K-Tel!

What a great idea! The compilation label from hell "K-TEL" gets compiled here.


Nowadays K-tel sells electric can openers. Back then they had the flashiest ads to sell you the trashiest pop compilations. With names like Ripper, Zipper and Sizzler, which sounded more like the rides on a funfair, they threw anything together that was somehow contemporary and apparantly sold truckloads of them.

My first purchased album was a K-tel compilation: Disco Fever! It contained 20 "hits", about ten of them were actually disco, the rest was a strange melange of rock and country ballads.

In order to fit all this music on one record, K-tels sound engineers were quite versatile in editing the songs in very creative ways. Knowing the originals and hearing the shameless, but seemless cuts, impressed me more than the actual music. I began editing my music as well with the aid of the pause button on dad´s tape recorder and his reel to reel machine. I was exstatic when I managed to get the "unhearable edit". For years to come i used to chose my new tape-decks by the reaction time of the pause button. Everybody else had high-end machines with more knobs to shake a stick at, but i had the fastest pause button and I was not afraid to use it!

Check out Kay-tel blogspot. Maybe you´ll find a long lost compilation, or something you have buried in the back of your mind for decades.