Pearl Jam Jams and Jams and Jams . . .

Call it the ultimate fan’s ultimate dream, or a bootlegger’s nightmare, but Pearl Jam has just released 25--yes, 25!--live albums.

It’s the latest example of how the Internet is reshaping pop music--a move that probably would have been inconceivable without the distribution capabilities provided online.

The new albums are all two-disc affairs, each one a complete concert from Pearl Jam’s summer tour of Europe. The CDs, released by the band and distributed by Epic Records, are available for as low as $10.98 (plus shipping and handling) for Pearl Jam fan club members via the band’s Web site (https://www.pearljam.com).

Besides the albums’ availability on the Web site, the band and Epic are making them available to Internet retailers and traditional record stores. They each carry a suggested retail price of $16.98--as opposed to the $17.98 to $18.98 list price of most single-disc new releases. But they are expected to be discounted by various retailers during their initial weeks on the shelves. Not all retail chains, however, are expected to stock all or even a portion of the albums because of the volume of the series.

The novel mass release--Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis affectionately describes the albums as “our own bootlegs”--gives fans unprecedented “authorized” access to the band’s musical output.

“There have been bootlegs of just about every show Pearl Jam has ever done,” he said. “But most of them weren’t very good and some were selling for $40 or $50 each, so we decided to put out our own bootlegs. We see it as a way for collectors to get the music with better quality and at a more reasonable price.”

Pearl Jam’s series comes at a particularly sensitive time in the record industry--a period when labels, retailers and artists are trying to figure out the impact of the Internet on their future. The most immediate question involves a high-profile court battle with Napster over the free flow of music on the Internet.

On Monday, Sony Records, which owns Epic, announced that the rock band Offspring had scrapped plans to post an album on the Internet more than a month before the CD goes on sale. Sony, which is involved in the legal battle with Napster, had reportedly told the band to cancel the giveaway, calling it a violation of contractual obligations.

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Though the Pearl Jam releases carry the blessing of Epic, retailers and rival bands will be watching the results of the 25-album barrage to see how many copies are sold, and how many of them are sold via the Internet or fan club rather than traditional stores.

The live albums went on sale on the band’s Web site Sept. 5, and orders have already been received for more than 60,000 copies, according to a source at Epic Records.

Polly Anthony, president of the Epic Records Group, said the project was a “bit of a brain twister” in terms of figuring out how to distribute the albums, but feels the series is in keeping with Pearl Jam’s attempt to maintain a special bond with its audience.

The sound quality generally isn’t as good on these discs as on “Live on Two Legs,” but it’s preferable to the average live bootleg.

And price isn’t the only attraction for fans with the new albums. Because Pearl Jam often reworks its set list from night to night, fans will have a liberating range of choices.

Pearl Jam is one of the most compelling live bands in rock, and one of the disappointments of its previous live album, 1998’s “Live on Two Legs,” was the song selection. There was an entire layer of essential songs missing from the 16-song single disc--from the anthem-like “Not for You” to the warmly idealistic “Wishlist.”

Thanks to this new batch of albums, however, you can find “Wishlist” on 18 CDs, including four that also include “Not for You.”

Bootlegs became a popular, if illegal part of the rock world in the ‘60s, when unauthorized concert or studio recordings of such seminal artists as Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were prized by hard-core fans.

Record labels and some artists complained that bootlegs siphoned off millions of dollars in potential revenue. Proponents of bootlegs argued that people who bought them were devoted fans who would buy all the artists’ regular albums anyway, so that money wasn’t lost. The bootlegs, they said, were simply a way for the fanatic fans to get more of their favorite acts’ music.

Though the opposition drove bootlegs further underground in the ‘70s, they remain easily available for hard-core collectors through the Internet and at swap meets.

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Unlike most live albums, the Pearl Jam CDs are being released pretty much as is--meaning you’ll come across a few wrong notes in places.

“We didn’t want to get into having to pick and choose between the shows, or having the band think about it too much,” Curtis said. “Everyone has a [mistake] somewhere in the show, and you can end up spending all this money to fix them. They decided to go for it, blemishes and all.”

Even Curtis hasn’t listened to all 25 albums, but he was at all 25 shows and cites the second date, in Katowice, Poland, on June 16, as a favorite, as well as shows in Paris on June 8 and in Verona, Italy, on June 20. (There is no album from the June 30 rock festival in Denmark where nine fans were trampled to death.)

“Collectively, I think it’ll sell a significant number,” he said. “Some of the top titles may even [sell enough] to show up in the Billboard [Top 200] sales chart next week.”

Some industry observers, in fact, believe that a half-dozen or more of the albums will make at least the lower rungs of the Billboard chart, since all you need to sell to reach the Top 200 most weeks is around 6,000 copies.

Pearl Jam’s “Vs.” album sold 950,000 copies in its first week in the stores during the peak of the band’s popularity in the early ‘90s. Its latest album, “Binaural,” sold about 250,000 copies in its first week in the stores last May, enough for it to enter the charts at No. 2.