My version of this is a double vinyl album, which I got from Fopp in 1998 for £1.99, according to the label. That's obviously why I got it, the £1.99 bit. I imagine each of the singles from the album cost more.
It does seem a bit odd that a chart album was so cheap just a year after it was released. And it says 'limited edition' on the sticker on the cover. The sound on the first disc is a bit muddy, so perhaps it was a dodgy pressing.
Not that I'm bothered, because I never found much to engage me in this album. I only stayed the course with U2 this far because their album as The Passengers a couple of years before was such a pleasant surprise. And when Discothèque came out, the word in the Rutland Arms was that U2 were cleverly riding the zeitgeist (just as Madonna was doing, in a different way, at the same time) and stealing the thunder of rock/dance crossover acts like the Prodigy. But if that was the intent, I think they failed.
There are some tracks on sides 3 and 4 that have interesting bits, but it seems to me that, in the middle of their career, U2 turned from a caterpillar into a butterfly, and that this is the sound of them starting to get back into the chrysalis and become a caterpillar again. It was the album after this, wasn't it, where Bono said they were re-applying for the job of greatest band in the world. That was the end, as far as I'm concerned. They've sounded like tired re-treads of former embarrassments ever since. Unfortunately the later ignominies cast a bad light back over the interesting middle-period albums, just as those albums in their time had almost cast the rubbish early albums in an interesting light.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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