Kraftwerk cassettes

  The November 1986 Guide (USA, Promotional sampler, 1986) Warner Bros. (no cat. no.) Generally speaking, I don't go in for the various artists compilations much. There is of course a score of these, featuring one song by Kraftwerk crammed in between other artists, but although I suppose these can be said to be part of the legacy of Kraftwerk, they haven't appealed to me that much. I suppose if there were a lot of exclusive content out there I would grab it eagerly, many other artists will issue alternative versions of tracks on such compilations, live material or demos or exclusive remixes... But with Kraftwerk, less was always more, and the music on the albums is nearly all you get. And having The Model crammed in between other hits of 1982 on some "Super Hits" style compilation just hasn't been as fascinating as getting the original albums from different countries.   This cassette doesn't have exclusive music, strictly speaking, but I found it interesting n

  KRAFTWERK (1979, Spain) Philips 71 05 248   Obtaining the earliest works of Kraftwerk on cassette is difficult; not many were produced originally, and they have not been reissued officially since the 1970s. I've been collecting Kraftwerk cassettes for a few years now but the two first albums rarely show up. I know of German, French and Spanish editions, as well as the UK "twofer" edition (the two first albums were released in the UK as a double LP, and as one double-play cassette!). I was lucky to acquire a Spanish edition of the first album recently, so here it is! This was the last official cassette edition of the first Kraftwerk album, coming as late as 1979. I suppose The Man-Machine had sold well in Spain, creating a market for other product with the band name on the front cover? Although I've grown to love these early albums, I must admit I feel for the poor Spanish fan who paid for this in 1979, expecting the prequel to The Man-Machine... The Spanish edition

Computer World (USA, Club Edition, 1981) Warner Bros. W5 3549/ RCA Music Service C 124643 Part of the fun of collecting Kraftwerk cassettes is that things tend to get complicated. In many countries, there were a lot of slight variations issued for each release; I've seen Spanish editions where the only difference is the quality of the card stock of the J-card, or Italian editions that came with 2-panel J-cards or 1-panel J-cards, featuring exactly the same print. Paper labels or on-body print is another example, and I've featured three Portuguese editions of The Man-Machine before.  Recently, I discovered that there were two completely different US "Club" editions for Computer World! As mentioned in a previous post, US Club editions were sold in "record clubs", a sort of mail-order catalogue that was popular from the 70s to the 80s. The Columbia House cassette editon of Computer World is fairly well known, coming in a simple J-card with the album art against

  TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (Argentina, 1977) Capitol 118019 Argentina put out a range of absolutely fascinating cassettes by Kraftwerk in the 70s and 80s, and it is still an under-researched area, meaning that variants still pop up that haven't been documented online before, and fans may learn of new items all the time! For Trans-Europe Express, Argentina opted for a variant of the colour image sleeve - The original German cover had Maurice Seymour's black and white group photo on the front and J. Stara's montage on the back, but many countries used the J. Stara image on the front cover, and in full colour. The Argentinian vinyl replicates the J. Stara sleeve from the US, UK and some other territories, but the cassette uses a cropped version of the image, with a black frame on white background. Many different editions exist of this cassette, some with paper labels, some with on-body print, and the J-card comes with several different catalogue numbers. Apparently, the first cass

THE MIX (Italy, 1991) EMI - 462 7966714 Kraftwerk's 1991 album wasn't _quite_ neither the come-back album nor the best-of compilation their record label had been requesting, but taken for what it is, it's actually a great album in its own right. Kraftwerk were as ever guided by new music technology, and had spent years sampling their multi-track tapes, the masters for the original albums. They had also been updating their studio with the then-current digital equipment, so to the band themselves, it must have made perfect sense to put most of their live set, in its re-recorded form, out on album. Many fans failed to appreciate it though, and in more recent years, Kraftwerk have taken at least some of the warmth of the 70s originals back into the live set.   As with Electric Cafe, The Mix came in near-identical J-cards in many territories - Editions from the EU, UK, the USA, Canada and even Australia all had a lavish four-panel J-card with photos of the robots as well as the

  ELECTRIC CAFE (Deutsche Version) (1986, Germany) EMI 264 24 0654 4 As a cassette collector, of course I love all the anomalies and variants and oddities; Finding an item on eBay that you think you have, but it turns out to be just slightly different; whether it is paper labels versus on-body print, or a Dolby logo where you haven't seen one before... It took me a while to get the German-language edition of Electric Café, and when I did, it turned out to be slightly different to the ones I've seen elsewhere!  Of course, by 1986, the European Community had made it easier for multi-national corporations to produce items in one country and sell them in the next, so it shouldn't surprise me that the German edition of this cassette was actually printed in Holland... although I must say I would have preferred it if the domestic release was produced at home. "Ordnung muss sein!"   The Discogs community has dug up two variants of the cassette, both "Printed in Holla