AUTOBAHN (1985, France)
EMI/ Pathé Marconi 2400704


Another recent acquisition today, a French reissue of Autobahn. I had no idea this existed until I stumbled upon it - although that says more about me than about the item I suppose.

As we've seen across this blog, most countries would put out different versions of an album, changing the label or J-card as the old ones sold out. The 1985 reissue of Autobahn was more like a full-scale reissue, sanctioned and remixed by the band, and with an updated version of Emil Schult's landscape painting on the front (without the VW dashboard from the 1975 original). While some cassette editions would crop the image, this one has the full LP image, facsimile-style on the front. Below, the band name in large red letters is more in keeping with other designs from the record label than with how Autobahn was presented everywhere else... , The lower inch or so of the sleeve is made up of logos, three record labels and two indicating loads of sound quality - Dolby and XDR. Bit of luck for the designers that the track list was so short, so they had space for all those logos!


The J-card is 1 panel with print on both sides. The backflap has "Reedition 1985" at the top, much like other French reissues actually. Below is the tracklist, and since the design template is made for perhaps 10-12 tracks, the back flap has a fair bit of empty space... On the inside, the tracklist is repeated, with some credits, and to the right is the XDR blurb, where you can read how fantastic XDR sounds. The cassette is beige with blue on-body print.


This was only recently (early 2025) added to the Discogs database. Not sure if it's actually very rare, but it was the time of the EU, and - perhaps this edition would compete with imports from Germany or Netherlands?








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