NON STOP (Poland, 1991?)
Basston B-149


Back to my recent mass of Polish pirate cassettes, and today we're back to the more puzzling end of the scale: "Non Stop". 


The cassette shares it's title with a live bootleg, and if I'm honest I was hoping this might be a pirate cassette of a bootleg CD... But listening, it's actually half the tracks of The Mix, an album we've seen in lots of variants here before. But even though these Polish cassettes often disregard the original design, at least they will usually keep the title! On the other hand, of course it's a practical way to make your product stand out; loads of different Polish labels put out The Mix, so if there's just one "Non Stop", maybe that will help sales?


Again, like many Polish The Mix cassettes, they leave out a lot of tracks from the official, 65-minute double LP. More surprising, the sides of this cassette is of uneven length; Side A clocks in at 17 minutes, while the b-side is nearly 23 minutes. Seems strange that they'd leave out the 5-minute "Metall Auf Metall" from the Trans-Europa Express" medley when there was room for it on the cassette? Yes, it's there; they just forgot to list it. (Taschenrechner does appear on its own, though - without Dentaku, causing a sudden break where the next part should have started...) Oh well.

 
As per normal for Poland at the time, the J-card is on thin glossy paper, just the one panel but printed on both sides. It's interesting that they have one of the 1991 promo pictures of the robots, but here it's actually in colour; I think I've only ever seen it in b/w before. Cassettes have golden or brown print directly to the tinted clear shell, and I've seen cassettes with purple cogs instead of these grey ones.







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