Supermanager Irving Azoff and radio megaglomerate Clear Channel have teamed up to launch “a.p.e. radio,” an all-lowercase effort that will allow people who just can’t seem to find a space on the dial that’s playing “Hotel California” or that Weezer song about Beverly Hills ad nauseam to tune in to artist-specific channels (similar to the ones on Sirius/XM) on CC’s iheartradio network. (Lowercase all theirs, not mine.) The first clients of Azoff’s Front Line Management to get the personalized radio stations: The Eagles, Christina Aguilera, and Weezer. Unfortunately, there’s no word yet on whether Guns N’ Roses will also get this treatment, possibly because Front Line isn’t sure whether or not Axl Rose has fired the company for the fifth time this month. [FMQB via Hipsters United]

The countdown to the Ticketmaster/Live Nation game of Super Concert Monopoly merger announcement is still on, and over at Hitsville, Bill Wyman notes that the Wall Street Journal story on the merger has excised the paragraph claiming that Bono, Don Henley, and Jay-Z would be making statements supporting this unholy matrimony that we noted last night. (It’s still in the print edition, though.) So… who complained? [Hitsville / Previously]

The countdown to the Ticketmaster/Live Nation game of Super Concert Monopoly merger announcement is still on, and over at Hitsville, Bill Wyman notes that the Wall Street Journal story on the merger has excised the paragraph claiming that Bono, Don Henley, and Jay-Z would be making statements supporting this unholy matrimony that we noted last night. (It’s still in the print edition, though.) So… who complained? [Hitsville / Previously]

It looks like Joe Walsh saved another Eagles concert with his superior solo material! How can a jam like “Funk No. 49″ not bring down the house?

I know that the Eagles aren’t popular around these parts, but I count myself as something of a fan, despite my best instincts. I get it: they represent the milquetoast lowest common denominator corporate rock of the 70s. All I’m sayin’ is that whenever I do “Take It Easy” at karaoke, it kills. People groan at the beginning, but are on board by the end. (For future reference, my other karaoke jam is “Glycerine” by Bush. Or whatever New Order/Erasure/Depeche Mode songs are in the book.)

I think the reason I give the Eagles a pass is Joe Walsh. He doesn’t fit. Don Felder fits. Timothy B. Schmit fits, despite his high-pitched voice. But Joe Walsh…I always got a sense that he was hanging out with those dudes because it was a good paying gig. He knew he could go solo again at any time, but why bother? It would be too much of a headache. Mama Walsh didn’t raise no fool. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t hop off the gravy train. Get paid. You know you can smoke all of them on guitar. You’re the rocker of the band. Those guys don’t deserve you. But you know what? Joe Walsh songs with the Eagles sound like Joe Walsh songs with the James Gang sound like Joe Walsh songs solo. Do you want to be a member of the Eagles, who can still sell 7 million records, or do you want to be the next Boz Scaggs? To paraphrase the knight at the end of The Last Crusade, he chose…wisely.

Plus, he called an album The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get. That’s rad.

Joe Walsh injects fun, energy into staid Eagles concert [Chicago Tribune]

So while Maura’s off at SXSW or Margaritaville or wherever the hell she’s going this spring, I’m being sent to Myrtle Beach in June for the opening of the Hard Rock Park, the long-awaited rock-themed amusement park brought to you by the Cafe people. There I’ll enjoy opening weekend festivities like a live set from the Eagles, the Moody Blues “christening a ride set to the band’s hit song ‘Nights in White Satin,’” a ride on the Bryan Ferry-is Wheel, and plenty of alcohol-related blackouts. [Myrtle Beach Online via Rolling Stone]

Hey, did you know that the Eagles won a Grammy last night? Yes, their wooing of the Grand Ol’ Opry crowd led to them taking home the Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals award for their song “How Long.” And the win made Don Henley get a little misty-eyed: “This Grammy win is particularly sweet because of the length of time that has passed since we (the Eagles) won our first Grammy in early 1976. I was 28 years old then. I’m 60 now.” And he’s ready to make 61 an even more awards-laden year!

