Your Flexible Friend: flexi-disks and their curious history

Craig Stephen takes a look at the life and times of the flexi-disk, and his own connection with the format …

They sometimes require gold coins to be placed on top for them in order to play; they’re flimsy and easily lost, and have been used for selling things like sugar-laden cereals or big macs. But there’s a certain charm about flexi-disks, a format that was used from the mighty to the obscure of pop music for more than a decade. 

My own modest collection of flexis contains wonderfully rare material by bands of the British indie scene of the mid to late 80s, and early 90s, from bands that did little to nothing else, to bands that became involved in the various ‘scenes’ of the time.

Totem among these releases is a flexi by the Manic Street Preachers, issued in 1990, shortly after their first single was given away with the Hopelessly Devoted fanzine, which presumably ended up in my recycling bin, reducing its value somewhat. The Manics contributed ‘UK Channel Boredom’ which, if the disk was of reasonable quality (and didn’t require three coins to prevent it from bubbling), would be a rather excellent example of the punk metal they were purveying at the time. 

It was a split single-sided disk with a band called The Laurens, very much the yang to the Manics’ ying, who contributed the pleasantly melodic ‘I Don’t Know What the Trouble Is’.  It’s fair to say that the Laurens’ effort hasn’t led to the disk being sold online for what can only be described as ludicrous amounts.

I also have a flexi by The Cult: ‘Wild Flower’ new mix, which came free in 1987 with the now defunct Record Mirror, a publication that regularly gave away impressive 7-inch singles. The back of this flexi contains suggestions of what you cannot do with it: “Get BBC2 on it”; “Use it as a makeshift shoehorn”; and “Pass it off as a £50 note”. But it does suggest you could use it to “make two into a pair of emergency binoculars”, and “use several to design a fancy dress outfit entitled “liquorice allsort” … thankfully, I ignored all such valid advice and still have it today.

We’ll have more from the collection later. 

A history lesson (of sorts) 

The first flexis  or “talking postcards” were intended to be personal. The user recorded a message onto phonograph grooves imprinted in resin-covered postcard then mail it to a friend to play on a turntable.

In the early 20th century the flexi became an alternative to the heavy and brittle 78. In the 1930s, the Durium company used their acetate in creating popular cardboard records - the ‘Hit of the Week’ series - that sold for only a few nickels at American newsstands.

When the post-World War II boom lead to a recording boom, flexis entered into a second golden age, with the focus more on promotion.

The most renowned use was on cereal boxes – the first known use of this was on the side of a Wheaties cereal box in the 1950s and these continued to be produced through the 1980s in the US. They were made using a special laminate that could be secured to cereal cartons. It’s a mass, captive market, after all. 

The peak of the flexi was when The Beatles sent out hundreds of thousands of  special  Christmas disks  to their fan clubs.

In 1973, the NME gave away an exclusive Alice Cooper track, a take on Elvis Presley’s ‘Slick Black Limousine’. On the flip side were four snippets from his forthcoming Billion Dollar Babies album, so not surprisingly this soon became a prized item amongst Cooper fans. 

ABBA were also prone to the odd exclusive freebie; their ABBA/Live 77 was a one-sided gold-coloured flexi that featured clips from that year's Australian tour. It was intended to be only available as a gift for kids selling books, papers, and magazines door-to-door at Christmas for the Jultidningsförlaget publishing corporation.

Perhaps the biggest flexi-disk giveaway was when McDonalds’s had 80 million flexis done featuring a version of the chain’s ‘menu song’. Only one record had the song in its entirety, and whoever got that won US$1 million.

A magazine dedicated entirely to the humble flexi-disk appeared in 1980 in Britain. Called  Flexipop  it was billed as “the world’s first singing magazine” and each issue contained an exclusive track from a major chart act. The list of artists contributing was extensive – The Jam, Soft Cell, Madness, The Associates, Blondie, The Cure, Depeche Mode and Genesis. Despite the range of stars and the sometimes curious and exclusive tracks they contributed, Flexipop only lasted until 1983.

So far, so Western capitalism, but in the Soviet Union, until it’s break-up, the flexi-disk played an unlikely role in subterfuge. During the 70s and 80s, when much Western rock was still banned, bootleggers and fans illegally pressed pirated tracks on to hospital X-ray film. Eventually the authorities twigged that excuses used by teenagers that the sheets were for "my uncle’s knee X-ray" were nonsense. 

Revival? 

As with vinyl in the 1990s and 2000s, flexi-disks suffered from the move to CDs, and pretty much became obsolete. 

But does that mean that flexi-disks are piggy-backing on the current love of vinyl? If there is it’s not something I’ve noticed. 

