Kraftwerk cassettes

TRANS-EUROPA EXPRESS (Poland, 1991?) Unofficial Mateos  91159 So, another Polish pirate cassette today, but it's not The Mix this time! Poland, as indicated on this blog before, is the one country that has produced the highest number of different Kraftwerk cassettes. Polish copyright law, or possibly lack of law enforcement, made it easy to make a limited run of cassettes without contacting the legal owners, and there are dozens of different labels that have put out one or more Kraftwerk cassettes. Sometimes, it's just a version of one of the albums, other times it's something more elaborate, including "greatest hits" type compilations. Most releases will have some special design feature setting them apart from their competitors.  Another feature I have began to regard as typically Polish, is that they will often have tampered with the tracklist in one way ot another, mostly to bring the playing time down to standard length. Rather than present the buyer with one ...

THE MIX (Poland, 1991?) SuperTape ST 632 Oh, come on. It's been ages since I had any Polish pirate cassettes up, surely one more can't hurt! Poland has had such a _mass_ of different cassettes, especially of The Mix, which I've shown in loads of different editions here before . Most of them will have tampered with the tracklist somehow - again I'm at the risk of repeating myself - as the original album is 65 minutes long and the normal cassette length is either 46 or 60 minutes. Simpler and cheaper to use a shorter cassette and skip one track on the CD. The track they left out, however, is slightly surprising: The last track of the album, and the highlight of the 1991 tour (and of many tours since) - Music Non Stop. They haven't left the rest of the tracks in their correct place, either - Pocket Calculator and Dentaku are on different sides of the cassette, bringing a medley to a confusing end, and worse still - Abzug is on its own in the middle of side B, while ...

AUTOBAHN (Poland, 1996?) Unofficial Reggae, 90208 Although there has been a lot of Polish releases on this blog before, I can't remember even one Autobahn? Well, here's the first, then, and it's on the surprisingly titled "Reggae" label. Apparently based on the German 1985 edition , same front illustration at least. The cassette is clear, without any info, not even which side you're looking at. The cover is a simple 1-panel J-card, on fairly cheap-looking thin paper, and printed on one side only. In fact, the only actual connection to the official item is the "motorway sign" design on the front; they haven't even bothered to put the track list on the cover! It just says "Autobahn I-V", which surprises me, as if they had access to the illustration on the front, surely they had the tracklist too? Maybe they were sent a postcard of it. I stated above that this came out in 1996, I base this on a stamp inside the cover. However it's bar...

The Model (Poland, 199?) Unofficial Euro Star ES 2213 Time for another Polish pirate cassette! This time, though, a compilation, one of the few that weren't "curated", so to speak, in Poland...  "The Model 1975-1978" was a compilation on the US Cleopatra label, released in 1992. It features tracks from Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, some of them in their original single edits, and Les Mannequins which had been issued as the b-side to its English-language counterpart Showroom Dummies on a promotional "disco" 12" single. There are several Polish editions of this, this one has all the tracks from the compilation - not in the same order, though, they have been jumbled around, I suppose it was an effort to make two programmes of equal lenght. Apart from starting the cassette with the title track, which is not unjustified for a best-of compilation with a title track, they somewhat surprisingly placed Trans-Europe Express on Si...

ELECTRIC CAFE (Poland, 1992) MG 0914 Another Polish pirate edition today, and this time it's a version of Electric Cafe! I keep buying Polish cassettes, if I can find them. I think they're interesting, and there's a lot of different ones - easily the country in the world with the largest number of different Kraftwerk cassettes! As has been said before, Polish unofficial releases would often have strange/weird/surprising/striking design features, changes to the track list and other anomalies. Today's cassette is fairly straightforward though - the LP design against a white background, and band name, album title and release year in the vacant space above the image. The most interesting part of the front cover is that the colouring is off - the yellow colour seems to have been added the wrong way around, giving the design a surprisingly messy make-over... The J-card is on the usual glossy, thin paper, printed on both sides. The track list both on the back-flap and insid...

