TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (Italy, 1977)
Capitol 3C 264 82306


Statistics are weird. In order to show the scope of Kraftwerk cassettes, I want to try and have different items on my blog, ie. not just the "canonised" German issues... It's been chosen at random, more or less, but I want to present some early works and also some later ones, some first issues and some reissues, a rarity and a comparably disposable item, and to try and have each different album featured, and not just a dozen of the same album. And here I present the second version of Trans-Europe Express, and they're both from the same country!

Well, Italy is a fascinating territory for Kraftwerk cassettes. Most albums came on cassette in Italy (From Autobahn to Electric Cafe), and many different variants exist for each album, with some items being fairly easy to find if you're on the lookout. 

Today's featured cassette is an early edition. I know of several variants, but there are two catalogue numbers for Trans-Europe Express across many countries; 82306 and 85110, with copious variations in prefixes (3C being Capitol's "country code" for Italy, then vinyl LPs have 064 and 8-track cassettes 364 in some instances, so I suppose the 2 refers to cassettes...). Since 82306 comes before 85110, I expect this to ba the earlier of the two - but as I say, there are variants within each number.

This one has a 2-panel J-card, and blue shell as well as case. I have many blue Italian cassettes, apparently they thought Kraftwerk could do with a bit of colour? Especially in this case, as they based the cover design on the black and white LP sleeve (Italy based the TEE release on the German b/w front cover, as opposed to the colour cover used in the US, UK, Japan, Sweden, and some other places). A quick browse on Discogs shows that there are variants with 1-panel J-cards, and grey cassettes for each cat.no. The 2-panel J-cards are nice of course, but with no print on the inside, there's not much point in the extra bit of card...

One odd thing about this cassette is, they changed the track listing! I'm sure it is to do with the lengths of each side of the cassette, to make side A as long as Side B and both save on tape and save the listener those minutes of blank tape at the end of the shorter side. I think personally I don't mind that The Hall Of Mirrors is now the last track here, but I find it very odd that Franz Schubert is on the same side as Europe Endless!






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