The California-based Pirates Press, which specialises mainly in punk and Oi! began producing flexi-disks in 2010 and claims to be the only producer in the world. Jack White’s Third Man Records hired them to produce 1,000 postcard records …“playable full colour postcards with grooves stamped in the glossy finish”.

For Record Store Day in 2019, second wave punk band Crass re-released ‘Do They Owe Us A Living?’ (a 1977 live version and another live version from 30 years later) on the format. 

There are more examples of flexi-disk releases, either on their own, or given away with albums, from the past five years, particularly on Record Store Day, but not enough to suggest some form of revival.

And back to the box in the spare room

This writers’ collection of flexi-disks (which given their thinness don’t take up much space) also includes such gems as Baby Lemonade’s ‘Jiffy Neckwear Creation’ backed by ‘The Bachelor Pad’ (on a 6 ½-inch disk) with the admirable advice “not suitable for deep frying”. 

This was part of a release of twee flexis by the same Glasgow label (Sha-La-La) that included The Clouds’ ‘Jenny Nowhere’ backed by Mighty Mighty’s ‘Throwaway’ (Throwaway version), both of which were fine examples of mid-80s jangly pop. 

Delving deeper into tweedom was a three-track flexi that came with the Shoot the Tulips fanzine and was led by the Pale Saints, whose track ‘Children Break’ was the first thing they ever did, and a world away from the shoegazing sound that they developed and became renowned for. 

The Savlons and the folky Kerry Fiddles were also involved in this, the one and only contribution to music both acts ever gave the world.

The Senseless Things contributed three tracks to one flexi-disk, at the time having had only one single behind them with far more to come over the next decade.

Chapterhouse contributed ‘Losing Touch With My Mind’/‘It Won’t Be Wrong’ on two separate disks; the first track was by Spacemen 3, the second by The Byrds. 

Spacemen 3, meanwhile, contributed ‘I Love You’ and ‘Sometimes’, also on two separate flexi-disks which came free with The Catalogue monthly magazine in February 1991.

The Barmy Army released at least two football-related flexis, one called ‘Leroy’s Boots’ and the other called ‘Billy Bonds MBE’, both of which were released by On-U Sound. Neither were cut so are square disks. The latter contains commentary, including when Bonds collected the FA Cup with West Ham Utd, and fan chants set to a wonderful dub anthem … I am sure the gaffer of this site will heartily concur.

(Indeed he does! … and I’ll also note that the popular 80s US alt-pop magazine Trouser Press was relatively prolific when it came to including flexis with copies of the magazine … acts like Altered Images, Berlin, Buggles, Japan, Joan Jett, OMD, REM, and XTC all featuring on flexis at various points during the magazine's relatively short-lived but much celebrated existence – Anorak-wearing Ed).      

Magazines of my time Part 4: The 1980s … Trouser Press, Blues & Soul, and The Face

So far I’ve looked at a childhood obsession with football magazines, including a comic, a brief flirtation with a commercial pop music glossy, and an early love of newsprint-based music papers. But I’ve only got as far as the early to mid-1980s, and my desire to actually collect magazines, rather than to simply buy them for reading purposes only, is really just starting to take hold ...

And so to my discovery of The Face, Blues & Soul, and to a lesser extent, Trouser Press.

I’ll deal with the New York-based monthly, Trouser Press, first, because it was the most short-lived, and given that less than 100 issues were ever published (between 1974 and 1984), surely the most collectable in the sense that copies would now be relatively rare, and I presume, highly sought after. Regrettably, I have no idea where my own small Trouser Press collection may have ended up.

It’ll certainly be far more collectable than the monolith it was up against in its home market, Rolling Stone (yawn), which, despite being hugely popular, was never able to adequately represent the more alternative or post-punk genres I was most keen on. Which is something that Trouser Press specialised in – all of that left-of-centre stuff that existed outside the realm of FM radio and the Billboard charts. Not by any stretch was it exclusively American, but it was definitely far more sympathetic to home-based “alt-rock” and all things “new wave”, than any other US-based publication I ever came across.

In later years, across the last couple of dozen issues (roughly), Trouser Press offered a “free” flexi-disc to supplement issues of the magazine. Acts like Altered Images, Berlin, Buggles, Japan, Joan Jett, OMD, REM, and XTC, all had flexi-discs released via the magazine. And after it wound up its magazine format, the Trouser Press brand continued as a series of “record guide” books, five in total – three under the title of the ‘New Trouser Press Record Guide’ (1985, 1989, 1991), one as ‘The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records’ (1983), with its final publication being ‘The Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock’ (1997).

