Kraftwerk cassettes

AUTOBAHN (France, 1975) Philips 7149 005 A "twin post" today, posting a variant of something I had here recently , the French edition of Autobahn. Previously I had the reissue; here's what I believe to be the first edition. As I said in that post , they're not very different. Same front cover, similar J-cards, same cassettes and labels - just different price code: This edition is marked by a "Y" on the spine, while the other has "PG 400" printed on the back flap.   Most of the other info is in that previous post, so I feel no inclination to repeat it here. You saw the link right? Right here. Thanks again for reading, hope you enjoy checking out the differences!

TOUR DE FRANCE SOUNDTRACKS (Hungary, 2003) EMI/ JJSR, 0724359171043 Huzza! Finally I can present Kraftwerk's final studio album on cassette on this blog. It only ever came in this edition, at least officially, so it's kind of a rare occasion... I find it interesting that the only place that issued this album on cassette, except of course the inevitable pirate editions, was Hungary - were cassettes a huge market there in 2003? I don't know. It is also possible, but as usual speculation on my part, that it was made for export to some extent, but given it's relative rarity I can't say I have much to support this theory. Anyway, I am glad that there is a cassette version, for whatever reason! Just one other Hungarian cassette has surfaced - Electric Cafe came out here in 1986. Where that was a fairly simple design, they pulled all stops on this one - a long, 4-panel J-card, full of much of the same illustrations and graphics as on the CD and LP versions - the Eiffel to...

RADIO-ACTIVITY (Greece, 1985) Capitol/ EMI, 262-82087 Another first on this blog - I don't think I've ever had anything from Greece before? Here's a 1985 reissue of Radio-Activity, which has turned up quite recently. It has maintained that '70s look, or at least, the design is very simple - where some territories amended the original LP design, here, we simply get the facsimile treatment. Ie, the square album design placed in the middle of the front panel, with band name and album title above. Can't have taken ten minutes to design this. The J-card is a 2-panel effort, printed on one side, and the cassette itself is grey with blue print, without labels.  (I never really understood the need for sticking paper labels on plastic cassettes anyway, they tend to fall off or skewer or curl up something horribly, and if one end came loose, the labels could be mangled up by your car stereo, so it's much easier to find decent-looking used copies of those cassettes that di...

Computer World (Italy, 1989) EMI 54 1643704 Something different today: An Italian reissue of Computer World. This came out in the late 1980s, apparently after Capitol sold the rights, because the Capitol logo from earlier editions is gone. Publishing is credited to Kling Klang Musik, and the phonographic copyright is credited to Golden Cloud - which I believe was a UK company, so maybe the copyright was licenced via the UK?  Anyway, rather than amend the original design to correspond with the then-current rights holders, they've gone down an entirely different route this time: The original LP cover is reproduced in the top right corner, a large white stripe across the middle has the band name, and then the album title and full track list is below that stripe. At least three Kraftwerk albums came out in Italy in the late 80s with similar design - we've seen one of them, Trans-Europe Express , before, and The Man Machine has pink background colour (I'm sure I will post that o...

THE MIX (USA, 1991) Elektra 9 60869-4 It's my 100th post on this blog, so I suppose I should have posted something fancy today; some collector's item from a far-away place, or a promotional item, perhaps... Instead, I will treat you to a US edition of The Mix. It's probably one of the easiest Kraftwerk cassettes to get hold of these days, but I like it, and anyway I don't want this to be a place where I simply brag about my obscure stuff... It's a format that was all but discontinued 20 years ago, it's hardly anything to brag about even if it's a rarity. So anyway, here it is! In fact, here _they_ are, as this is another of those few posts where I've taken pictures of two actual items (I posted two Portuguese cassettes together once). I've had a copy for years, but it didn't have the hype sticker, which I thought was a little annoying, so in the end I got another, still sealed copy. In fact, they're both a little annoying, since they are bot...

THE MAN·MACHINE (Belgium, 1978) EMI/ Capitol 4C 256 85444 I was really happy to get this cassette - the Belgian edition! It's both quite rare from a collector's perspective, and of course it has its own solution to the problem of designing a rectangular front cover. Of course, there are many different versions of The Man·Machine on cassette, and while the original, iconic LP cover was pretty quadratic, if you print this on the front of a cassette cover, you get a lot of empty space on the top and/or bottom of the front panel. (I can only remember one country cropping the image to make it fit: Germany ) Some countries would fill this space with band name, album title, track list, and/or logos from the various record companies, or add background colour; Belgium actually took some design from the back cover of the LP, and pasted it across the top of the panel! They took the whole top left corner of the LP, with the band name and album title, and a black and white background. On t...