Before they became stadium fillers, R.E.M. was a jangling, mumbling enigma. For fans of old Blogspot discography pages, this era is the holy grail. It’s where you find those rare live bootlegs and the original pressing of Chronic Town.

The band got angry and fast again. 35-minute run time. No filler.

The existence of these blogs lived in a moral and legal grey area. While R.E.M. management was historically known for turning a blind eye to bootlegging—often allowing tapers to record shows—file-sharing complete studio discographies was a different beast.

Over time, the blogs began to vanish. Some were hit with DMCA takedown notices; others simply succumbed to link rot. As cloud storage services changed policies and bandwidth became expensive, the files died. Today, clicking a "Download" button on a 2010 Blogspot post almost invariably leads to a 404 error.