WHOLE LOTTA SALES!!

For the second week in a row, good ol’ rock & roll banged to the head of the charts, paced by the definitive, must-have, three-CD live set from the great Led Zeppelin (Atlantic/Atl G), How The West Was Won, which exceeded projections, racking up 145k in first-week sales. The two-DVD companion set, featuring five hours of live performances not included on the CD, blazed past 100k, obliterating the record for music-DVD bows (set several months back by Paul McCartney) by almost 40k.

Hastings’ Mike Fuller played a 15-minute air drum solo to "Moby Dick" before enthusing: "Led Zeppelin is just the tip of the iceberg. Rock has been boosting my bottom line, and now here comes the daddy of ’em all, with Metallica. Never has banging my head felt so good."

Sharing the upper reaches of the Top 50 with Zep and the mudshark were five other rock winners. Wind-up’s Evanescence (#3) just keeps on kicking tuchus, while Flip/Elektra’s Staind (#6), Maverick/Reprise’s Matrix Reloaded soundtrack (#10) and the same label’s Deftones (#11) remain potent in their second weeks. WB’s Linkin Park (#13) continues to sell consistently, if not as briskly as its predecessor, in the mid-five-figure range and is (not-so) quietly approaching double-platinum.

Shady/Aftermath/Interscope rapper 50 Cent landed at #2. The rest of the Top 10 includes RCA Idol Kelly Clarkson (#4), Blue Note thrush Norah Jones (#5), WSM diva Cher’s best-of (#7), Disney’s Lizzie McGuire Movie ST (#8) and Def Jam South/UMG Soundtracks’ 2 Fast 2 Furious hip-hop collection, bowing at #9 with the movie hitting theaters this Friday (6/6).

Roger Ames’ Warner Music Group’s hot streak continued this week, with four of the Top 10, eight of the Top 20 and 15 of the Top 50, further raising the WMG sticker price.

Other guys with guitars and momentum climbed the chart stairway to sales success. V2 duo The White Stripes (26-21), Capitol’s touring Coldplay (30-22), WB’s Trapt (46-26, with a whopping 27% increase), Atlantic/Atl G’s Matchbox Twenty (40-31), Daylight/Epic’s Good Charlotte (44-33) and Columbia/CRG’s John Mayer (50-42, with an 11% boost) all sported albums that continue to hang tough.

Columbia/CRG’s Frankie J (#43) and Lava/Atl G’s O.A.R. (#48) were the other two chart debuts.

Goat will continue to be thrown (and sacrificed) on next week’s chart, following Elektra’s decision to move up the release of Metallica’s St. Anger five days, to this Thursday (6/5), which means it’s odds-on to finish first, over the likes of Atlantic’s Jewel and Sugar Ray, and Columbia’s Train.