Kraftwerk cassettes

AUTOBAHN (USA, 1975) Club Edition  Vertigo VCR4-2003 C 114346 A recent discovery today: an early Club edition of Autobahn, probably from 1975. Didn't know this even existed at all, until I saw it! Autobahn came in many editions in the US, being reissued on many different labels (or sub-labels) over the years, and I was of the impression that I had most of them. But I noticed this one online - looking exactly like the first edition except there's an additional catalog number in the top right corner of the front of the J-card. Closer inspection and comparisons revealed it to be a 1975 club edition. Or perhaps a 1976 club edition, but by 1977 Autobahn had moved labels to Mercury and this is on Vertigo, so I bet this one is earlier? Must be.   The  J-card is two-panel, printed on one side. Apart from the additional catalog number on the front, I can not tell this one apart from the shop version . (The second panel has the same advert, to get Kraftwerk fans to buy Bachmann ...

THE MAN·MACHINE (Italy, 1978?) Unofficial - no label, cat.no S.R. 3003 Now here's an oddity... Another unofficial copy of "The Man·Machine" from Italy.    I've posted one before, quite similar, and I know of others too - in fact, every now and then a new variant turns up. In this case, I had to take a closer look at a cassette I already own, but this one turns out to be just very similar. With the Italian "underground market" - ie. that of unofficial knock-off product - I fail to understand why they'd make so many different designs; wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just copy something one-to-one? Did the pirate industry cater for collectors like me, who wanted the same cassette in different covers? Surely not... So why then bother to have their own design for each run of bootleg? It's strange.  Whatever the reasoning behind it though, here is another green themed design, with both the top of the front and the spine bright green. The spine h...