In early 1986, I decided it was time to move to Wellington. I’d been feeling trapped in Palmerston North for far too long … I was unhappy in my job, and I’d been on the painful end of two relationship break-ups. The capital city offered a number of new challenges and attractions, not the least of which was a comparatively vibrant nightlife. The fact is, nightclubbing had become, if not an obsession, then pretty much my main hobby in life. In so far as it was something I spent almost as much time doing as my fulltime job – which was soon to become, conveniently enough (from a “body clock” perspective), a night duty manager at a large Wellington hotel.

Naturally, with that kind of lifestyle choice, I was being exposed to (and loving) a whole raft of new and exciting music – electro, hi energy, rare groove, hip hop, and before too long, new genres like house and techno. And as anyone who knows anything at all about that scene at that time will tell you, there were two “bibles” for the discerning nightclub patron (or DJ) of the era – Blues & Soul magazine, and The Face. I started to collect both.

(As an aside, although Mixmag was established in 1983, it remained underground for much of the decade before emerging, and um, peaking, during the acid house years. The other more high profile dance music publication of recent times, DJ magazine, didn’t emerge until 1991).

Blues & Soul is basically an institution, established as far back as 1966, and still active today, 1000-plus issues later. A few years back it had a brief spell as an online-only publication before reverting back to its original print format.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Blues & Soul was compulsory reading – what key contributors John Abbey (founder), David Nathan, and Roger St. Pierre, didn’t know about disco, funk, and soul, really wasn’t worth knowing. The magazine’s list of features and interviews through the latter decade in particular reads like a Who’s Who of every genre ever heard inside a club.

Prominent contributors during 1980s included the likes of Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, and Tim Westwood, before each man would eventually go on to establish a successful career as a DJ in his own right. Tong wrote an industry gossip column under the guise of ‘The Mouth’ – a “fortnightly foray into fads, fax, fallacy, and fun”. Oakenfold contributed a regular column called ‘Wotupski’, and Westwood is credited with establishing the first ever hip hop-specific column at the magazine.

The nature of club music is that it can be very fickle, very scene-centric, and at that time there seemed to be an unwritten “freshest is best” rule. To that end, I can recall religiously trawling the magazine’s various charts on a regular basis, obsessing over what I’d heard and what I hadn’t, what I “owned”, what I could potentially get my hands on, and what I’d clearly have to wait a long time for. For better or for worse, these things seemed important for a few years in the late 1980s. In fact, Blues & Soul had a chart for just about everything – singles and albums, for the UK and the US, the magazine’s own ‘City Slickers Hip List’, ‘Groove Control’ and other assorted club charts, and later in the decade, an RPM (raps per minute) chart.

The Face magazine was a slightly different beast in that it wasn’t really a music magazine. It was all about style – fashion, film, art, design, trends, identity, and politics. Naturally, a lot of music content aligned itself with that. From memory, its main rivals in that (relatively broad) market during the era were i-D, Blitz, and Arena magazines, but I think The Face was the quintessential 1980s style guide. Or at least it was for a certain demographic, one that I skirted around the periphery of due to my interest in clubbing, and the small fact that my partner between 1987 and 1990 was a committed fashionista studying textile design at Wellington Polytech.

Nick Logan, a former editor at the NME, who was also prominent in the establishment of Smash Hits, was the driving force behind setting up The Face in 1980. Logan was able to tap into the pool of outstanding journalists he’d worked alongside previously – most notably Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill (see part three), and the guru of them all, Jon Savage, who had worked for Sounds, Melody Maker, and the NME. Savage would later go on write ‘England’s Dreaming’ (1991), the seminal tome about the Sex Pistols and the punk era.

It wasn’t just about words though. As a glossy, published monthly, The Face was also renowned for its great photography and experimental/cutting edge design. Neville Brody was the magazine’s art director through the first half of the 1980s – he later moved to Arena – and much of the mag’s reputation was forged on the back of his ability to bring together all of the separate elements (fashion, film, music etc) into one cohesive whole. Brody is also noted for his album cover designs, and his CV includes work for Throbbing Gristle, Level 42, and Depeche Mode. In the case of the latter, the single sleeve for ‘I Just Can’t Get Enough’.

I think my own interest in The Face had started to fade by the start of the 1990s, but not until I had amassed a fairly decent collection (again, currently awol). I broke up with the aforementioned partner, who would go on to establish her own label and set up shop in Wellington’s bohemian Cuba Street before disappearing from my life completely.

Things were about to take another turn for me, and while music, nightlife, and er, magazines, remained right at the core of my being, I was about to indulge in that most Kiwi of 20-something pursuits, “the big OE”, and head back to the UK indefinitely. I didn’t really have any specific plans, but my passport was British, my ticket was one way, and my intent was to travel light …