THE MAN·MACHINE/ RADIO-ACTIVITY (Saudi-Arabia? 1983?)
Unofficial - Golden GL, GL 1328


Today's unofficial release was a bit of a mystery...Except I think I may have solved it!

This cassette was recently sold on ebay, but the ad did not suggest any country of origin. The pictures showed the cover and the labels, but neither state any country (which is not uncommon among unofficial releases). Worse, the cassette is not listed in Discogs - and the label Golden GL is listed as "from unknown country "! 


So what to do? Well, once I got it home, and started taking pictures of it, I thought it was kinda familiar, and it bears an uncanny resemblance to a previous post here, from the Saudi-Arabian '747' label; a C-60 cassette with The Man·Machine backed with selected tracks from Radio-Activity! Although the running order is changed, the same tracks were used, and there's several other similarities; typeface is the same, a couple of printer's errors ("Spacelas"??), the mention of "New wave" to describe the music, even the tone in the liner notes - addressing themselves directly to you the reader/ listener/ buyer. And the list of "other titles available" on the inside of the J-card, even if the titles are different, there IS a list of titles, and again it's set in the same typeface, in the format "cat.no./artist/title"... So although this is not enough to prove the Golden GL cassette is definitely from Saudi-Arabia, at least it looks like one is inspired by the other. The Golden GL version has newer releases, some from 1983, so it would appear that this one is a later reissue of the 747 edition.


Wherever it's from, the cassette comes in a glossy 2-panel J-card, printed on both sides as mentioned. The front is based on the cover of The Man·Machine, with a lot of extra details - C-60, "New wave group", titles and band name. Even if this is based on the 747 release, there are some extra spelling errors here, "The voice of Energh" on both backflap and label, and "Kraftwert" in the list of "other releases". One of the main attractions with pirate cassettes, I think! And all in all a lovely item!







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