AUTOBAHN (1974, Germany)
Philips 7105 181


Today's post is one of the key releases, an item that should be in every collection: The German original edition of Autobahn. At least, I suppose it came out at the same time as the LP, and it's listed many places as a 1974 release. Again we see that Kraftwerk took cover design seriously and at home, did not just print a tiny muddled facsimile of the LP cover and left it at that; the cassette art work went a different route and used the "road sign" graphic, in a narrow black frame.

 

The German LP has the beautiful landscape painting by Emil Schult, while the UK edition (and others) had a different "road sign" image. The original design from the German cassette is slightly narrower, with less space between the road lanes, and has the band name and title above the graphic. To me, it is a tidier design than the UK cassette, where the wording is smaller, in a more "hippie" style font and placed in as part of the graphic.


A surprising connection between the UK and German cassette editions is that they share the same anomaly: Both come in two different J-cards, either a fold out J-card or a simple 1-panel edition. The German version I have here is a big, 3-panel fold out, with the third panel being completely surplus; no print on that panel on either side. The 1-panel card (which I'll feature here some rainy day) lacks the tiny bit of printer's credit that is on the inside of this wide-screen edition. The labels on both editions are identical, leading me to think that the 3-panel version was just trimmed down to 1 panel once the first batch sold out, to save on paper... That's my theory anyway, and I'd be happy to be better informed if someone knows otherwise!









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