“I always secretly hoped that we could pull off something like this, but I had almost given up. This win feels really good — and it’s in a whole different field than we were in before. Now I’m thinking that we might have a good chance to win again next year because Long Road Out of Eden will be eligible then. This year, only the single, “How Long,” came out in time to make the nomination process. We’re all very grateful to the Academy members and to our loyal fans. It’s been quite a ride and it apparently isn’t over just yet.”

So should we just start steeling ourselves for the throwdown between the Eagles and Alicia Keys’ As I Am now? I’m thinking we should; despite Ms. Keys snagging two performance spots on last night’s show–thanks, Clive Davis!–her album actually won’t be eligible until next year. Which means that pretty much the whole show’s performance well will probably consist of Don & Co. handing off with Alicia for various duets with more dead people, and maybe a token appearance by Dave Grohl on drums as a nod to the “younger” demographic.

The 51st Grammys: Eagles Vs. Alicia Keys Vs. ? [The Set List]

Apparently, Don Henley & Co. did the nation’s Super Bowl halftime show watchers a big favor: Instead of being jilted by the game’s halftime-show planning committee in favor of the much more tolerable Tom Petty, it turns out that they were the ones who turned down the appearance. Guess selling 3 million non-returnable CDs to Wal-Mart does make you a bit cocky! [Canadian Press]

Apparently, Don Henley & Co. did the nation’s Super Bowl halftime show watchers a big favor: Instead of being jilted by the game’s halftime-show planning committee in favor of the much more tolerable Tom Petty, it turns out that they were the ones who turned down the appearance. Guess selling 3 million non-returnable CDs to Wal-Mart does make you a bit cocky! [Canadian Press]

So a few months ago it looked like Henley and Frey Ltd. were going to ruin the year’s most expensive TV time slot, with the Eagles rumored to be the entertainment for the 2008 Super Bowl halftime show. Well fear not, one-day-a-year football fans, because although the Eagles are still on track to outsell just about every other musician on the planet in 2007, the National Football League has wised up and instead chosen some weirdo with a fetish for cannibalizing Victorian schoolgirls.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will play the coveted halftime slot at the Super Bowl in Arizona on February 3, organizers of the year’s No. 1 television event said on Sunday…

Petty’s performance will mark a rare occasion where the veteran rocker is closely aligned with a corporate sponsor, in this case the North American arm of Japanese tire firm Bridgestone Corp, which has lent its name to the halftime event.

Now that he’s aged enough to play the old rock crank with a straight face, Petty is “an outspoken opponent of sponsorship of rock concerts,” but he must have overcome his aversion when he saw the checkthought about bringing the rock to all those hundreds of millions of American girls. So now we won’t accidentally nod off during the middle of “Hotel California,” and the NFL gets to placate the portion of its audience who loves those John Mellencamp Chevy commercials. Hey, maybe they should have gone with the Coug, since he doesn’t seem so bothered by auto-industry sponsorship.

Tom Petty To Play Super Bowl Halftime Show [Reuters]

In case you haven’t bought your copy of Long Road Out Of Eden yet, there’s good news: Only three weeks after its release, the album’s coming out in a deluxe two-disc version, complete with 40-page booklet and “red linen wrapping.” Hey, Don Henley, way to make the one and a half million people who already plunked down the cash for your album feel like complete chumps! [CNN]

Don Van Cleave, the head of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, on the Eagles’ so-called Wal-Mart exclusive and its performance on his sales chart of shops that are decidedly not the Bentonville big box: “”…many of our guys picked up the WALMART EAGLES new release at Walmart to resell back in their stores. We heard stories for the past few weeks about customers asking indie stores for the WALMART EAGLES. When informed that they would need to go to Walmart to pick up the title, the customers responded “Dude, we don’t go in that damn place” or something similar… (Soundscan) told me that they were obviously resales and they zeroed them out… They don’t want to count them twice…Streetpulse let me know…The WALMART EAGLES come in at #22 on our chart.” [hypebot]

Hoping to evade the possibility of an asterisk-tainted chart, the powers that be at Billboard and Nielsen SoundScan changed their rules for charting albums last night in such a way to ensure that the Eagles’ Long Road Out Of Eden–their Wal-Mart-only album that sold 711,000 copies last week–would top this week’s Billboard 200, pushing Britney Spears’ 290,000-copy-selling Blackout to the No. 2 slot.

