Kraftwerk cassettes

RADIO-ACTIVITY (France, 1983) EMI/ Fame 1820874  Another post, another addition I was glad to get. I think this is fairly obscure, if not necessarily valuable in terms of Euros? Anyway, here's a French reissue of Radio-Activity!   Sometimes, with these cassettes, it can be hard to find any actual information... I don't often know much about the item at hand, unless the info is printed on the actual item itself it has generally gone down the rivers of time. Especially when it comes to the release year of a particular re-issue, in most cases you rely on guesswork and hearsay. France is an exception to the rule, however, their reissues would generally print the year on the J-card. So this copy of Radio-Activity, on the Fame imprint, came out in 1983!  The release year was a little surprising to me, as I have a Fame reissue from France of Trans-Europe Express, which is dated 1985. It would make sense if they put out reissues of all the Capitol albums in 1985 - the same year a...

AUTOBAHN (1985, France) EMI/ Pathé Marconi 2400704 Another recent acquisition today, a French reissue of Autobahn. I had no idea this existed until I stumbled upon it - although that says more about me than about the item I suppose. As we've seen across this blog, most countries would put out different versions of an album, changing the label or J-card as the old ones sold out. The 1985 reissue of Autobahn was more like a full-scale reissue, sanctioned and remixed by the band, and with an updated version of Emil Schult's landscape painting on the front (without the VW dashboard from the 1975 original). While some cassette editions would crop the image, this one has the full LP image, facsimile-style on the front. Below, the band name in large red letters is more in keeping with other designs from the record label than with how Autobahn was presented everywhere else... , The lower inch or so of the sleeve is made up of logos, three record labels and two indicating loads of soun...

ELECTRIC CAFE (France, 1986) EMI 264 24 0644 4 XDR Today is another fairly easy-to-find cassette; a French variant of Electric Cafe. Only small details set it apart from the BeNeLux edition I featured ages ago, but I suppose in a sense this whole blog is about minutiae... The one detail this French edition shares with the BeNeLux one, setting them apart from most other versions, is on the front of the J-card, where the lower left corner has "English Version" written in a small box. As mentioned earlier, it would be fairly pointless to print this on the front in territories where you couldn't get the "Deutsche Version", but otoh I frankly doubt the German edition was widely distributed in France; for my money, the French edition simply got its cover design template from the Holland one. The J-card is the full 4-panel thing, printed on both sides. The cassette is cream coloured with a brownish on-body print.

Computer World (France, 1988) EMI/ Fame 1643704 Still a few gaps to fill in: I've posted the French reissue of Computer World a while back, so here's the original. There are a lot of nice French releases, both in terms of design and sometimes even music - Computer World of course has one song in French. The J-card has a facsimile of the LP cover against a grey background, tres douce, and the album title in very small letters. Just the one panel, and inside we find some technical info on the backflap: information on the Dolby B system, and how to cope with cassette programmes of un-equal length; turns out you fast forward the tape when the music stops. This text is the same as on the reissue, fi donc! In fact, the only difference between the insides of my two French editions, is that the re-edition has a note of "re-edition", and the strange changed compounds... It's fairly typical of Kraftwerk, of course, that the album "Computer World" will have a t...

THE MAN·MACHINE (France, RE 1990) EMI/ Capitol 7460394 I always feel that this album gets overrepresented on my blog - I suppose it's the one which came in most editions, released at the height of the cassette time, sold well over a longer period, and not least before the European Union's export trend, so there's more editions from the European countries. So I was a bit surprised when going through my collection, I found that I haven't posted the French editions of The Man·Machine here yet! So, here's one, a reissue of 1990. The French had a fairly straightforward approach to reissues, at least, many of them were issued with a message that clearly stated " Réédition " followed by the year. For the 1990 reissue of The Man·Machine , some minor changes were done to the design of the original French J-card; the album title appears in smaller, black print, where the first issue has the same white print as the band name, and all record company logos, cat.no...

TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (France, 1985) Fame 1851104 (PM 410)   Another French edition of TEE, a 1985 reissue. The Fame label was a reissue label under the EMI umbrella, which I'm told started in 1982, releasing budget "Nice-price" reissues on LP and cassette. They would generally cut costs were they could. For cassettes though, the difference was often more a matter of taste. The French 1985 edition of Trans-Europe Express had a new design, with the LP facsimile printed on a mostly black background (the first edition and the 1978 reissue were based on the train motif from the 7" single), as per Fame standards. In fact, they even used the cover of the current Fame reissue LP, with the Fame logo in the top right corner! You've just got to love such attention to detail. The J-card is 1-panel, with the track list and a few credits on the inside, and the list of tips to take proper care of your cassette on the back flap (this was printed on the early editions as well). ...

Computer World (France, 1988) EMI/ Fame 1643704 Well, what do you know: As I prepare a new post, again it turns out there are multiple variants I don't know about. In this case, the French reissue of Computer World. The French reissues are easy to spot, as they are marked with "reedition" and the year of manufacture. In this case, on both sides of the J-card it says "reedition the 1988", so France decided on a reissue the year before Italy. How come? I expect I shall never know. I have a few reissues on the Fame label, and where the LPs would substitute the designed labels and inner sleeves with adverts for more reissues, the cassettes don't really have neither designed labels or inners, and so the difference will sometimes be a moot point... Sometimes, the Fame cassettes will reproduce the Fame LP cover (ie with the Fame logo on the facsimile), but on this, we get the original LP cover against a white background, and the Fame logo is in the top left corner...

AUTOBAHN (France, 1975) Philips 7149 005 A "twin post" today, posting a variant of something I had here recently , the French edition of Autobahn. Previously I had the reissue; here's what I believe to be the first edition. As I said in that post , they're not very different. Same front cover, similar J-cards, same cassettes and labels - just different price code: This edition is marked by a "Y" on the spine, while the other has "PG 400" printed on the back flap.   Most of the other info is in that previous post, so I feel no inclination to repeat it here. You saw the link right? Right here. Thanks again for reading, hope you enjoy checking out the differences!

AUTOBAHN (France, 1975) reissue Philips 7149 005 A personal favourite, the French edition of Autobahn, I'm surprised I haven't posted it here before - I've had the first edition for years, but only recently realised there was a later reissue, so today's post is a recent acquisition. The French edition of Autobahn originally came in 1975, and while the first edition is not very hard to find, it did go out of production at some point, to be replaced with this second edition. Both have the same front cover, a tight crop of the Emil Schult painting, with band name and album title in blue. Both editions have 2-panel J-cards, printed on both sides. Labels and cassettes are identical. I suppose the French price code system must have changed in the mid-70s sometime, the only significant difference between the two editions seems to be the price codes. The first edition is marked with price code Y on the spine, while this has "PG 400" printed on the back flap.  There ar...

EXCELLER 8 (France, 1976) Vertigo, 7149 007 I haven't had a compilation cassette in a while, and when I mentioned Exceller 8 in a recent post , it dawned on me that I had never posted it here! So today I'm putting in a French edition of that seminal early works compilation. What has been said before though, is that the chart impact of Autobahn, especially in the US, paved the way for a whole bunch of compilations of their earlier product (as well as reissues of the previous album Ralf & Florian, but let's leave that for later!). I've written about a few of these before, but the single most famous one is Exceller 8, having been released as an LP and/or cassette in many countries all over the world. Apparently first compiled for the UK market, it was also released in France, Portugal, Israel, Canada, New Zealand and Australia (most places on LP only). The French cassette seems to have been put out after the LP, it is dated 1976, so it's possible that they made y...