Flexidiscs!

1. A Manic Steeet Preachers Holy Bible sample from the NME or MM (90s)
2. A Jonny Ball one that came with a kids science kit from the 80s

Sure I must have more somewhere, but can't for the life of me think. I do remember me and my friends having great fun fucking about with them - warping, scratching, bending, flexing. They were never going to have a long shelf-life anyway, and most of the free ones were pants.

Like koogs, i have a pile of indie flexis... the indie bands and fanzine scene really made the format their own in the 80s and early 90s.

does anyone even press them anymore?

kinda interested in those ..

My first flexi was the New Seekers, which came along with a 6 pack of Coke.

For it's last issue, though, The Bob faced the inevitable and included a various artists CD instead.

1. Throwing Muses "Fish" (original version)
2. Nick Cave "Scum"
3. Walkabouts "On The Beach"
4. Kendra Smith's German version of "All Tomorrow's Parties"
5. Virgin Prunes "Jigsawmentallama"
6. Brian Eno "Glint"
7. The Cravats - DCL Laboratory Series #s 1 and 2
8. Swans "New Mind" (acoustic version)
9. The Foetus one mentioned upthread
10. Suicide "23 Minutes Over Brussels"

honorable mention: Feelies "Dancing Barefoot"

I really like flexi discs! Lots of tracks from Reflex and The Bob have never been reissued...

16 posts and no mention of Joy Division? Well then. Joy Division.

http://www.worldinmotion.net/joydivision/discography/singles/1980/Komakino.jpg

napalm death/s.o.b. - split flexi 7" (really nice for a flexi)
a v/a thorazine flexi with the boredoms, dixie waste, eyehategod, etc.
some guitar magazine thing with a guy playing microtonal guitar

i do love the concept of the flexidisc.

http://www.franklarosa.com/vinyl/BigImg/bears.jpg

I'll really have to look for that tomorrow!

After looking it up and figuring out the best way to distribute x-thousand flexidiscs, I casually mentioned in a meeting that I wondered how effective this would be when a lot of modern-day Priest fans and metalheads do not have turntables.

There was silence.

Apparently the boss thought they were CDs and never once considered the incredibly cheap price he was quoted. He had no idea what a flexidisc was. Once this was explained, he got very upset that nobody (i.e. me) had told him this before and he canned the idea angrily.

And I'm the one who got laid off...

Eno's "Glint (East Of Woodbridge)" was an almost 9-minute piece that sounds like an outtake from Ambient 4. It was included in a 1986 issue of Artforum magazine. Don't know if it made it to CD ever.

Mine is, of course, pretty destroyed (makes a great DJ tool as noted above), but here's a 7:08 edit I found:

http://s7.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0CWB16DKO5DY52U9S56RG6B39D

I forget what magazine it came from. Option maybe?

I still have:

1) A Reflex magazine flexi disc with a Charlatans track "Between 10th & 11th" that was (is?) unavailable elsewhere even on their album of the same name. Fabulous tune, too.

2) The Creation Records flexi disc that came with the Catalogue magazine. It contains My Bloody Valentine "Sugar" and Pacific "December, With The Day" (which I was crazy about)

3) A light blue flexi (not see through) that has two Slowdive tracks "Beach Song" and "Take Me Down". I don't remember it being very thrilling musically, despite their usual high quality. I can't remember where I got it from.

Brian Eno
Glint (East Of Woodbridge) 8:36
by b. eno opal ltd. 1986

No, the Capital Radio Clash one was not a flexi.

What a world it was.

Esmeralda's Kite!

Nearly all of them are surplus copies of "Chaos In USSR" / "Live In A Dream" by Sub-@ctive.

This is not a good thing.

"No, the Capital Radio Clash one was not a flexi."

Iirc there was a proper vinyl version ("Listen" & "Capital Radio One" b/w an interview with the band by Tony Parsons) and a flexi (which didn't include the interview).

One of these you could only get if you sent off a voucher which came with one of the first 1,000(?) copies of the first album; and one of them you had to collect vouchers which came with Melody Maker(?).

Or something.

I believe it was the subsequent reissue of this item - albeit in a different form - which led any number of aggrieved hardcore Clash fans to accuse the band of having sold out, subsequently making solemn little ceremonial funeral pyres of copies of the original single outside various subsequent Clash gigs, in paroxysms of self-righteous indignation.

Of course there were also at least two different bootleg single versions kicking about, one of which was the same as the original and (again, iirc) one which had something completely different on the 'B' side....

