THE MIX (Poland, 1991?)
Tomzo Music News 0454


 

Time for a light-hearted release, methinks! Here's a funny one, another unofficial Polish edition, where they obviously knew better than to stick a grumpy robot on the front cover!

 

Poland is fascinating as cassettes go (and of course, in many other aspects that this blog does not mention). Apparently, anyone with a double cassette deck could print up a run of cassettes and carry them down to the local market to sell, and the amount of different editions is simply staggering. Odd compilations, split tapes with Kraftwerk on one side and another artist on the other, and the official albums, even the German-sung editions, and if I'm not mistaken, none of them "legal" in any West-European, major label definition of the term.

 

For Polish editions of The Mix, cassettes were often standard 60 minutes of length, and of course, the album runs for some 65 minutes. This is solved in different ways, in this case by simply cutting Metal Auf Metal from the programme. In order to split the album into two portions of as similar length as possible, Autobahn switches places with Radioaktivität. Otherwise, though, you get a fairly standard run of the original, Deutsche Version, probably just copied from a CD. I love that the original credit "Music Data Mix" has been misinterpreted as "All titles by" here, as it gives the impression that Fritz Hilpert co-wrote all the material! And the misspelt "Abzung" is better than the original in all other ways than semantics; clearly a band name waiting to happen. You're welcome!


This edition was released as part of a series of releases called "Tomzo Music News". This series had many different albums of the time, all in the same "Dance Party"-styled cover design. At least some of these had a neutral "Music News" label as well, but my Mix here does not have any labels at all, so either they got tired of sticking labels to clear cassette shells, or mine is a counterfeit of a counterfeit, which you must admit is just exactly the right version of an item like this. 


Of course, when they have cut corners and saved pennies in artists' royalties, the length of tape used, proof reading and labels, it stands to reason the inlay card is a simple 1-panel J-card, with colour on the outside only. I must admit it's a fairly great item, though, for all is cheap and garish charm...







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