The Associated Press has issued the following report from Jake Coyle:

Much of the rock 'n' roll and pop canon is well established.

Buying the albums of 60s and 70s acts like the BEATLES, the BEACH BOYS, LED ZEPPELIN, JIMI HENDRIX and BOB MARLEY is akin to a rite of passage for any young music fan. These are the artists that baby boomers love to keep buying, and with whom seemingly every teenager at some point experiments. (Remember A.J. hearing BOB DYLAN for the first time in the "Sopranos" finale?)

Now that the 80s and 90s are ancient history, what albums are people still buying from those decades? Do critical favorites like RADIOHEAD and the PIXIES grow more popular with time? Or do the BACKSTREET BOYS and MADONNA still rule the charts?

The short answer is that, above all, people are buying vintage METALLICA, AC/DC, BON JOVI, GUNS N' ROSES and, well, TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA.

AC/DC's Back In Black (1990) last year sold 440,000 copies and has thus far sold 156,000 this year, according to the Nielsen SoundScan catalog charts, which measure how well physical albums older than two years old are selling. (All figures for this article were provided by Nielsen SoundScan.)

Those Back In Black numbers would make most contemporary CDs a success. Metallica's self-titled 1991 album is altogether the second-biggest selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era, which began in 1991. Metallica sold 275,000 copies last year.

Bon Jovi's 1994 Cross Road last year sold 324,000 copies, while Guns 'N Roses Appetite For Destruction (1990) sold 113,000. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996) continues to be a holiday favorite; it was bought 289,000 times last year.

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