheap and cheerful Bambino. If you had a decent set, you'd go for proper records. But if you couldn't fork out all that money, this was your other option. Teenagers loved these postcards I was told.
No, you could not buy western music in Poland in the '60 not even in the 70's except for a very small number of licensed items.
There were ways of getting them I was told, thogh I can only relate to what my parents / grandparents told me - I myself was born in 1980. If you were born before then and have a different story, I'd be happy t hear it.
@@paradust Yes there were ways of getting them but surely not in official records shops, you had to have them mailed from abroad or ask to a friend who could travel abroad or things like these.
@@ludasmatyi2007 True, western music was problematic due to censorious nature of the communist regime. Sailors, diplomats etc. were the best source of western records back then. However, officially sanctioned records made by Polskie Nagrania were available since middle fifties.
Let's face it: if you wanted to listen to western music back then - and you did - you would listen to it off a bootleg tape, not a vinyl record. Those printed in the West were prohibitively expensive, even if you could get them.
"He must've covered every music format now" - Me, prior to knowing about a Communist Poland postcard & X-Ray printed music format.
We all should have seen it coming.
Hihu
Lool
4:23 "(hej) za rok matura (o dużo czasu)... za pół roku..." ~Czerwone Gitary. Never thought I would hear polish music on the channel. :D Such a weird and funny to watch. Great video. Thank you for making it.
*Czerwone Gitary
@@Alexagrigorieff thanks!
Matura za 1 dzień a ja oglądam filmik o pocztówkach dźwiękowych
You really haven't heard the Tra La La La La song until you've heard it etched in an old xray...
I am 50 years old and I am from a generation for whom it was also a past. We listened to music on the radio. The Polish state radio broadcast in stereo in good quality all the best albums, often on the day of the premiere - without interruptions. We had access to everything without a problem.
Also Polish recording equipment was of good quality. The only problem was the purchase of cassette tapes. These Polish products were of very poor quality and had to be bought abroad, or in stores called PEWEX - all Western goods available for US dollars were there. The currency was bought illegally, but the authorities allowed it. The exchange rate was cosmic, but for a month I was able to persuade my parents to buy one TDK, BASF, Maxell cassette. ;)
@IMHO At the beginning of the broadcast, they even gave a reference signal so that people could set the recording level in their tape recorders. ;)
@@kala-re-pah958 Yes. ;)
I went even further in the 80's when certain radio stations were broadcasting ready to use computer software to be recorded on tape and then used on ZX Spectrum oraz Commodore 64 computers :)
In those days, getting original records was almost impossible. That's why people were recording songs from the radio themselves. Even there were special broadcasts where the announcer said "please get ready to record" and people had full songs, no one was concerned about copyright. Someone who sent discs from abroad gained the most popularity among friends. Regards from Poland !
In my mind, I was imagining a Polish version of mission impossible and the recording would go "Good afternoon Mr. Nowak, the P.M.S has detected......This record will self destruct because it was played in 5 seconds."
Considering the durability of these things, they DID self-destruct.
There's a vinyl album by polish group called Papa Dance that has a ZX Spectrum program on it : ) Another fun polish oddity.
Retro Recipes would like that.
There was a Shakin Stevens tape my sister had that has a Spectrum game on it.
And i seem to remember Spectrum games on these floppy records that came in magazines.
The late Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks also released a single (or album) with a track for the ZX Spectrum. I think Matt may have even made a video about that. Shame artist ever made one for the c64 though! In the early days though the ZX Spectrum sold better as it was a lot cheaper. There was a lot of Spectrum clones in the USSR and other eastern block countries as it was mostly made from off the shelf components the USSR had already cloned such as the z80 CPU.
@@p166mx There are vinyls and CDs with C64 data tracks on them. 8-Bit Show and Tell has videos about them.
Some Mainframe singles had computer programs. One has a visualiser (Talk To Me) and the other is a message for a competition for the Apple II (Radio Will Bring Me Home) sadly nobody has really preserved these
I first danced with my wife to "Warsaw Taxi Driver" ; )
Back in the old country that song always drove the girls crazy.
So did I! Say hi to her for me please. ;)
That sounds so lovely!
As long as I recall, these were being sold in an orange envelope with the name of the artist and the song. Don't have many of these, but these allowed me to listen to John Lennon's "Woman" for the really first time.They were also able to give you better sound quality, it had minimal amount of hiss in mid-80's. I also remember that if you had Bambino, then no one'd lend you any vinyl records, just these...
