TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (Greece, 1977)
Capitol 2J-262 82306


Here is an interesting item I've been looking forward to posting here: The Greek edition of Trans-Europe Express. Quite rare, in fact I wasn't sure of its existence until a few months back, when it was listed on Discogs.


The cover is a full-sized two-panel J-card, on glossy card stock, print on one side only. Let us marvel at the print in question for a second: The b/w version of the cover (ie. the one used in most European countries, but not in the UK, Americas N and S, Japan... or Sweden) is slapped in the lower part of the front panel, actually at a slight angle, and above it, the band name and album title in the most garish "70s" letraset typeface imaginable. I mean, it looks more out of place even than the "wild west" letters from the spine of the original German Ralf & Florian cassette. On the other hand, it looks different, and together with the rarity of the item, I suppose it's sort of endearing, speaking as a collector.


Another bonus for a collector is that for some strange reason, Greece issued the TEE album with Showroom Dummies sung in French! Both the LP and cassette had Les Mannequins, and interestingly, the cassette has the songwriting credits. So where "Schaufensterpuppen" and "Showroom Dummies" were composed by Ralf Hütter, "Les Mannequins" is credited to Schmitt/Hütter/Hütter (Maxime Schmitt being their French label executive). BTW speaking of the umlaut ü in Hütter, as opposed to the Anglicised "Hutter" on most international editions - please note that on this edition, the umlauts were drawn in by hand before sending the J-card off to print!


The cassette is light grey, and comes with yellow paper labels.







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