Kraftwerk cassettes

RADIO-ACTIVITY (Portugal, 1976) Capitol 11C274 82 087 Every blog should have a certain amount of posts starting with "I haven't been posting in a while", for the benefit I suppose for readers who do not posess a calendar. It's summer, I was busy and I haven't received a lot of items recently to fascinate me. But sure, here's an item, a nice return to Portugal and to Radio-Activity!   I love these Portuguese items , they have their own style! At least during the "Capitol years", ie the albums Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man-Machine, each cassette came out in several slightly different editions. Each one presents the LP cover quite simply, except where Portugal gives us a coloured stripe across the upper front of the J-card. Bright, clear colours, and whenever one edition sold out, they changed the stripe. Hence I've seen red, yellow and blue editions of The Man-Machine, and at least a red and this blue one of Radio-Activity (if y

ELECTRIC CAFE (Romania, 19?) Unofficial Poker 443 Another pirate edition today, but this time it's a country that hasn't featured here before: Romania! Here's a Romanian cassette of Electric Cafe. Admittedly it looks a lot like a similar release from Poland; I'm not sure whether Poker Sound was an actual label, with a Romanian office or - if this is a "bootleg of a bootleg"... Apart from the country of origin, today's cassette is fairly straightforward - the J-card has the LP design centre front, against a blue background, and band name and album title in coloured boxes over and under the image. There is a Polish edition of this, and the J-card for that looks exactly the same as this. The J-card is on glossy, thin paper, printed on one side, but with a stamp on the white inside (the significance of which is sadly lost on me). The track list both on the back-flap and the second panel is amended to make the sides of similar length.   The cassette has a

The Model (Poland, 199?) Unofficial Euro Star ES 2213 Time for another Polish pirate cassette! This time, though, a compilation, one of the few that weren't "curated", so to speak, in Poland...  "The Model 1975-1978" was a compilation on the US Cleopatra label, released in 1992. It features tracks from Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, some of them in their original single edits, and Les Mannequins which had been issued as the b-side to its English-language counterpart Showroom Dummies on a promotional "disco" 12" single. There are several Polish editions of this, this one has all the tracks from the compilation - not in the same order, though, they have been jumbled around, I suppose it was an effort to make two programmes of equal lenght. Apart from starting the cassette with the title track, which is not unjustified for a best-of compilation with a title track, they somewhat surprisingly placed Trans-Europe Express on Si

TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (Canada, 198?) Capitol 4N-16301 Sometimes, writing about these cassettes makes me revisit previous posts. This time, here's the Canadian re-edition of Trans-Europe Express, which made me check a few others... Most Canadian cassettes come in a simple 1-panel J-card, printed on one side only, and this one is no exception. The backflap has the legal info, and a note that says "Previously released as 4XW-11603", setting it apart from the first edition. The cassette is black with grey print.   As an aside, the reason I checked previous posts was that I noticed the Dolby logo has "HX PRO" printed on it, and I have forgotten when that was introduced. One source on the www claims that Dolby HX Pro - sometimes only known as Dolby HX, an acronym for Headroom eXtension - was introduced in the early 1980s, so if that is correct, this cassette is not from the '70s. It shares label design with the mid-80s re-issue of Radio-Activity , too, so it sta

THE MAN·MACHINE (The Netherlands, RE 199?) EMI/ Capitol 1A 238 15 7597 4 Another follow-up of earlier posts, today it's a Netherlands/ Europe reissue of The Man·Machine! This one does not have the FAME logo anywhere; there's no XDR logo on the front, either, but they're printed on the cassette. Otherwise, it's fairly similar to this one which I featured earlier: It comes with a simple one panel J-card in thin glossy paper, printed on both sides. The J-card front still follows the standard FAME design palate, placing the LP design in the lower part of the front of the J-card, against a white background. The band name and album title above this, and further north, the Capitol logo, "Dolby System" and cat.no. The spine of the J-card has an EMI logo, no Capitol there, and the cassette has both (again like the FAME edition posted earlier). Although the XDR logo is on the cassette, the inside of the J-card does not replicate the info about the "XDR syste

THE MIX (Greece, 1991) EMI 14C-264 7966721/31 Official product again today! And it's the Greek release of The Mix. This Greek edition is a bit surprising, really: As we've seen here before, most countries had a full, 4-panel J-card, with pictures and graphics and credits and bells and whistles. This one, on the other hand, is a one-panel effort, with the track list printed in black on white on the inside. Not only that, but the cover is pretty badly reproduced; the white marks on the front, above the band name, are all printed, not flaws on my copy. I actually was worried that my copy might have a reproduced cover, but Discogs has a picture of a still sealed copy with these blemishes clearly visible! The cassette is grey, with on-body print in two colours. Oh, and the front of the cassette case has that strip of Greek info that I think was on all cassettes in this country (cfr this post for another example).