| Bearing the Cyrillic imprint "буд кон," these counterfeit
5.5" x 5.5"
multicolor flexidiscs started turning up as far back as 1993, possibly
even earlier. They are purportedly of Russian origin, but some people
suspect
that they are
actually manufactured in Poland. All are mono, 45rpm. The
label name is most commonly rendered in Roman characters as "Budkon,"
less often "BudKon" or "Bud Kon." Thousands of titles (one song
per disc) have been issued, covering every band imaginable — literally
ranging from ABBA to Zappa. The sound quality of these recordings is flat-out awful. If you're old enough to remember what the flexis that occasionally came with Mad magazine in the 50s and 60s sounded like, you're on the right track. These are worse. Noise overwhelms signal, pitch is warbly, frequency range is minimal, and the disks don't lie flat. Definitely not recommended for use with a stylus that you value! As of spring 2004, there are five Hüsker Dü titles known, colors as listed:
All of these are single tracks lifted directly from Zen Arcade. Comparing the catalog numbers with those of other Budkon discs whose release dates have been fairly well established, it seems likely that the Hüsker flexis came out during 2002-2003. Typically, a clear flexi might cost around £8 and a pretty colored one around £11. The extravagant prices are obviously calculated to exploit the most hopelessly compulsive segment of the collector market (not to mention hopelessly compulsive discographers). Language notes (Warning: Cyrillic characters ahead; if you can't see them in IE, it may help to grab the Pan-European character set. Up-to-date Mozilla browsers should have no problem.) Neither "Budkon" nor "Bud Kon" means anything in Russian or Polish, but there is apparently a construction company called Budkon in the Polish town of Szczecin. In Polish, budować = build, budowa = building; konstruować = construct, konstrukcja = construction — so the construction company name makes sense. In Russian, the situation is less clear. The буд- root seems to have something vaguely to do with work (будничный = workaday), or futurity (будущий = future). Конструкция = construction, just as in Polish, but кон- is a pretty common prefix. I can't conclude much of anything from this. The phrases below appear on either the discs themselves or their photocopied paper sleeves. I've ventured guesses at translations: Запись по трансляции [Zapis' po translyatsiy]= broadcast transcription? Ассоциация клубов филофонистов [Assotsiyatsiya klubov philophonistov] = association of record-fan clubs гибкая пластинка [gibkaya plastinka] = flexidisc моно [mono] = mono There's additional info and speculation on this Stranglers page. |
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