Greetings from Manchester.
Techmoan: Makes video about Polish Sound Postcards
Polish people: clicks video
Techmoan: STONKS
That was a really interesting look in to what on the face of it appears to be a quite unique slice of Polish culture. I suppose the nearest we got are musical birthday cards and they sound even worse. Whilst the sound quality is not the best by a long shot, I was surprised at how good they were when you consider the age and the fact they have probably been kicking around in a draw for the past half century. I would imagine vinyl would be pretty beat up stored in the same way without a sleeve.
Most enjoyable, well done Matt.
It seems people have been or used to use these things for fun, Thanks for a toy designed in Nippon which I better look around that. I have some ideas to start with, Because of cost, I might just do on either Cassette or VHS instead (VHS is said that the overall effect is close to a open-reel tape if using right player which has stereo output. I
Hello from Russia. The answer to "why square" was that those types of records were often included in printed media such as magazines as a bonus or supplement - like some magazines later included CDs. You can see some were torn from staples near one of the edges. They were usually stapled together with paper pages in the center of the magazine - where paper pages folded. The same also explains why they were so small and often rectangular
*DISCLAIMER* : I'm reciting that from memory of my childhood, so may easily misremember something. Sorry about that. Any corrections are welcome!
There were in fact magazines which primarily consisted of those records with few pages of accompanying text attached - they could be subscribed to like a normal magazine - and you periodically got fresh music delivered to your postbox
EDIT: According to wikipedia, apparently there were two such magazines in Russia - one for adults and one for children - issued from 1964 till 1992. Adult one also featured some journalist reports and soviet propaganda of sorts. The records were produced using french-manufactured equipment.
I remember some kids books came with those, containing a song or two related to the book. I'm sure there were other uses but I was too young to care back then. I never heard about a postcard like that though.
Although you would think swapping tapes would immediately obsolete the records you are wrong - tape recorders were quite expensive and hard to get while the tape was expensive and fiddly, record players were much more affordable and popular. And we were generally quite poor so entertainment industry was way smaller than in capitalist countries and often used aging and obsolete technology.
Couldn't find many photos with those still attached, but here are a pair of them:
avatars.mds.yandex.net/get-zen_doc/1064817/pub_5c5ab9e968d9ff00ade0cc3b_5c5ac6e3e2b03f00ad966827/scale_1200
avatars.mds.yandex.net/get-zen_doc/1612125/pub_5d3bf1e8ae56cc00addefb5c_5d571143e6cb9b00ad125a75/scale_1200
those are half-circle half-square (from aforementioned magazines), but some were definitely released as just squares - probably to ease cutting
ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BE%D1%80_(%D0%B6%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB,_%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A0)
>and you periodically got fresh music delivered to your postbox - convenient and inexpensive.
literally 60s spotify.
@@kaunomedis7926 Yes, that's it, thanks.
And also here is some more info, please reply if translation is needed:
ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B0#%D0%93%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B8
Apparently, some of those even contained computer programs that are normally read with cassette recorder, but nothing prevents them from being written to a record. Those contained up to 4 KB of data.
@@kaunomedis7926 Yes, Кругозор
I have two issues of the Krugozor magazine. The pages are bound in such a way, that you can play the records without removing them from the magazine and the whole book has a hole punched through it to fit the spindle. Each issue contains six double-sided flexi discs with both music and what I believe to be either inteviews or reportages (I don't speak Russian, so it's hard to tell).
8:31 This is because there's an established narrative in the West honed through the decades that says that anything coming from the Soviet bloc has to be seen through the lens of people yearning to escape a constant oppression and with an unquenchable hunger for Western goods and culture. Now people in the Eastern bloc did have a hunger for world culture as they were quite cosmopolitan but the tired narrative of everyone just being some sort of prisoner who can only find freedom through western (more often than not "American") consumer goods unfortunately works to cheapen and obscure the depths and contrasts of the actual lived experience of people at the time. Not to use the "P" word, but that's basically what that narrative is. Cool music on those postcards!
It's quite annoying because we are talking about the time when the Polish (and I'm sure it applies to other neighbouring countries) culture was heavily oppressed by censorship. People were starved for their own culture in their own language, and yet now are being told that western culture was more important to them.
