THE ROBOTS (USA, 1991)
Warner Bros. 9 4-64869

Time for another single, methinks! Also a nominee for the "least collectible item" category, finally something dealers will throw at you if you say you collect Kraftwerk cassettes... Too good an item to leave in the bargain bin!


Cassette singles had done well for many artists as the 80s turned into the 90s, and so it was decided to try the new Kraftwerk single on the format. I have no better indication on the success of this item than the fact that my copy is a "cut-off"; there is a saw mark on the spine to show that it is to be sold at a reduced price. This is normally done to items, logically, that did not sell at full price. In other words, sales must have fallen short of expectations. Radioactivity, the follow-up, was not issued on cassette in the US, and in fact this is the only US cassette single as far as I know.


Where the UK cassette single reproduced the tracks from the 7" single, with the Single Edit of The Robots followed by the remixed "Robotronik (Single Version)", here, the full "Kling Klang Mix" of Robotronik is used. Furthermore, the UK single repeated the same tracks on both sides, which would have made perfect sense on this, where the b-side is a full minute longer than the a-side, but nope - you get the hit, followed by a minute of silence to ponder your wrongdoings, and then the b-side. Well, you get a minute more music than on the UK single so there's that, I suppose.


The cassette single is issued in a card sleeve, quite narrow in order to keep the cassette in place, and a quite heavy grey cardboard is used. The cassette is black with on-body print.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
RADIO-ACTIVITY (Portugal, 1976) Capitol 11C274 82 087 Every blog should have a certain amount of posts starting with "I haven't been posting in a while", for the benefit I suppose for readers who do not posess a calendar. It's summer, I was busy and I haven't received a lot of items recently to fascinate me. But sure, here's an item, a nice return to Portugal and to Radio-Activity!   I love these Portuguese items , they have their own style! At least during the "Capitol years", ie the albums Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man-Machine, each cassette came out in several slightly different editions. Each one presents the LP cover quite simply, except where Portugal gives us a coloured stripe across the upper front of the J-card. Bright, clear colours, and whenever one edition sold out, they changed the stripe. Hence I've seen red, yellow and blue editions of The Man-Machine, and at least a red and this blue one of Radio-Activity (if y...
Read more
Image
AUTOBAHN (Poland, 1996?) Unofficial Reggae, 90208 Although there has been a lot of Polish releases on this blog before, I can't remember even one Autobahn? Well, here's the first, then, and it's on the surprisingly titled "Reggae" label. Apparently based on the German 1985 edition , same front illustration at least. The cassette is clear, without any info, not even which side you're looking at. The cover is a simple 1-panel J-card, on fairly cheap-looking thin paper, and printed on one side only. In fact, the only actual connection to the official item is the "motorway sign" design on the front; they haven't even bothered to put the track list on the cover! It just says "Autobahn I-V", which surprises me, as if they had access to the illustration on the front, surely they had the tracklist too? Maybe they were sent a postcard of it. I stated above that this came out in 1996, I base this on a stamp inside the cover. However it's bar...
Read more
Image
The Model (Poland, 199?) Unofficial Euro Star ES 2213 Time for another Polish pirate cassette! This time, though, a compilation, one of the few that weren't "curated", so to speak, in Poland...  "The Model 1975-1978" was a compilation on the US Cleopatra label, released in 1992. It features tracks from Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, some of them in their original single edits, and Les Mannequins which had been issued as the b-side to its English-language counterpart Showroom Dummies on a promotional "disco" 12" single. There are several Polish editions of this, this one has all the tracks from the compilation - not in the same order, though, they have been jumbled around, I suppose it was an effort to make two programmes of equal lenght. Apart from starting the cassette with the title track, which is not unjustified for a best-of compilation with a title track, they somewhat surprisingly placed Trans-Europe Express on Si...
Read more