I very much doubt the "Melody Maker" flexi version exists at all.

I have a version on "Neat" records, plays at 33rpm.

Oh, and it took nothing for Clash fans to accuse them of selling out. Happened every day. Even if it was joe popping out for a cup of tea, he was repressing the ceylon farmers or summat.

I used to like it when fanzine writers would get all ambitious and start producing flexis faster than they could write their fanzines. So one of the "Are You Scared To Get Happy"s came with two ShaLaLa flexis. And I recall a fanzine called "Shy Like You" which came with three (sadly not great: The Hangmans Beautiful Daughters, The Senseless Things and someone else, if I remember rightly).

I know that the plan for Sha La La was to put out lots of flexidiscs ("we're planning to FLOOD the summer with flexis", someone said in 1987). They made it to 8. It was an interesting idea: the flexis got really cheap (13p each?) when you ordered more than 2500, so if several fanzines around the country clubbed together they could provide giveaway music without grossly inflating the prices of their publications. I never quite understood how any given fanzine made it into the club, or on what basis the songs / groups were chosen. I think in the end personalities kind of got in the way and it was easier for people to go off and do their own thing than to try to deal with a loose collective spread around the country.

Like so much in the '80s UK indie world, the fashion for flexis felt like an act of wilful contrariety (the NME was already giving away vinyl singles; CDs were beginning to be made with boasts of indestructibility; flexis by comparison felt fragile and anachronistic) but also cheap, quick and fun. And good, sometimes. This felt like punk rock ethics in action and that was important, to them (us).

I have a Readers Digest flexi featuring Brendan Behan talking, but that's another story, or two.

As Tony Parsons was on their staff at the time, that would certainly make sense!

"I very much doubt the "Melody Maker" flexi version exists at all."

Maybe they promised one but didn't deliver - hence that week's reason for accusing them of selling out?

"Oh, and it took nothing for Clash fans to accuse them of selling out. Happened every day. Even if it was joe popping out for a cup of tea, he was repressing the ceylon farmers or summat."

OTM

All a far cry from allowing "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" to be used to advertise jeans that are made in the sweatshops of Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Macao, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.

Ooops, little bit of politics there, my name is....

Helen Love "Il Fait Beau"/Belm0nd0 "Metr0liner" on Wurlitzer Jukebox? (PB isn't terribly fond of that Belm0nd0 track and, er, would probably be very embarrassed that we were discussing it on the t'internet. So we're not going to tell her, are we?)

Austin: I've never had a flexi wear out in that way, and I must have played some of mine many tens of times. Much more dangerous for the life of your disc is the potential for creasage on the way from the sleeve to the record player and back again. Also sitting in the record box can be hazardous if you're not careful.

"Sad Kaleidoscope" by the Razorcuts (Sha La La 002, I think) changed my life, a bit.

Next would be Adam & The Ants covering "YMCA" as "A.N.T.S.", and the Smash Hits all-star Christmas disc from 1982.

How does everyone play them? I've always placed the flexi on top of a vinyl record for increased stability, but I'm not convinced that it really makes any difference.

I have so, so many flexis ... They Might Be Giants' debut single was a flexi (1985); I loved Reflex magazine and have most of their flexis, incl. the Residents and Foetus ones mentioned above. I also have a few The Bob flexis (including some acoustic Iggy Pop) and some cheesy ones that came with Keyboard Magazine. And Laurie Anderson's demo of "Let X=X" was first issued on an Artforum flexi.

Makes me pine for the good old days of underground magazines like Reflex, Option, B-Side, and even some of the defunct British ones like Select. *sigh*

I think the title was "Motherbanger." That record is *hilarious*, and Morris reproduced the Pixies' style so accurately, it's uncanny.

Big big xpost - on listening to it, it actually turns out that this track appears on The Shutov Assembly under a different name. Thanks for your trouble, all the same :).

As for "Motherbanger", is that track available anywhere else?

http://s26.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1J7BXT5Y64XGF1PFJ26E9VPD2Y

Can anyone verify that Zappa released Dancing Fool as a commercial flexi (in the early 80s I think)?

I used to have Twilight Alehouse by Geneis, which I think was a fan club flexi. Of course I sold it for about £20 years ago - wonder how much it is worth now?

And thanks are due for "Motherbanger" :).

dumb as deaths head flexi from i think it was the melody maker

Yeah, it was MM (otherwise unreleased The The track from the Pr0nography Of Despair album, anyone who cares).

Does anyone know where to get one of these made nowadays? I have heard tell that a place once again exists...

thx!