Computer World (UK, 1981) 
EMI TC-EMC 3370, OC 262-64 370


With the UK one of the big referential countries in terms of collecting, you'd think I would feature more UK cassettes... The UK is one of the places where Kraftwerk's commercial success is measured: They were a German band who had a big hit with Autobahn in the USA in 1975, and in the UK, The Model went to Number One in 1982. I know they did well in France, but I've never heard mention of their chart positions there. Possibly they had big hits in other markets too, but these two hits are cornerstones for their international carreer.


But I digress! All of this was just to say that the UK was an important market, and the multitude of releases from the UK should be scrutinised by every collector. For cassette fans, there are many releases (all the albums 1974-1991 came on cassette in the UK), some interesting variants, a couple of UK-only compilations of early material, even a range of cassette singles. Furthermore, the UK seems to have been the centre of distribution to some other markets, so that Australian, New Zealandese, Indian and Philippine releases often have variants of the UK design or use the UK catalogue numbers; so the UK releases sometimes feel like a "template" for other imports.


In the UK, Computer World came in at least three different editions, with different colour on the cassette shell and print upon it. This cassette is grey with red print. (I must admit the coolest edition is the one with yellow shell, but that's for another time...) As for the sleeve, compared with international editions, the UK J-card really stands out - the yellow colour is so bright and saturated, it really shines! The J-card is 2-panel, with print on both sides, including some liner notes inside. And a printer's error in technician Günther Spachtholz' name!










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