ELECTRIC CAFE (Edicion Española) (1987, Spain)
EMI 274 24 0688 4


Time to bring out the big guns... Here's a well known and sought-after item, and one that seems to fetch surprisingly high prices on the collectors market: The Spanish edition of Electric Cafe.

Kraftwerk had been interested in the use of language over many years; even when they were an instrumental band, their titles would feature some word play and puns that are frankly surprisingly creative... After Autobahn was a surprise hit in the USA, Kraftwerk would cater more to their international audience, and for Radioaktivität, the lyrics were in both German and English. Then, for Trans-Europe Express, they had one song, Schaufensterpuppen, translated to French (issued in France and Belgium, but not Canada. Fun facts: Les Mannequins was also issued as a club 12" in the USA, and on the TEE LP in Greece!). On Computerwelt, language took a yet more prominent place, when the lead single Taschenrechner was released in English, French and Japanese, and also performed in Italian in concerts and on TV.

Electric Cafe continues the trend of using multiple languages, but here it's more a device of its own; short bursts of different languages, and perhaps surprisingly, two of the songs feature mostly French lyrics - even on the German pressings.

Some of the tracks also feature Spanish lyrics, often just a line or two. That is, on the German and English/international edition; the second Spanish release had two songs with all lyrics translated to Spanish.

As to why Kraftwerk found it worthwhile to make a special Spanish edition of this album, I couldn't say. Nothing springs to mind. The international, standard edition had been issued in Spain in November 1986, and probably sold fairly well, as it is not a very hard edition to come by on the collectors market, but that was six months before this edition, and there was no tour, and no activity that I know of. Nothing in particular to suggest that the new edition would send Electric Cafe back up the Spanish charts - nor did it, it was fairly unknown even among Spanish fans at the time, and it's now a sought-after rarity both on LP and Cassette. Some say the LP had a manufacturing error, causing the LP to be withdrawn quickly after release, but to be honest I haven't checked.

The two Spanish cassettes for Electric Cafe both have a cover design that is a little different to most other editions; the first one has the standard LP design framed in thin red stripes, with the band name and album title in large digital letters above and below. For the second edition, both the LP and cassette have large "EDICION ESPANOLA" hype boxes, and on the cassette, the LP image has been tidied up a little, so that the band name and album title now only appear above the picture. It's rather pretty, and even with just the one panel cover it's still a nice edition, even if it hadn't been so rare - prices go up and down, but I've seen this go for over 250 euros twice, which most people would consider a ludicrous sum for a cassette!









  

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