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 ...

ELECTRIC CAFE (USA, 1986) Club edition Warner Brothers W4 25525 Today we're back to the USA for another favourite thing of mine - another club edition, this time it's Electric Cafe! When I began collecting Kraftwerk on cassette, I knew of exactly ONE US Club edition - the most common one of Computer World (which, I'm surprised to say, I have not posted here yet!). I've since discovered that most releases were made available in Columbia House and similar record and cassette clubs, and I've even found a different Club ed for Computerworld - this I have posted before . The editions themselves are often not that special, of course - sometimes, it's just a 1-panel J-card with the LP sleeve and track list on backflap, but for this and The Mix , the versions were nearly identical to the versions available in shops. 3-panel J-card, even the same bar code as other US editions. In fact, there's not much to set it apart from the standard cassette you could buy in shop...

THE MIX (USA, 1991?) Club Edition Elektra 9 60869-4/ C 102677 I wanted to celebrate a round number with style: Today is my 150th post on this blog, and it would have been fun to have something spectacular to show for it. Instead, I present an anomaly that is perhaps more typical of this blog: it's another obscure US edition of The Mix, a Club edition which I just chanced across recently and which was not listed in Discogs before I added it a few days ago. The Club Editions were as discussed previously , specially made for music clubs, subscription services from which people would get their music through mail order. In the 70s and 80s, there were a few such Club editions issued with more simplistic J-cards, but in the case at hand today, the Club membership were treated to a full 4-panel J-card, printed on both sides like on the standard edition sold in shops. The most significant difference that I can see (and feel free to check for yourself!) is that there is no bar code on t...

Computer World (USA, Club Edition, 1981) Warner Bros. W5 3549/ RCA Music Service C 124643 Part of the fun of collecting Kraftwerk cassettes is that things tend to get complicated. In many countries, there were a lot of slight variations issued for each release; I've seen Spanish editions where the only difference is the quality of the card stock of the J-card, or Italian editions that came with 2-panel J-cards or 1-panel J-cards, featuring exactly the same print. Paper labels or on-body print is another example, and I've featured three Portuguese editions of The Man-Machine before.  Recently, I discovered that there were two completely different US "Club" editions for Computer World! As mentioned in a previous post, US Club editions were sold in "record clubs", a sort of mail-order catalogue that was popular from the 70s to the 80s. The Columbia House cassette editon of Computer World is fairly well known, coming in a simple J-card with the album art against...

 RADIO-ACTIVITY (USA, Club Edition, 1975?) Capitol, 4XT 511547 Time for another obscurity... Here is the sought-after "Club Edition" of Radio-Activity. I was not even aware there was a club edition of this, before it was up on ebay. I didn't really know why there were these club editions either, but after some research (ok, I asked a friend from the US and googled it), I think the story goes like this:  There was a music club called Columbia House. (Probably others too, but never mind them.) The idea was to get people to subscribe to music, via mail order, for a monthly fee, and it was such a success that from the early '70s on, Columbia House would issue their own pressings both on LP and cassette (in fact, there were also 8-track cartridges andeven reel-to-reel tapes!). The music was divided into categories and catalogues, where you'd get the months biggest new release from some major artist or other, and then there was a lot of back catalogue, where members cou...