You are right. But it was a game that both parts played: all Soviet or, more broadly, communist citizens just craved blue jeans, coke and Elvis records and would have welcomed Us troops as liberators (that one was recycled later for Iraq and Afghanistan too) and all western citizens were oppressed proletarians living in slums and being kept ignorant and fearful of the marvels of the international socialist brotherhood, that were going to inevitably join, overthrowing their capitalist oppressors, any day now.
@@ScarfmonsterWR there was a censorship, which is fundamentally bad, but it was far from "heavy oppression" - public speeches and books were heavily oppressed, but not music. Take a look at punk rock official releases. Siczka from KSU explained once how it was easy to release whatever you wanted. Or listen to Izrael - Biada, biada, biada. They openly say politicians, military and clerks are corrupted, the system is teaching us wrong ideas, but it's falling and supporters will pay the price. Do you really consider it "heavily oppressed"? And there are even stronger records than BBB. Or check out the records of the biggest punk rock festival in Poland (sic) - Jarocin. In movie about this festival, they mostly censored their own (clerks, politicians) speeches, not the music.
Zani Zone better dead than red
Pindos still havent figured out nobody likes them. What can you expect from them?
its still a cutting edge technology if you cut the edges and make it a circle
Lol
No to be cutting edge it needs to be able to cut things itself
Techmoan needs to build a public Museum of Audio Technology & Media Formats
he already does (albeit only a virtual one).
Was Museum of Audio Technology (MAT) an intentional joke or an unintended fluke? Forget the "media formats" part, for Mat's sake!
As most of my compatriots chimed in already, I'll just say that didn't expect to hear Niemen or Czerwone Gitary on Techmoan. And I thought nothing would surprise me after seeing Captain Disillusion on Objectivity or Matt Parker on 8-Bit Guy... Great job as always!
Niemen is pretty good
Some good pieces of Polish music. It so great to see a whole episode about something Poland-related on a technical YT channel with worldwide coverage.
I just recently discovered this channel. Not only are his videos all very interesting, but the biggest thing that was apparent to me immediately is that there is ZERO nonsense here. He's not wasting our time with lengthy splash screens, plugs for socials, giveaways, or just the way that so many people out there try to trail you along without really saying anything to get to algorithmically convenient timestamps. There is no click bait in any of his videos. So refreshing. And it's nice to know I now have a nice library of quality and interesting content to sift through when I'm bored.
Yeah it's nice too
Welcome....
My parents had theirs marriage vowes recorded on one of them
9:56 there wasn't any attention given to copyright because proprer copyright laws did not exist in Poland until late 90's
Not the late 90's, the first copyright protection act was in effect on 4th of February 1994, so more mid 90's.
Many (if not all) western music published by Polskie Nagrania, were properly licensed. Same in other eastern countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or East Germany. Only Bulgarian releases of western music were partly or completely unofficial, some soviet releases by Melodiya from 70s were also not very legit (but John Lennon's Imagine album was officially licensed in 1977 by EMI).
@@droopy_eyes Don't pretend you do not understand what they said. Copyright was completely ignored between 1945-1994, so for 50 years. Stop spreading your bullshit, pretentious asshole.
Let's be honest
This problem doesn't only affect the poland but also other countries
Then came the 1994 :P but to be honest piracy especially when it comes to the PC Games was still a thing in Poland until the mid 00's
But to be honest? There are still plenty of piracy here in slav countries
Cebulactwo goes on and on
@@YershJRSZ "Cebulactwo goes on and on" your comment is the best prove of it, most famous pirate page is a product of Sweden...
Hi
huge fan of your channel and as a polish bloke, I greatly appreciate coverage of this topic. Great video and as always, stay safe ;)
My uncle and grandma told me about these and I have some of those in my collection. Interesting thing about them is that there were two main types : a "pirate" one, pressed at the kiosks and the "official" one, pressed by normal, "government-approved" record plant. The main difference between them was, obviously, the sound quality - the pirate ones varies in that ("shady" master tape, rudimentary cutter etc.) but the official ones (you have at least one of those, it's the one with Muza label) were cutted from studio-grade tapes and using standard vinyl cutter so even when there's a lot of hiss and crackles, the audio tone is rather solid. Those official ones were made even in the early 80's and were made from paper with laminated top side with the track. Even the western music made it's way onto "those official" - I have a Precious Wilson "We are on the race track" on one of those and it sounds okay.
You picked really good date to release this video!
1 may is workers day and 3rd is our constitution day.
Very fitting for our postcard era of music!
