Polish Sound Postcards

YouTube's auto-subtitle translated the Polish into "KGB uncover", which is rather unfortunate.

I'm posting weeks after this video came out, but thought you might be curious: I talked to my mother, who was a teenager in Poland in the 60s. She said that she had a bunch of these, but they were all Western music (mostly The Beatles). And yes, some of it recorded from Radio Luxembourg. She doesn't recall ever seeing any Polish music on these, the whole point of them being to get access to that western music. She remembers getting one with a personalised message from a friend for her namesday, otherwise they were all pre-recorded. They didn't go with her to Australia, unfortunately I've never seen them.

I'm sure we used to have a 78 rpm British birthday card with some, kind of birthday song on it when I was a kid. Same technique, must have been early 60's

Very interesting story here ... and a few of those Polish pop singers are worth a search to hear what they really sound like. Thanks, Matt!

It's a genuine (and clearly long-lived) regret that my Mother would never let me make a recording in those booths which you'd see in major railway stations in the '60s-'70s. They were quite pricey I think, so I see her point. But what a shame. You may be too young to recall them.

Fantastic! I had never heard of Ribs, let alone these postcards. Thanks for this, Mat.

Here is a related item. Playable stamps from Bhutan:

Great video. As for the later plastic form of these postcard records, I was told (from an old Polish collector) that it was technically still a postcard and you could go to a kiosk (usually a bigger newspaper stands) either to record your message on the postcard page or to write a short message using a sticker-type special paper to be put on the postcard section of the plastic. However, I have no written records to verify this.

Those postcard records would've been an ideal medium for an episode of Mission: Impossible TV Show. I had no idea those existed, and they don't sound THAT bad considering they are on a laminated piece of paper.

Fascinating stuff, Mat. Like many others, I can vaguely remember seeing something similar-ish here in the UK - probably more akin to a transparent flexidisc glued onto a printed square card; an advert of some sort, I think. Anyhow, really informative and well presented as ever - thanks!

Funny how our parents, grandparents listened music back those days. In Hungary, back in the communist days, many music or video formats weren't available, the people didn't even heard most of them, vinyl, reel to reel, and lately tape was known only the music formats, and those were expensive too, like in many communist countries. I was born in '88, 2 years before the end of communism here, but the effect of the last 40-45 years could be seen in late '90s too: who had a two-head VHS recorder, or a hifi system with a vinyl player, AM/FM tuner and tape recorder, was a rich person. So I think, a sound postcard could look a little dumb nowadays, but for our parents, grandparents getting one of these were a big surprise.

Great stuff as always, Mat. The situation with YouTube is getting ridiculous. There's a musician on there called Rick Beato that does breakdowns of various songs, demonstrating how they're constructed, why they're great etc. Even just playing bits of them himself (i.e. with his own guitar) it can trigger copyright flags and blocks. He's made a number of videos highlighting the madness of it all. There really needs to be some common sense at some point as this greed/ desperation is going to eventually kill the golden goose.

I love how you find these things. As an American, my experience with what you call a flexi-disk was twofold. The first is records pressed on the back of breakfast cereal boxes like these cards and the second is the more common record bound in a book or magazine. Did you have the cereal box ones in the UK?

I've got one from the early 80s with information about the tower of London on it

Ha! I got one of these with a compilation album from 1973. "*Dick Clark* 20 years of rock n' roll. Haven't played it yet, maybe I'll give it a whirl. Cheers

The sound quality on these, while still not great, is quite remarkable. Some of the ones you played like the totally plain yellow one sound way better than most of what I've heard from flexi-discs, and on its first play it must've sounded rather nice, actually. Flexi-discs were absolutely massive in the USSR after Khruschev took a personal liking to them when visiting the US, so even though ribs went out of fashion in favor of magnetic tape you're likely to find a lot of magazine cutout flexi-discs from the Soviet Union on eBay or similar to this day, there's a lot of interesting stuff on those. Have a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9myqJI9ZQCo

Thanks, Mat.

Being a musician, I found one of those songs samples to be something I might like. It was the third song in the group starting with the picture of the pretty girl, at 8:07 into the video. I'd really like to know what the song is. Sounds a little Beatle-like, but I am a boomer.

That was pretty fascinating. As they didn’t seem to trouble themselves with pressing the hole in the center of the pattern (or perhaps just stamped them out regardless of the pattern), my OCD would not have tolerated watching them play for very long. I’m sure that my brain would be looking for the disturbing wow of an off-center record. I don’t know if you had it over there, but here in the states breakfast cereal companies would print (?) records on the backs of cereal boxes. I’m pretty sure I cut out a Bobby Sherman record from a box of Quisp or some other sickly sweet cereal. These also reminded me of the Brush Mail-a-Voice record cutter from a much earlier time. It looks a bit like a child's lunchbox. You would put a sort of laminated plastic over thick cardboard record on it, then a plastic center bit that had a spiraling grove to track the cutting head, then record something to a loved one and mail it off. I have one of these. I can't imagine that people recorded commercial music on them, but, hey, some pirating Lawrence Welk may have happened. With my luck, I'll find I have nothing but someone's aunty playing a zither at a family gathering.

