A tale of two Langleys this time. Firstly a routine item: the South African release of the CD. Ostensibly manufactured in South Africa, but in fact the CD is sourced from the DADC Austria plant. Necessary for the completist, but a bit dull.
However the other cassette is an absolute gem of sproutological history, but not for the obvious reasons. You’d take it for the Kitchenware release of KWC9, and that’s because that’s exactly what you were supposed to take it for. The clue is in the generic “See inlay Card for Details” label on the cassette. Closer examination shows the inlay card is single sided without any lyric details. And on playing it, the sound quality is truly execrable: it sounds like it’s been recorded via AM radio. Have a listen to the clip I’ve included and marvel at how bad it is. It doesn’t even manage to get to the end of Nightingales at the end of Side 1.
It’s a counterfeit. The kind of thing that unscrupulous market and street traders or discount shops would sell to the unwary at low prices alongside fake perfume and other rubbish. All the effort is in the faking of the external appearance, with a really not badly printed inlay, and probably it would have had a nice cellophane wrapper so the first hint it wasn’t pukka would have been on opening and playing it. Possibly the only consolation for the unfortunate purchaser would be that the bottles of Chanel No 5 sold alongside it probably smelled worse.
I absolutely love this sort of thing: it’s a magnificent curiosity, a truly rare survival, and a relic of that vanishingly brief period of time when it was worthwhile counterfeiting Prefab Sprout as a chart band.