Kraftwerk cassettes

TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (France, 1985) Fame 1851104 (PM 410)   Another French edition of TEE, a 1985 reissue. The Fame label was a reissue label under the EMI umbrella, which I'm told started in 1982, releasing budget "Nice-price" reissues on LP and cassette. They would generally cut costs were they could. For cassettes though, the difference was often more a matter of taste. The French 1985 edition of Trans-Europe Express had a new design, with the LP facsimile printed on a mostly black background (the first edition and the 1978 reissue were based on the train motif from the 7" single), as per Fame standards. In fact, they even used the cover of the current Fame reissue LP, with the Fame logo in the top right corner! You've just got to love such attention to detail. The J-card is 1-panel, with the track list and a few credits on the inside, and the list of tips to take proper care of your cassette on the back flap (this was printed on the early editions as well). ...

AUTOBAHN (UK, 1974) Philips 7149 005 We haven't had an Autobahn in a while, so here's one of the "key editions", so to speak... An original UK 1974 cassette. The UK was the first export market to feature Autobahn on cassette; only Germany and the UK got cassettes of Autobahn in 1974. There were a couple variants of Autobahn in the UK; Some copies add a production credit to the labels. On this copy, though, you're left to browse the J-card for such information - leaving the labels more open and elegant, I think. The J-card is as small as they come, just the one panel, and printed on both sides. The sparse credits go to Hütter and Schneider only - the beginning of a whole series of disputable credits on Kraftwerk's releases: Emil Schult is of course normally credited for co-writing the lyrics to Autobahn, but he does not get a mention here.   In many countries, the J-card would use Schult's landscape painting on the front, but in Germany and the UK, they use...

V/A - Mörderische Entscheidung - Soundtrack (Germany, 1991) Eurostar 398 7001 4 This just in: A lucky punt! I came across this recently, the soundtrack for a 1991 TV film. It includes Trans-Europa Express - and since it was from 1991 I wondered if they had used the re-recording from "The Mix" or the 1977 original... Also, of course, most Kraftwerk songs run longer than the standard pop song, so I found it likely that some sort of edit had been used. In short, it turns out they used the 1977 7" single version! I'm a little surprised that Kraftwerk or their record label didn't push for the new version to be used, in order to promote their most recent album, but perhaps that's simply not how things are done in Germany? Or maybe the filmmakers thought the old recording fitted better - there's a lot of older songs on this, it's not merely a compilation of recent pop hits. Some 12" remixes or b-sides also give the impression that the soundtrack is well...

ELECTRIC CAFE (US Promo, 1986) Warner Bros. Records WB-25525 Today's edition of Electric Cafe is interesting; a promotional copy without artwork - the black-on-white cover has just the song titles and a bit of additional information. I've seen this one included in a promotional "press pack", distributed to press contacts, important record stores and record company executives to promote the new Kraftwerk release. This would include an info sheet, promotional photograph and the famous "mobile"; a card cut-out of the four robot heads to hang from the ceiling. Anyway, in addition to these press packs, I suppose the cassette must also have been circulated on its own, as it appears for sale more frequently than the other promotional stuff. It's of particular interest to me that the album title is not printed on the J-card nor on the labels. Famously, the album started its life in 1983, as "Techno Pop", the title they changed back to since the 2009 re...

DIE MENSCH-MASCHINE (Germany, 1978) EMI 1C 258-32843 I've been eager to get an early edition of the German Die Mensch-Maschine cassette - I posted a mid 80's reissue of it a year ago, but you can never beat an original can you? I never know which versions to call "first editions", but it appears that the blue cassette is at least one of the first. There is also a black edition, from around the same time, and a "Club-edition" which I suppose was sold via mail order - that one is also blue but clearly marked and different to this. (And it's an under-documented field of research, so I suppose there are others as well!). Whatever the edition though, Die Mensch-Maschine cassettes all come with a small and flimsy 1-panel J-card, with the track listing on the inside. Labels are printed directly onto the shell, light blue print on a darker blue cassette. I think it's a pretty sight, although it isn't exactly in keeping with the El Lissitsky-influenced ar...

THE MIX (UK, 1991) EMI TCEM 1408 Here's the UK edition The Mix. I've said before that many international editions of The Mix are roughly the same, and this one will not surprise my regular readers much, but it has a few features, and anyway, for some reason the UK editions feel like a sort of standard, don't they? The UK edition came with a big 4-panel J-card with images and graphics. At first glance, the J-card is very similar to the Australian , EU , German and US version. The UK had a unique catalogue number, though, and things like barcodes and record company logos set it apart. Also, the photos of the robots are cropped differently; the UK edition has a tighter crop than the EU but just a little more of each image than Australia.  The UK-only hype sticker is a bonus, hinting at a best-of compilation by claiming "Die Klassik Werks" - and in fact, the mock-German apes the hype sticker of the Exceller 8 compilation LP ("Autobahn vas ein Monster" etc)...