THE MIX (Poland, 1991?)
SuperTape ST 632


Oh, come on. It's been ages since I had any Polish pirate cassettes up, surely one more can't hurt!

Poland has had such a _mass_ of different cassettes, especially of The Mix, which I've shown in loads of different editions here before. Most of them will have tampered with the tracklist somehow - again I'm at the risk of repeating myself - as the original album is 65 minutes long and the normal cassette length is either 46 or 60 minutes. Simpler and cheaper to use a shorter cassette and skip one track on the CD.


The track they left out, however, is slightly surprising: The last track of the album, and the highlight of the 1991 tour (and of many tours since) - Music Non Stop. They haven't left the rest of the tracks in their correct place, either - Pocket Calculator and Dentaku are on different sides of the cassette, bringing a medley to a confusing end, and worse still - Abzug is on its own in the middle of side B, while Trans-Europe Express ends the programme! This cut brings the cassette to an astonishing end...

 
And as usual for Polish cassettes at the time, the J-card is on thin glossy paper, just the one panel but printed on both sides. The front is the official LP/CD image, ie, square, against a cream-coloured background with titles and credits. The spine has the titles against a white background, with the cream colour continued on the edges. Cassettes are clear with blue print directly to the shell, and someone must have sat on mine as the A-side is cracked! Still plays, though, as if I'd ever need to play this mess of a tape. Glad to have it, of course, but I'll listen to the music via other formats!

 






 

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
ELECTRIC CAFE (Edicion Española) (1987, Spain) EMI 274 24 0688 4 Time to bring out the big guns... Here's a well known and sought-after item, and one that seems to fetch surprisingly high prices on the collectors market: The Spanish edition of Electric Cafe. Kraftwerk had been interested in the use of language over many years; even when they were an instrumental band, their titles would feature some word play and puns that are frankly surprisingly creative... After Autobahn was a surprise hit in the USA, Kraftwerk would cater more to their international audience, and for Radioaktivität, the lyrics were in both German and English. Then, for Trans-Europe Express, they had one song, Schaufensterpuppen, translated to French (issued in France and Belgium, but not Canada. Fun facts: Les Mannequins was also issued as a club 12" in the USA, and on the TEE LP in Greece!). On Computerwelt, language took a yet more prominent place, when the lead single Taschenrechner was released in Engl...
Read more