Notwithstanding the extensive docs and debate around bootlegs, which I’ve tried to digest, I have a specific question on these release groups, each containing a single nearly identical release:
If these matched exactly and I’d never seen them, I’d just recommend merging to the one with the date, which matches bootleg style. But I have the latter one in hand, the two-disc set that I bought in the East Village back in the day. I was about to put its disc IDs in via Picard when I saw there were two releases.
My track list matches the upper release (group). That release contains better relations. But all of the track times are empty.
My disc shows only “The Purple Rose” on the spine, to the extent that matters, but the date on the back cover matches the one in the upper release group. One track in this release is different to mine - my CD says “If 6 Was 9,” matching the upper release group, and I’ll have to do some listening to tell which it really is, as the source material is well outside my wheelhouse.
How can I best document what I know? Does it even matter? Probably nobody else will ever see this. (You’d have to pry mine from my cold, dead hands.)
These two copies of the same concert should be the same Release Group. But it is common for a good concert to be “released” many times by different bootleggers. A copy goes out on tape and is passed around. It is uploaded as a torrent and is shared around. So we have two Releases of the same material.
Now a bootlegger who can pressed CDs downloads it and pressed some CDs to sell down the market. We now have a third release. It then gets cloned in Japan \ Russia \ Italy and released on another label, different artwork. Multiple releases appear of good concerts.
At some point someone spots that tracks are named wrong on a track list and that error gets updated on a later issue.
All a legit, but all use the same recordings.
If I had a CD like yours I’d add it as a new release, upload the artwork, add the label etc. But I would also link to the recordings already in MB as it is no doubt just the same old released reissued again.
I’d use the dated one as it is likely to be first, and more informative.
With bootlegs the same concert gets gathered into one Release Group even if there are many different titles to the releases. Having the date and location on the RG title makes it easier to locate.