In consultation with Nielsen SoundScan, Billboard will now allow exclusive album titles that are only available through one retailer to appear on The Billboard 200 and other charts, effective with this week’s charts. Prior to this, proprietary titles were not eligible to appear on most Billboard charts.

Early SoundScan numbers have the Eagles taking the top perch on The Billboard 200 with 711,000 copies sold, with most sales moved by Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores. For now, the only other U.S. outlets carrying “Eden” are walmart.com, where both physical copies and downloads are sold, and the Eagles’ own Web site. …

“We know that some retailers will be uncomfortable with this policy, but it was inevitable that Billboard’s charts would ultimately widen the parameters to reflect changes that are unfolding in music distribution,” says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard’s director of charts. “We would have preferred to make this decision earlier, but only became aware within the last 24 hours that Wal-Mart would be willing to share the data for this title with Nielsen SoundScan.”

Ah, the power of being able to ensure you’ve won before the results of your battle are announced! Although it’s funny (in a “wow, the business is circling the drain even faster now!” way) that the likelihood of this new rule influencing Wal-Mart’s decision to slash shelf space for music in the new year is probably nil.

Revised Chart Policy Lands Eagles At No. 1 [Billboard]

Those of us who regard following the Billboard charts as our version of sports fandom have a problem, of the Roger Maris-in-1961 variety, to contend with on this week’s album charts: two different, legitimate No. 1 albums.

On the official SoundScan tally, to be released at end-of-day today and published in Billboard later this week, the victor will be Britney Spears’s Blackout, with about 300,000 albums sold.

But in terms of actual, nationwide sales, the winner–announced this afternoon in a press release–is the Eagles’ Long Road Out of Eden, with a staggering 700,000 sold.

That’s the second-largest first-week total of the year, and it was achieved through just one chain: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (including Sam’s Club and the Wal-Mart/Sam’s websites). And therein lies the confusion, and the problem for us score-keepers.

Yes, sports fans: for those of you who have been rooting for the reunion of the Frey-Henley axis to thwart poor little Brit girl’s comeback, your lesser-of-two-evils pick has indeed emerged victorious. (We here at Idolator would’ve preferred Britney to the Eagles, for all sorts of reasons, but we can debate that another time.) What sucks about the Eagles’ win is what this does to chart history–arguably a far worse blow than anything Radiohead did this year.

The Billboard 200 is the main, industry-approved album chart, heir apparent to the former “Top Pop Albums,” which before that was “Top Stereo Albums,” and so on–it’s got decades of history. What you might not know about the album chart is that Billboard, at the behest of the industry folk who rely on its data, scrubs from the chart literally dozens of albums that don’t meet its criteria for either currency or general availability.

The rules were set in place in the early ’90s, when SoundScan made it painfully clear that Led Zeppelin IV and Dark Side of the Moon would keep selling well enough to chart in the top 200 week after week, crowding out decent-selling new albums by fledgling acts. So, for the last decade and a half, albums that fall below the top half of the chart and are more than two years old are permanently removed. This even includes Christmas albums that return to the charts year after year.

More recently, around the turn of the millennium, a second rule was added–largely at the behest of the record-retailing community–removing from the chart any new album that is not generally available for sale to all stores. Call it “the Big Box rule”: as more superstar acts decided to sell exclusive product through Wal-Mart, Target and CIrcuit City (and, more recently, Starbucks), Billboard declared that such albums would not be eligible for the big chart. (The rule was also practical, since some of these retailers wouldn’t report sales of their exclusive albums to SoundScan, anyway.)

As a compromise, Billboard introduced a chart a few years ago, Top Comprehensive Albums, that would include literally everything: Starbucks and Wal-Mart exclusives, Mannheim Steamroller, the umpteenth sale of Bat Out of Hell, you name it. It could be argued that this is a more “real” chart than the “official” chart trumpeted by SoundScan every week. (Wouldn’t you love to know that the Beatles’ 1 outsold Buckcherry last week?) But Billboard treats Top Comprehensive Albums as an industry exclusive: it’s unpublished in the magazine and on the public Web site and only available to online subscribers.

