Kraftwerk cassettes

  AUTOBAHN (New Zealand, 1985) EMI TC EMC 203 At the risk of over-representing a small market, here comes another New Zealand cassette. I do love these New Zealand releases - I suppose it's partly due to the fact that NZ is a small country, on the other side of the world, so you don't see these items every day in my part of the world...  Whatever the reason, NZ put out a fair amount of nice items in the 70s and 80s, some with more or less unique design features, and some of the world's top rarities (which sadly, I don't have and am unlikely to present here anytime soon). For Autobahn, the 1985 version, the cover has the LP sleeve at the bottom of the front panel, with album title and band name above it, in black against a blue background. The blue background stretches to the spine, but the backflap and right panel are both white with black text. White labels with black text, and the short track list for the a-side makes the label look a bit barren, while the b-side bene

RADIO-ACTIVITY (Italy, 1976)  Capitol 3C 264 82087 An early Italian edition here, possibly the first one... the blue edition of Radio-Activity. In Italy (and many other countries), the follow-up to Autobahn was not released before 1976, when it came out on LP and cassette. Possibly it didn't really take off internationally until the title track was used as theme tune for a music show on French radio, making it a hit there.   As usual in Italy, there exists a couple of different versions. This, as mentioned, is blue, and I've seen another edition with the same cat.no - and identical J-card - with a white or light grey cassette. A later edition, with cat.no's beginning in 54 appeared later, 1983 or so. With a slow but steady seller as this, I'm a little surprised that only two variants have popped up from the first seven years after it was released... In addition to the blue cassette with white on-body print, the cassette was released with a blue shell. Since the spine an

THE MAN·MACHINE/ Star Peace (Syria, 19??) Romance Tapes S.A 8030 A new country for me today as I recently received a Syrian cassette! It's unofficial, in as much as it's probably nothing to do with the Western record industry - whether it's technically a "pirate" cassette or not, I can't say, but it certainly is an interesting item! It's a split tape, with Kraftwerk on one side and the Droids on the other. None of the albums appear in full; each misses the final track, and in the case of the Droids, some confusion has arisen when several songs have shared titles; three titles have a "Part 1" and a "Part 2", but they are listed as one track here, each named "Part 102"! Looks to me like someone had a handwritten track list, with "Part 1 & 2" written in accordance, and when this was typed out, it was misunderstood...  The cassette is light grey, and the labels - bearing a rather fetching design with a mildly psyched

  AUTOBAHN (Argentina, 1985) EMI 18321 Here's another example of the 1985 reissue of Autobahn, albeit in a bit of a state... There seems to have been some sort of water damage, causing a brown discolouring to the edge of the J-card. I still think it's worth posting, being a rare Argentinian issue... The attraction of cassettes from Argentina (and also LPs, btw) is of course that they would translate the track listing to Spanish, a welcome change from the usual German or English titles. (Another attraction to European collectors is of course the simple fact that they are fairly hard to come by here!)  Apart from that, it's a pretty straightforward release - a 1-panel J-card, which features just a small part of the familiar landscape painting from Emil Schult. The VW Beetle is not on this edition at all! The Spanish-language title go across the sky of the painting itself, in white letters against the clouds... Not that easy to see what it says. Inside the J-card, the heavily-

  TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (USA, 1977) Capitol 4XW 11603   Most Kraftwerk albums have undergone a lot of different releases in the US; labels change, new releases would rekindle interest in the old, reissue labels would get a licence. Trans-Europe Express, on the other hand, came in only a couple of editions in the US; this is the first. The two US editions are easily distingusihed, with different design for the J-cards, different catalogue numbers - and the other edition has "A Capitol re-issue", giving the game away at an early stage.  So anyway, this, the first edition, is a surprisingly lackluster affair if I'm honest, a simple 1-panel J-card, printed on one side only, and a grey cassette with darker grey on-body print. Having said that, it IS a nice touch to have black background to the facsimile of the LP, at least. 

  THE MAN·MACHINE/ TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (New Zealand, 1987?) Capitol TCTP5 A fascinating item today - two cassettes in an outsize box. These were released in New Zealand. Apparently EMI Australasia issued a whole series of these, entitled "EMI TWIN PACK CASSETTES", in 1986 and 1987. Generally featuring major artists' double greatest hits sets, the series included people like The Hollies, Cliff Richard, Queen, Frank Zappa, The Stranglers, and Whitesnake; but with Kraftwerk, there were no "The 40 Greatest Hits" or similar collection, so they simply put out two of their best-loved albums side by side. The box is large and flat, housing the two cassettes next to each other. Therefore, the J-card is roughly double the size of a normal one, although that may be hard to spot on my crappy jpegs... Anyway,  the front has an image from the inner sleeve to The Man Machine, and the J-card is 2-panel, printed only on one side. Not much in the way of liner notes or legal info