EAST OF THE GROOVE
Journal
Stories about records, collecting, and the music that matters — from Soviet estrada to the rock, jazz and pop of Eastern Europe, exploring the artists, labels, pressing plants, formats, stories and cultural worlds that brought these records to life.
Music History
How the Beatles Conquered the Soviet Union
Somewhere in Leningrad in the early 1960s, a teenager pressed his ear to a gramophone and heard something he couldn't quite explain. The recording was scratchy, barely audible, pressed onto what appeared to be a discarded chest X-ray. The ribs of some unknown patient curved across the surface like a ghost image beneath…
17 July 2026
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