Pearl Jam did something this week no artist has done before — they landed five new albums on the Billboard 200 albums chart simultaneously.

Five of the Seattle rock band's 25 double-disc concert recordings from their recent European tour will appear on next week's chart, to be published Thursday: Katowice 6/16 (#103), Milan 6/22 (#125), Verona 6/20 (#134), London 5/30 (#137) and Hamburg 6/26 (#175), according to SoundScan data released Wednesday (Oct. 4). The feat tops the previous record of four albums debuting at once, set by late Tejano singer Selena in 1995.

As for why those shows are the top sellers, fans say it's a combination of the variety in the setlists and the intensity of the performances.

"The band is pretty much on every night, so it's not just about how good the performance is," said Wes Wyborney, a 17-year-old Pearl Jam fan from Waterloo, Iowa, who bought nine of the "official bootlegs" and traded with friends for several more.

Wyborney's favorite is the June 16 show from Katowice, Poland. "It starts out weird, because they play three or four slow songs," he said. "And then they play a bunch of ones they don't play a lot."

The June 16 show was one of Mike McCready's most memorable, the Pearl Jam guitarist said last month. The show opens with the haunting "Release," from Ten (1991), and also includes the acoustic "Soon Forget" (RealAudio excerpt of studio version), from this year's Binaural. Also included in the encore is their cover of "Soldier of Love," by soul singer Arthur Alexander.

David May, a 30-year-old fan from the Hague, Netherlands, bought the shows recorded in Verona, Italy, and San Sebastian, Spain, and has ordered eight more from pearljam.com.

May wrote in an e-mail that he bought the Verona show because it was the first Pearl Jam show he'd seen in eight years. He added that it's more than just the band's performance that makes for a killer show.

"[It's also] the interaction with the fans and the fans themselves, an amazing bunch of people," May wrote.

Since Pearl Jam knew that many retailers would have a hard time stocking all 25 titles, the band recommended six shows to record stores, according to Alicia Beams, sales manager of one of the three Tower Records outlets in San Francisco. The band recommended shows from Katowice; Milan and Verona, Italy; Cardiff, Wales; and two from the Wembley Arena in London.

Beams said she ordered at least one copy of all 25 releases, and more copies of the six shows the band recommended. The store only sold eight copies, however, with Verona 6/20 being the only title that sold more than one copy.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Epic Records President Polly Anthony said that although the live albums' performance surpassed the label's goals, "breaking chart records ... is not surprising considering Pearl Jam is one of the most heavily bootlegged and best live bands of our time."

The five shows in the Billboard 200 sold a total of 54,045 copies, with the Katowice show leading the pack with 14,058, according to SoundScan.

But the SoundScan numbers don't include sales through the band's Web site, where the albums have been available for order since Sept. 5. According to McCready, the site received nearly 500,000 orders by mid-September. Up-to-date online sales figures were unavailable Wednesday.

May, who's an active participant in the alt.music.pearljam newsgroup, said that almost all the people he talked to from the forum ordered the albums online.

Pearl Jam nearly tied the record for most albums on the chart at one time. The Beatles, the Monkees and U2 all have had seven albums on the chart at once.