None of this has been a problem, historically–most weeks, even perennials like Bob Marley’s Legend don’t sell well enough to place in the upper ranks of the Comprehensive chart, and the exclusive CDs that have been reported to Billboard generally fall short of the Top 10, much less threaten that week’s chart-topper.

Which brings us to the Eagles, and their Wal-Mart-exclusive smash: it will be No. 1 this week, by a two-to-one margin, over Britney’s new CD. And 98% of the known world won’t know that. Whether you get your chart data here, over at Billboard.com, or from the little “bumper” flashed at CNN before they go to commercial, you’ll be seeing Billboard 200 data. This even though the Eagles’ total gives them the second-best sales week of the year; back in September, they would’ve beaten 50 Cent and come within a quarter-million copes of Kanye West’s Graduation.

Eagles manager Irving Azoff may be one of the most historically detested figures in the music industry (if you’re wondering why Fast Times at Ridgemont High has so much incongruous Eagles-related music in it, he’s your fall guy); but you can hardly blame him for braying in HITS about his band’s stellar week. It wasn’t even a squeaker. The real loser isn’t Britney, who posts a perfectly respectable comeback; it’s rank-and-file CD retailers. And, to a far lesser extent, chart geeks like me.

Last week, people around the world had to make a difficult choice, a choice between drugged-out, leathery pop musicians of two very different generations. England chose Glenn Frey and Don Henley. Just something for Anglophiles to keep in mind in the future. [BBC]

Last week, people around the world had to make a difficult choice, a choice between drugged-out, leathery pop musicians of two very different generations. England chose Glenn Frey and Don Henley. Just something for Anglophiles to keep in mind in the future. [BBC]

Britney Spears’ Blackout is already being projected as the decisive winner on next week’s Billboard albums chart, but Eagles manager Irving Azoff tells Billboard that Britney fans shouldn’t be too sure–at least if Wal-Mart, the only place where people can buy the new Eagles album Long Road Out Of Eden, decides to throw its sales figures into the ring.

Spears’ “Blackout,” her first studio album since 2003, led Nielsen SoundScan’s Building Chart with 124,000 sold when the chart was released earlier today (Oct. 31). The Eagles’ “Long Road Out of Eden” was missing from that list, which suggests Wal-Mart will choose not to report sales from the title, as was the case with exclusive Garth Brooks albums it sold in prior years.

“If the Eagles were SoundScanning this week, even though it’s only available at one retailer, Britney wouldn’t be No. 1″ on the Building Chart, said Azoff, speaking by phone Wednesday from London, where the Eagles played a showcase for media and Universal Music Group honchos at Indigo2 Club.

Billboard notes that “Wal-Mart has until the end of the tracking week to decide whether it wishes to report sales of the Eagles album” and that the chain is reporting that the album’s sales “exceeded projections by 50%,” which means we could still be looking at a soft rock coup next week. But c’mon, even if Blackout was terrible, rather than the unexpectedly decent dance-pop album it turned out to be, only the most ardent Brit-hater could honestly be rooting for the friggin’ Eagles to trump her at the last minute.

Eagles May Have Week’s Best Seller [Billboard]

After Prince, it’s something of a…step down:

SPORTSbyBROOKS (“SbB”) has learned exclusively today that the National Football League is in final negotiations to sign the Eagles to perform at halftime of the 2008 Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona.

An announcment was not imminent, but a source said the likelihood of a deal being struck between the band and the league was “90%”.

The NFL’s initial choice as headline halftime performer was Garth Brooks, but negotiations with the country performer broke down.

Of course, this is an “exclusive” scoop which quotes itself as its primary source in its own headline, but it does go on to say that “SbB was also first to report that Prince would perform as the 2007 Super Bowl halftime performer.” So, yeah, we’ll probably have to suffer through (goddamn it) the Eagles or switch over to the (probable) Law and Order marathon. I’m not sure if there’s enough Bud or Bud Light in the world for this.

Eagles Halftime Show Likely According To Sports By Brooks [Sports By Brooks]