DOPPELCASSETTE (Germany, 1974?)

Philips, 7581 435


Another compilation today, with an added twist this time!

As I said in an earlier post, following Kraftwerk's surprise hit with Autobahn in the US and elsewhere, every record company they had ever had dealings with tried to re-package their older material to cash in on the success. (In fact, I suppose the practice must have started already as Autobahn began to get noticed in it's home country, if the info I have is correct; because this album was released in 1974, before Autobahn was in the US charts... Anyway.) 

Doppelalbum, sorry if I'm kicking in open doors here, translates as "Double album" in English, and this is the fairly apt if not so very imaginative title of the vinyl counterpart to this cassette. It. Is. A. Double. Album. Using the Autobahn road sign, which was on the front of the UK LP and the German cassette, but of course, not on the German LP, the discs feature the full length album version of Autobahn, Kometenmelodie 2 from the same album, three of the four tracks of the debut, and "Kling Klang" and "Wellenlänge" off Kraftwerk 2. Unlike many of these compilations, none of the tracks are edited substantially compared to the original album versions. 

So. I find it a bit strange to compile most of the debut album, a good portion of the second, nothing off Ralf & Florian, and two songs from Autobahn, on a best-of double album released while the Autobahn album is still relatively fresh. Perhaps there was some contractual clause that they couldn't re-release the three first albums in their original form? This is mere speculation on my part. If they do find it necessary to put out a compilation, I think it a little peculiar that there is nothing from the predecessor. But the one thing I really find weird is the cassette edition.

Being the Doppelalbum on cassette, they decide on the title Doppelcassette. So how many cassettes are there here? Um, one. Not two. One. It is, if you take the record company's word for it, a cassette of "double length", but it's a single cassette. 

Had they at least used the term Doppelalbum, then at least that makes sense to me, now, nearly 50 years later, as we refer to an LP as an "album" nowadays... You see it is a cassette, it bears the legend Doppelalbum in big letters, you can understand their reasoning. It's two albums on one cassette. But this is not a double cassette. 

Yeah, so. As it is, the cassette IS named Doppelcassette, is rather cool in spite of - or even because of - all the slight dips in logic, and it comes in two different editions. This one has green labels. There is another with maroon labels, which also has a little bit of extra copyright info on the j-card.

If you're a cassette collector, you can buy the two different variants and pretend it's a doppelcassette, I suppose, but it feels like two separate cassettes, so it takes a fair amount of pretending.










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