i'd been hunting for and finally located a copy of REM's Songs For A Green World. when it arrived yesterday i thought something about the tracklisting looked familiar. it's the same recording as my german import of REM Live USA 89. always dug it and have had it for years. i didn't even pay attention to the tracklisting in all the time i'd been searching for it; i just knew that i didn't have that particular title. now i guess i've got two. has that ever happened to anyone else or am i just a special sort of stupid?

As a collector of *ahem* grey market material, I've run into this sort of thing LOTS of times.

In the "gray area" releases, I know I have bought the same Paul Young & The Q-Tips live album twice under different titles without realizing the second one was identical to the first, but it was a pretty cheap mistake — maybe £3 or so from a used shop in London.

I've deliberately bought one album — Kim Carnes' debut, "Rest On Me" — multiple times on CD under multiple titles in hopes that one of them would finally be mastered at the proper speed. The 2012 digital-only remaster comes closest, but even that one is marred by some pretty bad pops in the obviously vinyl source. But you can find the same album (not that you'd really want these versions of it) under the following titles — and then with multiple covers for each and every one of the variations:
Rest On Me
I Won't Call You Back
To Love Somebody
Sweet Love Song Of My Soul (and its can't-these-people-even-read-the-song-title variants "Sweet Love Of My Soul" and "Sweet Love Song To My Soul")

There is a tape of the Alice Cooper band live in Toronto in 1969 (and which, for some reason, also contains two songs from Ronnie Hawkins from 1964) that has been the source for innumerable grey-area releases.

http://www.sickthingsuk.co.uk/toronto69/toronto69.php

That early live Chicago concert recording has been issued a number of times under multiple names. I'm pretty sure I bought it at least twice.

I've run into this a few times. One of the duplicates is usually a Charly album.

Both Universal and Sony-BMG have reissued several existing 2-CD anthologies with revised artwork, to bring them into their "Gold" and "Essential" series. The only one that tricked me The Essential Mariah Carey, but I returned it unopened.

Mariah Carey? Man, you buy everything don't, you.

(I kid, I don't know anything about Mariah Carey.)

I bought a Spanish import cassette 20-something years ago from a cutout bin - 'Gigantes del Pop - The Who." It was Meaty, Beaty Big & Bouncy.

I believe many of those "Extended Versions" budget live CDs are shortened versions of previous releases, but they sure don't seem to want the buyer to know that!

Yep, add me to the list. Sometimes even with the same title (sometimes I swear i have very early onset Alzheimer's!).

i've done that too geff...and thought the same thing.

I'm more shocked that Jimbo actually decided there was something he didn't need.

My wife is an Air Supply fan (she's the first to joke about her "wimp rock" tastes) and one day I saw a live CD/DVD package that I knew I hadn't seen in her collection. I snatched it up and brought it home to her. It turned out that album, titled Love Collection, was the exact same release as one she already had called All Out of Love Live. I offered to return it but I think she likes having variations of the same release. Those darn collectors!

Just to be clear, I already have Carey's 2-CD Greatest Hits, which was repackaged as Essential.

Jimbo, you are a very sick man. Ask for help, it's there!

More like, "Help me find a good CD sale!" amirite?

I always kind of figured the winner here was Jimi Hendrix's "Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead," or whatever bootleg title you may be familiar with, that apparently has Jim Morrison on vocals and claims of Johnny Winter.

And a double-down on those "Extended" budget discs with the non-existant details, unless they slip in an accidental "King Biscuit Flower Hour."

Crosby & nash Wind On The Water has 4 or 5 different titles in Europe.