I also laughed out loud when you dedicated “Warsaw Taxi Driver” to a factory friend, and the song started with the guy moaning wistfully “I don’t know why I chose this job / Many claim there are better ones out there...”

(Although some articles also mention a bunch of Polish artists started their career this way! Spurned by official studios, they found popularity on postcard recordings…)

I am Polish, and I remember those vaguely from my childhood! (Although they felt obsolete then – I was into cassettes.) I just did some reading to try to answer your question. It seems that even though vinyl records of foreign musicians existed, they were often much delayed, by a year or more – if at all available (for example, you couldn’t listen to Dylan that way). Postcards were most often made by smaller fly-by-night operations in basements – still completely legal within the Polish law – and they were popular as they could get you the music much faster (there were even some under-the-hood dealings where some music ended up on postcards earlier than even on the radio). Eventually the big recording studios invested in them alongside vinyls, too, mostly because they had already such a cultural cachet – but by that time it was too late and people moved to bootleg cassettes for their needs. So the collection you’re presenting (mostly Polish music and mostly it seems big record companies?) might be a bit atypical. In general, this seems familiar to many other aspects of late Polish communism, which was pretty “loose” – the rules were sometimes less rigid than in other countries of the bloc, resulting in gray areas of fascinating shapes and forms. This is one of them. Now, don’t get me started talking about the “Polish American dollar,” which was an actual official secondary currency...

at 9:00 you say: with the exception of 1 track. But both tracks are not Polish. Mireille Mathieu is a famous French singer.

Was the glitch at 9:26 intentional, because, if so, that's brilliant.

I had a few of those records on a card, but they faded away very fast, I think those things were everywhere.

I’m also curious about the why. Surely an interesting story in that.... These sound postcards reminded me of getting a CD-ROM business card from someone once in the early 2000s. It was rectangular business card size piece of plastic with a hole in the middle that contained about 30mb or so of information telling you about their company. The card had a circular ridge so that it sat in a CD-ROM draw slot for single CDs.

I really don’t understand copyright on music, as long it’s only a third maybe of the tune. What’s the deal with it? I could maybe understand if it was something awful that someone was trying to sell and doesn’t want anybody to know how awful it was.

First i read "Polish Sound Cards" and thought if they cloned SoundBlasters and Adlibs. o.o

I remember when I went away on a business trip and I went into a booth at a seaside town and recorded a message to my girlfriend. I also remember when I worked in the Hi Fi trade and I got offered a free trip to Russia from people in the Russian trade delegation. They were in reality KGB. I didn't accept the offer because I was asking myself why they wanted me to go.

Never knew any of that. I had a few flexi records back in the day, but that was fascinating; thanks, Mat.

Great video. didn't know this existed but loads on eBay including 15 set of Beatles ones. Nice you finally found a use for a sound burger lol

Great video :) I didn’t know those existed until I found one in a 2nd hand record store here in Germany last year. And it seems I was lucky to get one with international songs. Sound quality is horrible, just as you mentioned. https://ibb.co/Yp8DrfH

Great stuff Mat. I really liked the music I heard here, especially the female sung one in the first montage. Hoping to find some of these tracks :-) Funny enough I once uploaded a clip from the film "Absolute Beginners" (as the clip already on YouTube was very poor quality) and received an instant notifications that my material was blocked in one country; you guessed it - Poland! Surprised me for a film you'd assume would have little presence there, wasn't even a David Bowie scene (!) So we've learnt Polish copyright robots are seemingly the most fastidious in the world AND that YouTube in Poland must be a very boring place :-p

Fascinating as always Mat. This could be a Soviet era pamphlet; Copyright enforcement as proof of capitalist insurgency.

Custom-etched postcard record machines were apparently a thing in some tourist areas in the US as well. I wish there was a good way to extract the audio from these postcard records. I have one of my late grandfather from the late 60s that I wish I could get a better quality recording from, but unfortunately it barely plays. (I doubt you could’ve added a copyrighted song to one, however.)

So strange, this copyright stuff, as if you're going to this YouTube film to listen and enjoy these old records... But I remember cardboard records also from the west, my mother once bought at a flea market a promotional records for the 2CV, because she like the picture of the ducky on it... There is even a website about this disc: http://www.minigroove.nl/citroen_lelijke_eendje.html (in Dutch)

Just had a ribs 10 years ago. 78 rpm, looks like microgroove flexi 10” disks, and the sound quality was really isn’t so good, before i glued it to 10” vinyl. The problem here is purely mechanical: the playing part bends inward, and the pressure of the stylus is not enough for more or less high-quality sound. After gluing the disk, the sound was smoother, comparable to a normal flexi disk.

I'm sure I detected the shake n vac advert in there :) at 8:01