I've been told that people manufacturing these were quite sneakiny and acting quick. A song, which had premiered on the radio in the evening, could have been "published" as a postcard next morning. Such situations were not unheard of. BTW, you've published the video on 1st of May, Labour Day for many countries around the World, which used to be very important holiday back in the times of People's Republic of Poland. There's an annual tradition: Polish Radio 3 plays only local music on days like this - and today a DJ was asked by a listener to explain younger viewers what sound postcards used to be, because back in the day they had enormous impact on the musical taste of the nation, arguably more significant than the vinyls published by the major, state-run publishers. Like, there was no official pressing of T-Rex back then. Keep up the good work, Techmoan.
4:23 when you have "polish A Level" in the next month. You don't want think about this so you watching english video on YT and you hear polish song from 60's about a level
hahaha, glad we get to know what the song was about at least, thanks!
Does anyone know the song?
@@me323me song is "Matura" by a band called Czerwone gitary (Red Guitars)
@@ArtB414 Thank you so much! I would have never been able to find that on my own!
I remember those post card records. They belonged to my parents but there long gone. I live in Australia and at some stage my parents brought me the Czerwone Gitary LP. I still have it and probably in good condition. Kind of the Poish version of the Beatles.
Im from Poland and watch this channel 4 years. Greetings from Poland.
gód
Today is National Flag Day in Poland, so perfect timing for such a video. I remeber finding those postcards in every country holiday home when visiting friends but I grew up in the 80s so the main format of music was a cassette tape. As for WHY they were produced- they were cheap, they were easier to carry around, because of weight and they didn't break as easily as proper vinyl when you would drop them. The quality was not worse than AM broadcast at the time and also writing letters and postcards was very popular in Poland. Combine those factors and voila- you have recipe for success. I am more surprised as why this form of music wasn't popular in other countries. Again, brilliant video Mat, thank you.
Matt , when the Iron Curtain came down Russia started to allow (grey market) LPs to be available however because of a paper shortage the sleeves were often re-purposed maps.
I have Beatles Rubber Soul which when you look inside the “mouth” of the sleeve there’s a map in Russian of a Japanese harbour area (we checked the co-ordinates) ..interesting social-political history.
Glad I looked at my phone for a last time before I went to bed
The nostalgia this video gave me is beautiful, I love being polish
I was born in the GDR and my best friend is polish. Makes me always smile when i see something like this, or when she is talking about creative things from her past in poland. We guys simply HAD to be creative in a lot of ways. And sometimes it was even fun.
Those Postcards were very popular due to its price. You could buy them everywhere in the 60-70s. Due to the lack of music sources and good equipment for playing music in that time those postcards has been some kind of singles. LP records were very expensive and many people couldn't afford to buy it so post soundcards has been adopted to spread and release singles around the country. Most of those cards was collectable and people share those cards between each other. As you mention in the clip - most popular vinyl player in that time was Bambino which quality was tragic in compare to the vinyl player from the west but those cards sounded ok on it that time. Due to its natural wear and degradation - people even repaired such records using hot needle! In the 70s if you were lucky enough you could buy a reel2reel tape recorder and copy such post cards on a tape or record music from radio. Even I was born in the middle of 80s and still remember that I have used to play recordings from such old fashioned reel2reel player from Unitra ZRK ZK 127 like this one : allegro.pl/oferta/magnetofon-szpulowy-unitra-zrk-zk-127-vintage-prl-9196510853
The amount of Tech History I discover on this chanel is ludicrous.
Seriously, I'm nearly 45 and I never knew almost all of the things you showcase ever existed!
Absolutely!
The amount of formats that never made it, or existed for such a short time.
And today I learned that recordings were smuggled about on old X-Ray pictures!
Love this channel!
See "Free to Rock" documentary movie for more history of Bone records!
So I just asked my mom about these and she said that for her (80's kid) these were like a fancy novelty, like hologram cards. Apparently my great grandmother had a collection of them but didn't let my mom or uncle use them lmao. We're not sure if she still has them, but I will definitely ask her next time I visit Poland (so whenever they take away their nonsensical quarantine)
Wow those brought back a few memories, but contrary to what you suggested I can reveal that they were often also used to send whole recorded messages from one family to another without containing any music. I suspect that these more personal messages have simply not been published, as their content is of less general interest, but I well recall listening to them when the nanny who looked after me, who came from Poland, received them from her family back at home.
