Vladimir Vysotsky was a popular singer during this time period and while the state run music publishing house did not publish his music, it was still widely available in this format.
"This was also the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vystotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Unable to completely ignore his musical phenomenon, Melodiya did release a few of his songs on disks in the late 1970s, which, however, constituted but a small portion of his creative work, which millions already owned on tape and knew by heart."
Vladimir Vysotsky is my father's favorite singer. He (ex military from Bulgaria) used to go an train with soviet forces every summer (in some desert). But pretty much he grew up anti-establishment, listening to rock, heavy metal, and illegal vysotsky recordings (the ones soviet government would censure).
One summer he came back with casette and some authentic recordings from him, but then my sister decided to sing Michael Jackson and have recorded her own singing over the casette :) - so it's all lost, but he's able to find now lots of material.
It's interesting, how he really loves russian culture, was military, but despised communist, and oppressive regime. To this day he plays (maybe even now) the IL-2 sturmovik game, where with his german, russian, ukranianian, bulgarian and other buddies re-enacts the World War II period in flight (he was in the Air force, and I'm glad that he was never ever to become a pilot (due to his vision), as lots of folks from his age died in these planes, some fathers of kids I was in school...)
Music on bones... Now it sounds like a joke, but for some people, who were thrown to jails for selling this stuff on Soviet's black market, it sounds literally.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 19.9 ms ] thread2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14939295
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10724639
E.g. a quote from
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vladimir_Vysotsky
"This was also the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vystotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Unable to completely ignore his musical phenomenon, Melodiya did release a few of his songs on disks in the late 1970s, which, however, constituted but a small portion of his creative work, which millions already owned on tape and knew by heart."
One summer he came back with casette and some authentic recordings from him, but then my sister decided to sing Michael Jackson and have recorded her own singing over the casette :) - so it's all lost, but he's able to find now lots of material.
It's interesting, how he really loves russian culture, was military, but despised communist, and oppressive regime. To this day he plays (maybe even now) the IL-2 sturmovik game, where with his german, russian, ukranianian, bulgarian and other buddies re-enacts the World War II period in flight (he was in the Air force, and I'm glad that he was never ever to become a pilot (due to his vision), as lots of folks from his age died in these planes, some fathers of kids I was in school...)