Entertainment For Lively Minds
Who remembers Dynaflex records?
Back in the early 70s RCA came up with the brilliant idea of making their LPs quite a bit thinner than usual but selling them at the usual price, thus saving them a fortune in vinyl costs. Various reasons were put forward for this ill-conceived scheme, one of which had something to do with the looming oil shortage, although to be fair, Dynaflex records first appeared in 1969, well before the 70s petrol crisis became big news.
For those who don't remember, these records really were a lot thinner and more flexible than regular LPs. If held up and supported by the label, the records would visibly sag. Many of the early Bowie LPs were pressed on Dynaflex vinyl and although it was mainly an American innovation, several UK RCA releases utilised imported Dynaflex records.
Audiophiles hated them of course, claiming the thinner records produced more surface noise and classical record buyers in particular voiced strong opposition. Eventually towards the end of the 70s Dynaflex LPs quietly disappeared, never to be seen again.
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My first copy of
Rock n Roll Animal was a Dynaflex disc. Heroin was ruined, in a purely Euterpean sense of course.
Euterpean
I had to look that one up.
Good word.
Apologies, I can't get the Wikipedia link to work. What am I doing wrong? Isn't it supposed to pick it up automatically without any added tags?
You're not doing anything wrong
For some reason, the automatic linking thing doesn't work sometimes with Wikipedia URLs - I've no idea why. In the meantime, I've linkified it with a bit of HTML.
as far as I can tell
the preponderance of australian pressed albums were quasi dynaflexdiscs from 1970 onwards.
They must have been pre pre greenies too because so concerned with saving trees were they that they didn't bother with gatefold sleeves most times.
Tell me about it!
Third world quality vinyl, hardly any gatefolds, very few sleeve inserts and in some instances (Zappa, Ian Dury, Marianne Faithfull to name just three off the top of my head) records were randomly censored in Australia well into the 80s.
The advent of CD eventually brought about some sort of uniformity with the rest of the world, thankfully.
Thank you sir
you're a star (Fraser, that is).
I've a couple of early Bowie disks that fit the description...
... I've also got some old Elton John albums and singles (on the DJM label) made out of a very strange flavour of vinyl. Ostensibly black as any other disc, if you hold them up to the light they suddenly appear red. This is well before the advent of 'proper' coloured vinyl, and I suspect is just a property of the (cheap?) vinyl used by DJM back in the day.
Anyone else come across this, or can at least explain it to me?
Some UK pressings
of Caribou were pressed in the way you describe, I believe. They look black, but when held up to the light a red marbling effect can be seen.
Zappa/Mothers ~ Roxy and Elsewhere
a double album of flexible deep red vinyl
My Dad's copy of Elton's
My Dad's copy of Elton's Greatest Hits Vol.1 (now in my ownership) is like that - the vinyl appears black but when held up to light, is opaque and decidedly purple.
Still can't explain it, though.
i'll get my anorak
The "deep red" vinyl you describe was commonplace on most pressings from the Pye factory during the 70s - they presumably just used a different colouring agent in the mix (as any fule kno, vinyl is naturally a clearish colour, and is variously pigmented, most often to black with the addition of carbon particles)
btw coloured vinyl was popular right back to the 78 era, and the first RCA 45rpm microgroove issues in the late 1940s were pressed on coloured wax accoridng to their musical genre
What about CBS/Epic circa 1982?
My sister had a Shakin' Stevens LP on Epic, bought in 1982 or so, that was really thin and flexible.
Were CBS cutting back too at that moment in time, or was this some kind of cheap import copy instead?
Got my copy of Nilsson Schmilsson out when I read this
You can use it as a wobble board.
In the late 70's, early 80's
In the late 70's, early 80's I lived in Holland, in some shops you could buy records imported from Portugal which sold for (I think) 10 Guilders instead of 15 -20 for the locally pressed vinyl. They did away with gatefold sleeves and inners, in fact the glue holding the cover didn't last much longer than getting the records home and of course the vinyl was not much thicker than a flexidisc but they where much more suited to a pocket money budget.
My LP of Trick of the tail
still bears the words "Fabricado em Portugal", and iirc my LPs of Blonde on Blonde, Abbey Road, and several others were similarly sourced.
Other record companies...
...may have skimped on quality from time to time, but what's interesting in this case is that only RCA had the balls to brag about their parsimoniousness.
Indeed, they even gave a name to it (Dynaflex) and by the clever use of reverse psychology, successfully convinced record buyers it was a good idea to pay more for less.
Value?
Which Bowie LPs appeared as Dynaflex releases?
Are they worth any money?
I'll have to check
but I think most of the American RCA Bowie albums appeared as Dynaflex pressings up to at least the Berlin trio of LPs
In the UK they would often use imported US-made Dynaflex LPs and match them with UK-printed sleeves.
I've never seen this make any difference to the value though.
Some of the RCA offshoot labels also got the Dynaflex treatment. Remember Jefferson Airplane's vanity imprint Grunt Records? Most of those (including the attendant JA solo albums and Hot Tuna releases) were Dynaflex pressings.
perversely
I have seen 70's Australian pressings of records on collector sites priced at a premium.
I understand differentiation warranting a premium price but:
a deficiency of vinyl
an absence of a gatefold cover,
an absence of sufficient glue to bind the cover
an absence of weight in the cardboard used for the covers
and often an absence of a diffent photo on the back cover (having simply reproduced what was on the front)
strikes me as not warranting a premium
Sounds like Portuguese and Australian pressings were interchangable.
All you say is true...
...but among Zappa obsessives the Australian censored pressings of 200 Motels (sans Penis Dimension) and Uncle Meat (minus, among other things, the Suzy Creamcheese speech) are highly prized.
Getting a B side was a bonus
In New Zealand, they didn't wait for the first oil crisis to save money on vinyl. Flexi pressings were standard issue from the late 1960s; once I bought a record so cheaply made both sides could touch each other (Okay it was a Hari Krishna record bought of a guy in the street who said George Harrison was on it. I forgot my gullibility pill that day.)
And the local branches of multi national record companies were so mean they even printed full colour sleeves in colour on the front, and black and white on the back - even if the image was a wrap around design, Moondance or Let It Bleed. Any overseas pressings had a real cachet.
You say that, but...
...compared to the cynical penny-pinching that went on in Australia, the Kiwi record releases were wonderfully eccentric and interesting.
Take the first King Crimson LP In The Court Of The Crimson King, for example. Instead of appearing on Island as it did almost everywhere else in the world, the NZ version was released on the swirl Vertigo label! The same thing happened with a few other Island LPs - something to do with Island and Vertigo both being distributed by Polygram in NZ, I recall.
The US album Beatles VI was released locally in New Zealand, but clearly Roman numerals were not the Kiwis' strong point, as the label was printed as "Beatles IV"
The list goes on.
And let's not forget that NZ also threw up many unique (and now hugely collectable) LPs and EPs
It is the record of tomorrow, yours today
Over a year later I'm back with a scan of an original paper inner sleeve for one of the wobble board style Dynaflex records made by RCA in the early 70s.
Have you ever read such bollocks? So much hyperbole for what was basically just a cost cutting measure dressed up as some kind of philanthropic public service.
Apart from the first line (which is hardly a plus, anyway), every single one of those listed claims is almost certainly a great big lie.
And the errant apostrophe simply puts the tin lid on it.
Indeed
Well, I read Spotify's justification for the Facebook tie-up the other day ;-)
If any of your RCA Bowie LPs...
...look like this.
You're in trouble