You have to remember that back then, in the mid 60’s, making a phone call from London to Warsaw required making an appointment to be connected. When you eventually got through, often at 2am in the morning, the quality and volume would be awful, and the conversation was hardly private either, with every operator and censor between the two destinations undoubtedly listening in. Stray too far from pleasantries and the call was apt to be abruptly “lost” as I can remember happening on several occasions.
So sometimes these audio postcards were used, along with letters sent via other routes or addresses, to work together to convey more sensitive and private information, in a way which would not attract the attention of censors, because only part of the story was in the letter, and part on the separately posted disc. Either on its own seemed innocent enough, but interpreted together, by someone who knew the sender, they would reveal far more.
Fascinating! Makes me think of the record I cut out of the back of a box of "Sugar Smacks" cereal as a child!!
Greetings from 🇬🇧. I'm from Poland and I remember this things 😁
I was having few in actually postcards size with typical (for Poland) postcard printing on back. One with writed text and post stamp.
My collection was 100% polish songs or children stories.
Yes the was sold alongside normal vinyls, primary target was children song and stories. Or something like anniversary stuff for polish cinematic, tv shows, famous artis etc.
I didn't expect the song on the cards sounded so nice!
Brings me back to my childhood cutting Jackson 5 and the Archie's from the back of cereal boxes...
My mom still has her Jackson 5 cereal box singles. Not sure if she has the full set, but she has quite a few and they're still in good condition. I told her she had BETTER not throw those out, and she looked at me and said "do you think I'm crazy?"
@@dashcamandy2242 that warms my heart!
Greetings from Poland! :D
When the back up turntable that you don’t mind risking is a highly collectable, relatively expensive Sound Burger haha ;)
Thank you for the very thoughtful video. I enjoyed the well-reasoned discussion.
Tego to sie nie spodziewalem :)
Thank you so much for posting the links to the songs. Just discovered some awesome Polish rock!
I grew up in Poland in the 60s and 70s and western music wasn't officially banned or prohibited, like e.g. books by George Orwell. It was just extremely hard to buy (as was everything else). In 1979 the national music publisher Tonpress produced a Beatles double-EP with 7 songs and if you bribed a sales lady with a big box of chocolates, she would save you one, since the entire pressing would sell in a few hours. And if you were one of the lucky few with a family abroad so you could get a passport and travel, and brought back some records, the customs officers were never interested in them, as I know first hand - my dad was a violinist in the National Philharmonic, traveled a lot with the orchestra, so I had a nice collection of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc. - which made me a hero in school :)
Interesting thing about this Beatles double-EP is that Tonpress got mono versions from EMI, and these were converted to stereo using original Polish method developed by eng. Janusz Piechurski from Polish Radio Experimental Studio (I read this some time ago in an interview with eng. Piechurski). My friend had this EP, and he also had some original Beatles records published by EMI that he brought from Western Germany where he had a family. I listened to both and I think that stereo obtained using Piechurski's method was better - it sounded like an actual stereo panorama, while EMI just put some tracks of the original multi-track master tape into the left channel, and the others into the right one. Piechurski's method has been further developed and is now used by National Audiovisual Institute during reconstruction of old recordings.
This is like the back of USA Cereal box records.....I knew as a child
I was going to comment on this as well. I remember Cheerios and some other brands that had a record on the back of the box. You cut out the back of the box and you could play the song.
Did it sound good?
@@quimbus_bingley
Probably not. But I would assume that it was a cool concept for kids.
@@quimbus_bingley The quality was similar to these postcards. A thin layer of plastic laminated onto the heavy paper of the box. You could get a few playings of the recording before it gave out. At about the same time it was not uncommon to find recordings of music and adverts in the pages of magazines. The square format made it easy to bind them in with the other pages. Sometimes they were perforated near the binding to facilitate their removal. In almost all cases you needed a real vinyl record to put on the turntable to provide a flat surface along with some sort of weight to make the flimsy material spin at the right speed without slippage.
How can I watch this channel for years and still see media I never knew existed!
As a Pole it's always surreal seeing pieces of PRL tech popping up on UK and US YT channels! Awesome!
Honestly, better quality than I would've expected for something cut into a laminated postcard.
Records from X-ray photo's.. As always I'm amazed by your knowledge of media.
I honestly thing a death metal band could do something similar just with vinyl instead of xrays
S denton I agree, I’m seriously curious if some obscure Finnish death metal band tried the same concept.
Absolutely fascinating, thank you as always!