HITS (Poland, 198?) Unofficial HiTs H135 I have not forgotten the Polish pirate cassettes! Feels like it was a while ago since I featured one here, but there are plenty of them, and as I've said before, they're often interesting, even if "interesting" means "ridiculous" at times...  I was tempted to list this as "Kraftwerk", or even "Untitled", as "HiTs" is apparently the name of the label. However, that's what it says on the front, so I'll go with that - I suppose the confusion is a selling point? I mean, you look at the front, it says "Kraftwerk" and "Hits", you will assume it's a best-of compilation, right? Anyway, this is a compilation of tracks from different sources, and opens with the most known song from the 80s - "The Model", which was their biggest song in the charts in the UK, and which always received a rapturous response from live audiences on the 1981 tour.  The front cover...

NON STOP (Poland, 1991?) Basston B-149 Back to my recent mass of Polish pirate cassettes, and today we're back to the more puzzling end of the scale: "Non Stop".  The cassette shares it's title with a live bootleg, and if I'm honest I was hoping this might be a pirate cassette of a bootleg CD... But listening, it's actually half the tracks of The Mix, an album we've seen in lots of variants here before . But even though these Polish cassettes often disregard the original design, at least they will usually keep the title! On the other hand, of course it's a practical way to make your product stand out; loads of different Polish labels put out The Mix, so if there's just one "Non Stop", maybe that will help sales? Again, like many Polish The Mix cassettes, they leave out a lot of tracks from the official, 65-minute double LP. More surprising, the sides of this cassette is of uneven length; Side A clocks in at 17 minutes, while the b-side ...

Computer World (Poland, 19?) Unofficial release Mag Magic M-0401 Had a few nice additions from Western Europe recently, which I'm looking forward to posting - but today I'm back to the Polish editions! Here's another version of Computer World. You gotta love these pirate versions! Now, I've touched upon the attraction of these un-official , more or less cottage industry Polish cassettes before, but one thing I seem to have forgotten to say is how to tell they're actually Polish. It doesn't necessarily say so on the cover, and they generally use English language on the cassette covers - although exceptions exist - but in many cases, the Polish copyright bureau ZAIKS is mentioned, giving the game away. Of course, if this mention indicates any other contact with the copyright authorities, such as paying the musicians royalties for their work, one might debate how un-official these Polish cassettes really are. I'll leave that for a rainier day though. Anyway, ...

Kraftwerk (Poland, 199?) Unofficial TomZo 0090 The Polish takeover continues with another pirate cassette, today it's a compilation! Well, kind of.   I've touched before on the anything-goes attitude, typical in Poland in the late 80s and through the 90s. Today's item is a brilliant case in point; nearly a two-for-one, it has most of the The Man-Machine album on side one, and most of the Computerwelt album on side two. Yes, one in English, the other in German! 'Neon Lights' is omitted from the first, while Computerwelt is presented here without 'Taschenrechner' _and_ 'Nummern'. All three are key tracks, although I suppose nearly every track is key on these two releases... It's especially baffling that 'Nummern' is not included, since it's sort of a medley with the next song, 'Computerwelt 2', so this one starts rather abruptly after the ending of it's counterpart. In fact, the cassette is a c60, so it wasn't even neces...

Computer World (Poland, 1990?) Unofficial release Tact 037 Been quiet here for a while, but I'm back today with a Polish edition of Computer World. I've featured many Polish pirate cassettes recently of course, and in fact, I haven't been able to add much else to my collection for a couple of months, so there's that. Also, I've been waiting for some fantastic rarities from a friend, but they have yet to materialise, so we're back to the boots again. It's ok though, they're nice, although there's little left for me to say about the Polish cassette industry . I have of course touched upon the fact earlier, that some of these cassettes look genuinely baffling, some quite hideous, but today's example I find rather pretty actually. It's green, as visible from the pictures, and the green background compliments the original yellow album design nicely while also being of a quieter tasteful style compared with some of the more garish eye-catching co...

ELECTRIC CAFE (Poland, 1986?) MC M-194 Another Polish pirate edition today, and this time it's a version of Electric Cafe! I bought a pile of Polish cassettes recently, and had a few from before, so it's going to be a bunch of them from now on, although I'll try to mix in some other editions too. Today's one is interesting though - for the cover design! With the music exactly the same on every edition, obviously the design is a big part of the appeal when it comes to collecting. I've mentioned before that sometimes, the "best" ones from a design point of view are not necessarily the most interesting ones, and today's one is certainly more in the "WTF?!" end of the register! The original LP inner sleeve - also a page of the CD booklet - is cut in between two halves of the front cover. I expect it is another of those creative decisions on how to make a square LP/CD front translate to a rectangular cassette, but it's sort of baffling all the...