Another 8″ x 8.5″ magazine with discs inside for this week’s Flexibition, only this time they aren’t strictly flexi’s as the grooves are pressed into a thin layer that is fixed to the card pages similar to some of the playable post cards I’ve featured (and will feature) already. Living Music takes the same format as the previous Echo and Sonorama publications in that there’s a spindle hole through the centre of each page and they fold back with the ring binding so that the whole mag is placed on the turntable to play. There are only actually two records inside, with narration by Milton Cross about 10 sampled albums and the fidelity is suprisingly good but nothing to get excited about unfortunately.

It’s primarily a music magazine, highlighting releases and news of an audiophile nature, ‘converting your hi-fi to stereo’ is one such article, and there are ads for Garrard turntables inside among others. A coupon offers $2.50 off the annual subscription of 12 issues to Charter subscribers and suggests that it was available on newsstands. The editorial also promises more to come with focus on contemporary Russian music, Gypsy, Classical Jazz and technical info in future issues. This is issue one, an American publication from 1959, and I can find nothing else about it on the web so have no idea if they made it to issue two, any info is appreciated.

Sonorama was a monthly French audio magazine that debuted in 1958. Following the format of Echo magazine as featured last week, it folded back so that the pages could be placed on the turntable and the discs played from there. The design may not have been up to the standard of Echo but it ran for considerably longer, reaching over 40 issues with usually with between 5 and 8 flexi discs in each publication.

The plain white, extremely thin discs in my copy of No.6 (they should be floppy discs, rather than flexi) contained nothing but a number on each. There’s a short film at the bottom of an issue being played, not the one featured here though, where you can see the construction of the mag and hear an example of the disc (he has a job to get it on the turntable at one point). There seem to be many of these available through Discogs for between €4-10 each.

Echo – ‘the magazine you play on your phonograph’ – was first published in 1959 and came with 5 or 6 flexi discs fixed inside each issue, mostly containing music and interviews with the subjects profiled within. The ring-binder design let each page fold back under the last and a spindle hole through the centre meant that you could place the whole magazine on the turntable to play each disc.
An 8″ x 8″ quarterly publication that ran for at least 4 issues as far as I can tell (of which this is #3), it had beautiful page layouts courtesy of Designers’ Collaborative from New York and United Artists served as the agent supplying the entertainment talent. This one features music and interviews with The Trapp Family / Mary Martin / Brigitte Bardot / France Nuyen / Eva Gabor / Siobahn McKenna / Brendan Behan / a Shelley Berman monologue / an interview with The Kingston Trio / Fiorello La Guardia reads the comics and an advert for Springmaid Fabrics.
 
There are some extracts from the discs over on WFMU’s excellent 365 Days Project entry by Katya Oddie for the same issue. Here’s the cover for #2 – pretty advanced design for 1959 – if anyone has any of the other issues that they’d like to sell then I’m interested.