Great video! It recalls many memories from my childhood - I had a small collection of sound postcards with short bedtime stories and poems for kids. :)
As far as I know, sound postcards issued by Polish state-owned companies usually contained Polish music (there were also those with Western music, but there were few - if foreign music was published, it was usually a music from other socialist countries). RSW was one of the companies involved in the production of sound postcards (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prasa-Książka-Ruch). In addition to publishing activities, this company also dealt with mass distribution of their own and third-party publications via their shops and kiosks network. Sometimes these sound postcards were added to magazines as well: I remember such publications from the late 1970s and early 1980s (due to my age, I could only come into contact with the decline phase of this phenomenon). Anyway, in the mid-1980s it was a rarity.
Sound postcards were also manufactured by small private companies - often they were one-man "factories". These usually contained unlicensed Western music and were sold at marketplaces. It was a kind of black-market activity caused by very limited access to Western music. Their greatest popularity falls in 2nd half of 1960s and they began to disappear in 1970s with the spread of tape recorders.
Fascinating
this is an absolutely fantastic video!, its great getting to see unique music formats like these postcards :)
the audio quality of some of these is surprisingly good all things considered
whoa! i have one from the 50s, but it’s from Sweden. it’s an early recording by Swedish Jazz singer Monica Zetterlund under a fake name (Eva Norén). i think the one i have is Love Letters in the Sand. it’s a really cool item because it’s a recording that only got an official vinyl release on the postcard!
I bet there's a jazz music collector somewhere here in Sweden prepared to lay up a pretty penny for that record. There can't be many of these around anymore. A Swedish journalist found just that unknown recording in 2009.
www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/varmland/nya-latar-med-monica-zetterlund-hittade (use google translate)
Ebbe Ollman haha jag behöver ingen översättning! och jag ÄLSKAR monica och hennes röst. det är svårt att hitta hennes skivor här i kanada men jag köpte typ 5 den sista gången jag reste till sverige
Ebbe Ollman inspelningen finns också på youtube: th-cam.com/video/D8E5uy6Yk5Y/w-d-xo.html
As always, great video! Thanks very much for all your efforts making these most enjoyable videos!
This has been one of my favorite channels on TH-cam for years now. Every time you think you know something about tech, Matt always schools you on something you've never heard of and I always look forward to a new video.
love the videos man! really interesting stuff
Fascinating, as always. Lo-Fi or not, those are pretty damn cool.
Hello @Techmoan i realy enjoy your videos and learn always something new about things i dont now wich is awsome , i watched till the moment when you put the record when my mom comes in to my room and recognizes the second song she told me a few thing about these records( she is from poland ) this was one the first time in a few years that she lookes realy happy and remembers things from the time she lived in poland , that was awsome :D , i casualy clicked on the first youtube link that was in the description , (i didnt know the artist ) and it was violetta villas , the first 5 seconds and my mom burst in to tears
the song is about the violetta wich emigrated in the 60ties to the us to make caarer as a musican its a song about homesickness and she wrote it to her mom ( my mom loved my grandma from deepest heart and realy miss her [my grandma died in 2007] )
also my mom told me that the lp`s in this time were realy expensive and at the time it was cheaper for them to buy just one of these cards than a whole album
i still thank you very much for this video and for your dedication
- Max. Jankowski
Again, an amazing piece of history. Thanks for sharing.
Pozdrowienia z Polski
Techmoan, you just made me go through my collection of records and I found quite a few of those "postcards". One of them has Paul Anka's "Crazy love" and "Goodbye my love" pressed on it (it's also slipped into a nice paper sleeve that is quite like a 7" single sleeve but without a hole in the middle). Foreign ones were quite rare but not impossible to find.
I also found an oddity (auditty?) - at a first glance very similar to the "sound postcards" (those thin, floppy ones made of semi-transparent plastic), but when I examined it, it turned out to be a 33 1/3, 7" record, sold as a part of a Soviet magazine "Krugozor" ("Кругозор"). You'd pull or cut these records out of the magazine and listen to them on a record player. They were double sided, and mine contains Elton John's "Shooting star" and "Madness" on one side, and songs by Irina Sokhadze (Ирина Сохадзе) on the other. Unfortunately, my Russian is still too poor to find the latter artist's song titles by lyrics (and there's no track listing).
