Kraftwerk cassettes

THE MAN·MACHINE (France, RE 1990) EMI/ Capitol 7460394 I always feel that this album gets overrepresented on my blog - I suppose it's the one which came in most editions, released at the height of the cassette time, sold well over a longer period, and not least before the European Union's export trend, so there's more editions from the European countries. So I was a bit surprised when going through my collection, I found that I haven't posted the French editions of The Man·Machine here yet! So, here's one, a reissue of 1990. The French had a fairly straightforward approach to reissues, at least, many of them were issued with a message that clearly stated " Réédition " followed by the year. For the 1990 reissue of The Man·Machine , some minor changes were done to the design of the original French J-card; the album title appears in smaller, black print, where the first issue has the same white print as the band name, and all record company logos, cat.no...

THE MIX (USA, 1991?) Club Edition Elektra 9 60869-4/ C 102677 I wanted to celebrate a round number with style: Today is my 150th post on this blog, and it would have been fun to have something spectacular to show for it. Instead, I present an anomaly that is perhaps more typical of this blog: it's another obscure US edition of The Mix, a Club edition which I just chanced across recently and which was not listed in Discogs before I added it a few days ago. The Club Editions were as discussed previously , specially made for music clubs, subscription services from which people would get their music through mail order. In the 70s and 80s, there were a few such Club editions issued with more simplistic J-cards, but in the case at hand today, the Club membership were treated to a full 4-panel J-card, printed on both sides like on the standard edition sold in shops. The most significant difference that I can see (and feel free to check for yourself!) is that there is no bar code on t...

AUTOBAHN (USA, 1992) Elektra 25326-4 Here's another US edition of Autobahn, the 1992 edition. This came on Elektra, but seems to be based on the Warner Brothers 1985 edition - since it bases both the cat.no and front cover design on it! The USA had a bunch of different releases of Autobahn, on various labels or sub-labels - why they kept changing labels I never understood, but it makes for a nice pile of different editions! So from Vertigo to Mercury to Warner to Elektra, over the course of 18 or so years, if nothing else it's testament to Autobahn's lasting impact on popular culture I suppose? As mentioned, this edition is a mild update of the previous, 1985 WB version. It uses the front cover design with one small change - the information across the top was written in black, but now it's in white. The catalogue number has not changed, either; at a guess, the original was long out of print? The inside of the cover has some credits, notably Wolfgang Flür is credited f...

THE MIX (USA, 1991) Promo Elektra 60869-4 Here's a US edition of The Mix, which is a bit different. It's The Mix, in a promotional edition known as a "title sleeve" version. The "title sleeve" promo is normally a grey or white simple design with track list on the front, instead of the standard picture design used on the corresponding commercial releases. It looks like it's been fairly common for record companies to send out these sort of promos before the normal versions were ready, or maybe they are sent out to recepients who need not concern themselves with the picture covers? Ie. if these were sent out to enigineers to check if they sounded right, or radio stations where they might appreciate an edition in neutral sleeve to give the impression that the music speaks for itself... So as I say, you can find similar promo items from the late 80s and up through the nineties, and I suppose they are related to the more recent CD-R promos, which typically c...

RADIO-ACTIVITY (Italy, 1983?) Capitol 54 1820874 An Italian reissue here, we haven't been to Italy in ages... I have a feeling this came in 1983, because that's when the LP with similar catalogue number was out (according to www.discogs.com).   The reissue - ie the one with the "54" cat.no, which replaced the earlier edition with the cat.no starting with 3C - came in a couple of variants. This one has a white cassette shell with black on-body print. There's also another with a clear shell. The J-card is 2-panel, printed on one side on sturdy glossy card, while the clear-shell copy I know of, has a 1-panel J-card, with the same print, just spread to both sides of the card. In 1987, Italy had a reissue series with a different style of front design, but I have no indications that Radio-Activity was part of that? (if you know anything about it, please let me know!)   Typical to Italy, the spine of the J-card has a stamp with the letters S.I.A.E, indicating that the...

TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (UK, 1977) Capitol TC-E-ST 11603 - 0C-262 82353 We will now have a short break in this barrage of Polish pirate tapes in order to present this, the UK edition of Trans-Europe Express. Not exactly what you'd call a monster rarity, but a nice item, pretty to look at, and very official, so here we go! The cover is a full-sized two-panel J-card, on glossy card stock, printed on both sides - but the inside is just a bit of legal notices and such. As pointed out before on this blog, the UK, US, and a few other territories used the J. Stara colour collage for the front cover, whereas many european territories including Germany, Italy and Spain would use the Maurice Seymour photograph. The UK got the colour a bit wrong, it's over-saturated and looks orange tinted, but they liked the design enough to keep it for their later Fame label reissue .  The cassette came in many variants, both originally and the Fame reprints; most shells are grey, although an early 80s ve...