AUTOBAHN (Thailand, 1985)
EMI TC-EJ 240074

"Good news, everyone!" Something special today: a cover variant that I think is unique, and from a country that's new to the blog - Here's a mid-80s issue of Autobahn, from Thailand!

We've seen a whole bunch of different editions of Autobahn on this blog, and I've also touched on the problem of converting album art to cassette - From large to tiny, from square to rectangular, it can present some problems. Some editions have cut Emil Schult's beautiful cover painting - I refer you to this Argentinian version and to this US '90s reissue - and others present like a thumbnail of the whole painting, where if you whip out the magnifying glass, you can see a fairly crappy reproduction of the artwork. 

So it is a little surprising to see Thailand's solution, because I don't think it's been done anywhere else: They've changed the portrait orientation of most cassettes to landscape. They've cut a bit of sky and a lot of asphalt from the picture, and hey presto! On the second panel, the back cover picture from the LP is also cut to a "landscape" shaped picture - editing out the bits you don't really need. I think it looks beautiful - in fact, it makes me wonder why nobody else thought of it!


The J-card is 2-panel, printed only on one side, and the backflap contains all there is in the way of information; the track list. Nearly hiding this, is a clear sticker, with a little bit of manufacturing info. Whether the omission was an error, or whether the sticker was a standard feature of the Thailand cassette in 1985, I couldn't say; here, it messes up an otherwise pretty great J-card. The labels are white with black print, and my copy has a previous owner's initials on it (maybe even the full name, I can't read it!)






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