From what I found in Russian wikipedia, these records were pressed in France until the end of 1991, and fully superseded by compact cassettes in 1992. There is a photo of this magazine containing these records referred to as "floppy records". I can't tell anything more than Russian wikipedia - I'm a bit too young to know the details (I was 7 when they stopped issuing "Krugozor"), maybe someone a little older (and a reader of Russian magazines) could shed some more light on this topic. I'll certainly ask my parents...
Anyway, as always, a great video! And thank you for a Polish accent this time! Pity you didn't try to pronounce "pocztówka dźwiękowa", though - I don't think someone might get offended. We are always very happy to hear someone at least trying to speak our language, because we know it's one big tongue breaker.
Stay safe and healthy!
As a postcrosser, i would absolutely love something like this! Wonderful!
Man, that's really awesome to know about! And especially those ribs records, I actually feel the need to form a Death Metal band just to launch some music in it! Great videos!
Imagine being so full of freedom that YOU HAD TO SMUGGLE MUSIC BECAUSE MUSIC WAS ILLEGAL.
Appreciate and defend what you have folks.
Thank you so, so much for that video. I clicked on it instantly and gave a thumbs up without viewing ;) I have a lot of those from my father. If you need anything (translation, identifying songs or performers) - I'm here
Fascinating, never knew they existed, thanks for the information, great channel!
Dziękuję @Techmoan za nostalgiczną podróż do czasów dzieciństwa. Mama opowiadała mi (rocznik 1950) jak wieczorem słuchała radia Luxemburg, a następnego dnia rano biegła z kolegami z klasy do prywaciarza, u którego kupowali piosenki, których tytuły mieli wcześniej wynotowane. Ja jako dziecko ilekroć odwiedzałem dziadków wyciągałem pudełko po projektorze "Bajka" i przesłuchiwałem po kolei wszystkie znalezione tam pocztówki na gramofonie Artur Stereo firmy Unitra. Bardzo lubiłem tę z muzyką z Bonanzy. Pocztówki leżą wciąż w tym samym pudełku w moim tapczanie.
fun-fact: cut-off corners of those non-paper ones (like that @7:24) were often used as guitar picks. :)
also - please not the way you handle them - and multiply that by years of similar treatment. originally they were just slightly worse that "real" singles.
God, this sound not that bad, this have some nostalgia :)
Greets from Poland ♥️
Nice video Matt! I love how you always manage to find this sort of rareties, then investigate them and make a cool video about them.
Thanks Mat, an interesting little window into another country's cultural history. 😀
I used to play around with these as a kid in my aunt's place, she had tons of them and an old Unitra turntable, it instilled my love for records. As far as I'm aware western music was usually produced on cardboard ones, and these were very quickly worn to shreds at house parties, which explains why most of them didn't survive... I do however have few of these myself, and among them a copy of Rolling Stones' Satisfaction and Twist and Shout by the Beatles. I believe the later plastic ones were produced alongside regular records as a cheap alternative. If you want to get a full story of these, I would suggest reaching out to Marek Niedźwiedzki from Polish Radio, he has a encyclopedic knowledge of history of music in Poland.
In any case, I never imagined I would hear Czerwone Gitary in a Techmoan video :D
7:43 sounds amazingly good.
Yeah! What is the name of this song?
@@astrolite. Ala Eksztajn - Nie wierz plotkom (Don't Believe the Rumors)
Mat, I nearly spit my coffee out at the get well greeting message. Thanks for the smile.
Thank you . Really enjoy your videos . Almost always something I had no clue it existed. Keep on the good work . Stay Healthy
I remember back in the 70s Franken Berry Cereal had a special box with Monster Mash on the back. We had to cut the back off the box and the play it on the stereo. I thought that was so cool.
Then there's Mad Magazine... th-cam.com/video/z6le600NWk0/w-d-xo.html
I remember these too. I believe we had one from Boo-Berry cereal.
I’ve got quite a few Beatles/ Lennon polish postcard recordings
I like the info you give about vinyl related things. Great stuff
I’m polish and I have sooo many of them. I love them. When I’m traveling to my friends in different cities they are so much easier to transport and if they are in good quality sounds amazing
If you transcribe the recordings as mono instead of stereo they will sound better. You're recording three dimensions of damage rather than two.
really want to add 1 of these to my collection as someone who has collected both postcards and music over the years
It was nice to watch.
In fact, there was a wide availability of such recordings in Poland in those days. My mother listened to this often.
Greetings from a fan from Poland.
Thank you for putting the song links!! I liked a few.