RALF & FLORIAN (Australia, 1975)
Vertigo 7149 006

I have relatively few of the early albums on cassette, and should perhaps save them for a rainy day... But I felt like presenting this, so here we go: the Australian Ralf & Florian, a 1975 Vertigo release.


This cassette actually came out in 1975, as a follow-up of Autobahn. I've already pointed out how the surprise chart success of Autobahn in the USA called for immediate re-marketing of their previous record, which was named after the members. 


In fact, at this point in their history I suppose the steady line-up of Ralf & Florian must have been something of a watershed to themselves, as the band had been a very floating, free-form collective of musicians in the early days. A dozen people are documented to have been in and out of Kraftwerk in 1970-1971. For example, Ralf and a drummer (possibly Klaus Dinger) played in Aachen 19th Dec, and a week later, Florian did another gig with Charly Weiss and Eberhard Kranemann. More fluctuation followed, then the band had a different, more steady line-up in spring/ summer 1971, with Florian Schneider, Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother. Apparently, Ralf at this time had another constellation with Klaus Roeder and Charly Weiss... Anyway, perhaps these fluctuating line-ups made it more important for Ralf and Florian to restrict Kraftwerk to just the two of them, which it seems to have been from September 1971 until Wolfgang Flur joined, sometime after this album was completed in the summer of 1973.


Anyway. This Australian cassette comes with a 2-panel J-card, printed on good stiff card stock. The picture of R+F on the front is cropped smaller than on other editions, with Ralf only just sporting his long hair, and Florian his famous tone broach. Spine and backflap are yellow, with the backflap listing the song titles in surprisingly small print... The second panel on the right does not have liner notes beyond the songwriter and production credit for the two head honchos, but we get translations of the song titles both here and on the labels. Cassettes and paper labels are white, quite the norm in Australia in the mid-70s.







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