DEEP PURPLE PERFECT STRANGERS SET OF FIVE RUSSIAN POSTCARDS
£
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$
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Description
These Are A Set Of Five DEEP PURPLE Russian Postcards PERFECT STRANGERS Consisting Of Under The Gun, Nobody's Home, Wasted Sunsets, Hungry Daze, Mean Streak.
Impossible To Find These Days!!
Although the so-called USSR Postcard singles are widely considered an aspect of flexidisc collecting, the sheer range and novelty of available issues has established them as a firm, if difficult, theme in their own right.
Little firm data has been published surrounding these exotic issues’ origins and development. The majority were produced by the Polpress label and are sometimes inaccurately described as pirate productions, in that the music was not licensed from the western copyright holders. However, as one of the few rock-music media readily available to Russian youth during the Communist era, their status as items of social history necessarily outweighs any legal issues.
Many of the discs (which are, of course, shaped and manufactured to the specifications of a regular picture postcard, then embossed with two musical tracks) frequently bear images completely unrelated to their subject — cartoons, street scenes, greetings and so forth. It also appears that “new” postcards were not always produced; many postcard singles exist pressed onto cards which clearly predate the song’s recording — a 1920s view of Moscow, for example, playing a 1970s Deep Purple song.
The Soviet Union itself saw a number of postcard singles issued by the Moscow Photo/Cinema Organization during the late 1960s, measuring some 9½” across and playing at 78 rpm. These cards, too, tend to offer totally unrelated images on the postcard side.
Another characteristic of these issues is their extremely limited availability. Some press runs were as tiny as 50 copies. One should also be aware that automatic record players — that is, those whose mechanism automatically returns the playing arm to its rest upon reaching the end of the record — are unable to play them, as the postcard record begins where a conventional 45’s label would lie.
Entire LPs were produced in the postcard medium, two songs per card. For obvious reasons, complete sets are extremely rare and highly valued today, particularly those still contained within their own original packaging. Many cards, individual and otherwise, were issued in “picture sleeve” envelopes or wrappers, bearing the artist and song title. Several Pink Floyd titles are known in this format, including the albums Dark Side Of The Moon and Meddle, and a unique compilation, Super Floyd. (Pink Floyd themselves utilized the wrapper format as packaging for the set of non-musical postcards included within their Shine On box set. )
Russian postcard releases, while actively traded, are nevertheless extremely difficult to find. Many collectors might spend their entire lives without ever finding one through their traditional record-hunting channels. However, shift one’s focus away from record collecting and into the realms of cartophily (postcard collecting) and some finds can be made. Many card dealers have sections of novelty and musical postcards, and while these tend to be dominated by mass-produced American issues, playing state anthems and songs for tourists and the like, more esoteric items abound.
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