TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (UK, 198?)
FAME 41 3151 4

 

A recent addition to my collection, which I post because I learned something new... Here's a UK reissue of Trans-Europe Express, on the FAME imprint. And what I found interesting about this is this: The cassette appears to be overstock from the Capitol originals, with new paper labels pasted over the on-body print! 

I've been familiar with the FAME reissues for years, and always saw them (as I suppose also the record labels saw them!) as a practical way to get the music, a few years after its original release. They came out in most of Europe, I suppose, and were manufactured in many countries - Holland would typically supply the EU with these reissues, while the UK and Spain would press up their own. FAME LPs have inner sleeves advertising other reissues, as opposed to the artwork inners of earlier editions, and were regularly sold with a big hype sticker on the front to mark them as budget albums ("Nice Price", yellow stickers with white exclamation marks, or a number of others). The Fame logo is typically placed in the upper right corner, unless it interfears with the design, so it was obvious to the buying public that this was not a full price product.

UK Cassettes are more similar to their first-edition counterparts, as they come in the same 2-panel J-card, printed on the same card stock. The design here is similar to earlier editions, apart from the first edition which has an amended tracklist (the ones with blue on-body print on a grey cassette) - just with a new cat.no and FAME logos on the front, upper spine and lower right panel.

So as I said, the cassette in question has black on-body print underneath the white label. The label is thin enough that you can make out the print underneath in a couple of places, but I can't get a good enough image to see the word "KRAFTWERK" in the top right corner. You will be able to make out the Capitol logo to the left though! I didn't know they would re-use overstock to make these reissues, and if I'm honest, I can't understand why they would do it, either - they could have just put a "Nice Price" sticker on the front of the shell and sold out the rest before making the FAME reprints? Oh well, it's interesting to me, whatever the reasoning behind it.