ELECTRIC CAFE (Poland, 1986?)
MC M-194


Another Polish pirate edition today, and this time it's a version of Electric Cafe! I bought a pile of Polish cassettes recently, and had a few from before, so it's going to be a bunch of them from now on, although I'll try to mix in some other editions too. Today's one is interesting though - for the cover design!


With the music exactly the same on every edition, obviously the design is a big part of the appeal when it comes to collecting. I've mentioned before that sometimes, the "best" ones from a design point of view are not necessarily the most interesting ones, and today's one is certainly more in the "WTF?!" end of the register! The original LP inner sleeve - also a page of the CD booklet - is cut in between two halves of the front cover. I expect it is another of those creative decisions on how to make a square LP/CD front translate to a rectangular cassette, but it's sort of baffling all the same... Especially as the image is kind of an unfinished version of the front, so you get two versions of the same image!


The J-card is on slightly glossy, thin paper, and the credits (on the inside) are kept to a minimum - no hint on producers, song writers, publishers or any of that sort, not even the track durations are mentioned. The songs are the German-language versions, and they've mixed up the track list (not unusual for Polish cassettes), to make the cassette sides of as similar length as possible. One unusual thing about this though is that it has printed labels - many Polish cassettes either didn't have labels at all or just a small sticker with the brand name and "A" or "B" denoting the sides. The labels I suppose is one factor lifting this release from a home-made DIY type bootleg.








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