Kraftwerk cassettes

TRANS-EUROPA EXPRESS (Australia, 1980s) Capitol TC-MID-166109 Back to Australia again! From a Kraftwerk cassette collector's perspective they put out quite a lot of interesting releases - certainly more than I knew when I started collecting! Most cassettes from Australia - whether first-issue or re-release - come with nicely un-imaginative design; sometimes based on the UK cassette counterparts, sometimes just the LP front against a white background. This one, which I think is from 1987, falls into the latter category, and looks like you'd expect it to if you've seen the LP version with colour front (as released in Australia, and also UK, US, Japan, Sweden and others, I talked at some length about it in an earlier post ). There's no mistaking it for the first edition though, as the LP design is moved towards the middle of the front, with the band name above. It looks like this cassette is the counterpart to a 1987 mid-price reissue on LP, with the same catalogue nu...

TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (Australia, 1977) Capitol TC-ST-11603 Back to Australia for this one, there still quite a few releases from that great country that I havne't presented here! The standard design of first-issue cassettes from Australia is pretty straight forward - either based on the UK cassette counterparts (like Autobahn), or a very simple version with the LP sleeve against a white background. The front of this, which I suppose to be the first Australian cassette edition, has the band name and title in larger letters underneath the picture. (I have seen later issues, a mid-80s reissue with the cat.no TC-MID-116109 - MID surely must refer to the price range? - and one with the cat. no beginning in TC-SW, with a pink background on the front.)   The J-card is 2-panel, and although it does have print on both sides, with the inside giving a list of "do's and dont's" on how to care for your cassette. It seems kinda cute these days, but otoh, if you followed thes...

ELECTRIC CAFE (Australia, 1986) EMI TCEMD1001 Back to Australia, and one I've been looking for without much luck, the Straya edition of Electric Cafe! On a personal note, I ordered a copy of this during the pandemic, but it has yet to materialise... A rare occasion of things getting lost in the mail for me. Hope it's not going to happen more often in the future! For me as a collector, with many different editions of each release, the ones that look a bit different are often the ones I find the most interesting - even when they don't look that fascinating per se. I've shown a few editions of this release from countries that didn't splash out on the full , 2-sided/ 4-panel J-card, some countries made a relatively "budget" release on cassette... Australia did an interesting variant, where they steered clear of the all-black custom design, but at least, the J-card was printed on both sides. And the inside is simply an image, the one which was on the inner cove...

EXCELLER 8 (Australia, 1975?) Vertigo, 7149 007 It's time for another compilation cassette, I suppose - here's Exceller 8, in an Australian edition! Exceller 8 has been featured before, from France , but I wasn't even aware that this one existed until recently. It may be quite obscure, of course, but on the other hand - Kraftwerk cassettes are generally un-researched, little information is to be found outside Discogs, Ebay and a couple of Kraftwerk collector/fan sites - so the fact that it is not listed online doesn't automatically make it a monster rarity. What I do know though is that it came out in 1975, on the back of Autobahn. It has the same Price Code as other Vertigo cassettes - the Australian editions of Autobahn and Ralf & Florian ( both of which have been listed here before ). The cat.no.s are adjacent, too - This is 7149 007, after Autobahn came as 7149 005 and R&F as 7149 006. The J-card is a lovely 2-panel, printed on one side of the thick card ...

RALF & FLORIAN (Australia, 1975) Vertigo 7149 006 I have relatively few of the early albums on cassette, and should perhaps save them for a rainy day... But I felt like presenting this, so here we go: the Australian Ralf & Florian, a 1975 Vertigo release. This cassette actually came out in 1975, as a follow-up of Autobahn. I've already pointed out how the surprise chart success of Autobahn in the USA called for immediate re-marketing of their previous record, which was named after the members.  In fact, at this point in their history I suppose the steady line-up of Ralf & Florian must have been something of a watershed to themselves, as the band had been a very floating, free-form collective of musicians in the early days. A dozen people are documented to have been in and out of Kraftwerk in 1970-1971. For example, Ralf and a drummer (possibly Klaus Dinger) played in Aachen 19th Dec, and a week later, Florian did another gig with Charly Weiss and Eberhard Kranemann....

THE MIX (Australia, 1991) EMI 796671-4 The Mix, that 1991 collection of re-recordings of well-known songs that has served as one of the 8 albums in their "Der Katalog" concept, came long after the era of 'local design', and well into the era of multinational companies, so it's no surprise that most editions look like each other; and while I've tried to present some of those editions that deviate from the norm, we should not forget how this release was meant to look - so here's a - relatively speaking - "standard" issue! The Australian edition is similar to the US, European and UK versions in most aspects - it's a clear cassette with a sheet of foil inside, it comes with a 4-panel J-card including a full-panel backflap, bearing the same design with only minor details keeping them apart (cat.no and such - in fact, looking closer now I see this edition has the photos cropped tighter than US and German versions, but they're all the same pics ...

AUTOBAHN (1974, Australia) Philips 7149 005 If I'm perfectly honest, today is kind of a cleaning out of my picture catalogue - I've had these images on my computer for a year, and decided to post them so I can dig out some more cassettes and take pictures. I hope the item itself is interesting even through the blur of the jpg's! Australia is an interesting market, with a lot of product and some fascinating anomalies. Today's cassette is one out of two known variants of Autobahn, both from 1975 (not sure if the 1985 reissue was even published in Oz?); only a bit of copyright info sets them apart. This cassette has the legend "Distributed by Phonogram Pty. Limited" printed on both labels (lower left corner on the pictures). This is substituted on the other edition for a slightly amended bit of text: "Manufactured & Distributed in Australia under license". The version with this text on the labels also has the same message on the cover, again the onl...

    RADIO-ACTIVITY (1975, Australia) Capitol, TC-SP-11457 I've briefly featured Australia before, with the cassette single for Tour De France , but there are of course a wide range of releases from that great country, so - have another! Most Australian cassette releases are quite... tidy, I suppose, rarely straying far from the international norm - and Radio-Activity is no exception. The front has a facsimile of the LP cover against a white background, and band name and title in larger letters underneath the picture. I've only ever seen this one edition of Radio-Activity on cassette from Australia, too, no mid-80s reissue or cassette shell variants (that I've come across, yet!).   The J-card is 2-panel, and although it does have print on both sides, the inside is not related to this particular release. Instead, we are treated to a few hints and tips - do's and dont's - on how to care for your cassette. Similar information has been printed on cassette releases from ...

  TOUR DE FRANCE (1984, Australia/ New Zealand) EMI, TC-ED-90 So, after twenty cassettes on this blog, I've tried to show the variation of product underneath the umbrella "Kraftwerk cassettes"; I've presented official and unofficial cassettes, I've had first editions and reissues, I've had German releases and many other countries, all the core albums and various compilations - but I haven't had a cassette single yet?? How can I hope to achieve anything in the direction of an ultimate cassette blog without the singles?   So. Cassette singles were first released in the UK in 1980, and spread out worldwide quickly thereafter.  and already the following year, Kraftwerk's UK label issued 'Pocket Calculator' on cassette. The follow-up, 'Computer Love' b/w 'The Model', did not get the cassette treatment, even if it was released twice (the b-side received attention from DJs, so they switched sides, thus scoring Kraftwerk's only numb...