RADIO-ACTIVITY (USA, Club Edition, 1975?)
Capitol, 4XT 511547


Time for another obscurity...

Here is the sought-after "Club Edition" of Radio-Activity. I was not even aware there was a club edition of this, before it was up on ebay. I didn't really know why there were these club editions either, but after some research (ok, I asked a friend from the US and googled it), I think the story goes like this: 

There was a music club called Columbia House. (Probably others too, but never mind them.) The idea was to get people to subscribe to music, via mail order, for a monthly fee, and it was such a success that from the early '70s on, Columbia House would issue their own pressings both on LP and cassette (in fact, there were also 8-track cartridges andeven reel-to-reel tapes!). The music was divided into categories and catalogues, where you'd get the months biggest new release from some major artist or other, and then there was a lot of back catalogue, where members could get more releases at a cut rate. 

I suppose it was part of their cut rate plan to produce their own licenced editions, that they would make their own editions. The LPs I've seen are exact replicas of the albums, with inner sleeves and all, but the cassettes are a different story. The Club edition of Computer World on cassette places the quadratic LP design on the front, with white space above and below, where almost all international editions had some kind of elaborate design... It is the same with this one; very simple design, with the track list only on the backflap of the J-card, and some pink stripes adorning the spine. 


A funny detail on this cassette: To save tape, they tried to make the cassette sides equal in length. They chopped off Intermission and News from Side 1, and moved them to the beginning of Side 2. Except the Intermission - either by mistake or because it begins over the fade of the previous track, they've cut it off altoghether! But hey - I did say the club edition was cheaper than the regular, good for the purchasers of the "regular" edition they got a bonus of 15 seconds for their money.







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