THE MAN·MACHINE (Portugal, 1978)
Capitol 8E 266 85444

Today we're going back to Europe, and a recent addition to my collection - the Portuguese first edition of The Man Machine on cassette.

Portugal has many collectible editions of Kraftwerk product, but mostly on vinyl - well, I suppose vinyl is more commonly collected anyway. Portugal has had some cool versions of singles and albums, and generally, quite collectable too - I expect for a country about the same population as Sweden the market for Kraftwerk releases was limited, so Portuguese pressings will be comparably rare, certainly less common than, say, Spanish editions.
 
Cassettes from Portugal are quite rare, again I suppose it's simply a matter of quantity. Discogs still has not had listings for every album on cassette, but The Man·Machine comes in as many as THREE different editions. A sign, perhaps, that the market was bigger than Capitol Records had anticipated? Or that the album kept selling, long after it dropped out of the charts (I don't even know if The Man·Machine charted in Portugal!).
 
Apparently, Capitol Records had a standard for their cassette releases in Portugal: The cover design for the vinyl record across the front panel; above that, the band or artist name and album title in larger letters than in the picture, and above it, a large stripe of bright colour. I've seen other cassettes with the same red stripe as this one, released a decade later, so I think red was the "first edition" colour, and not, say, the 1978 colour.

Later editions came with a blue stripe, or even a yellow stripe. I believe the red one came first, for two reasons: 1) the dealer I bought it from advertised it as a first (sketchy, I know - if he lies, I lie - but he seems knowledgeable enough in other respects, so... well, perhaps), and 2) it is the only one with paper labels, the other two have on-body print.

Apart from that, the cassette comes with a 2-panel J-card, print on one side. Glossy paper is used, but it is rather thin, certainly not card stock. 
 
Note that the last picture here shows the two other Portuguese editions mentioned. 










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