DAVE'S THE RAVE AT RETAIL

They follow him all over the country, gobbling up enough tickets to sell out stadiums from coast to coast. They trade mind-boggling numbers of homemade tapes, CDs and MP3 files, cruise the Internet in droves and buy massive amounts of merchandise. So would they flock to music stores to score his first new album in years?

Duh. What do you think?

This week, the new project from RCA's the Dave Matthews Band blew out of stores and blew up on the album chart, scoring a monumental #1 debut, with sales north of 750k. It was no contest.

"It may have surprised many people, but we knew it was going to be phenomenal," said Trans World's Jerry Kamiler just before breaking into actress Pamela Anderson's house. "We were right."

But Dave wasn't the only one taking a big bow this week. There were a coupla hip-hoppers who hopped to the top. Check out Roc-A-Fella/IDJ's DJ Clue, which debuted at #3, as well as Loud's Project Pat, coming in at #4. Needless to say, both projects were pleasant surprises for those wacky retail knuckleheads.

"DJ Clue performed a full 25% better than we had expected, and Project Pat easily beat our projections by 50%," said Kamiler, just before stalking a local Girl Scout troop. "Island Def Jam did a great job of setting up DJ Clue. It's not a typical rap record that falls off significantly after the first week."

Besides the aforementioned debuts, Top Five veterans Shaggy and Dido maintained their epic runs at #2 and 5, respectively. Other Top 20 debuts included No Limit/Priority's Silkk The Shocker at #15 and DreamWorks Nashville's Jessica Andrews at #17.

In a related story, despite a huge accumulation of snow in the Northeast that could impact overall numbers on next week's chart, Vice President Dick Cheney's doctors insisted there was no snowstorm, and that sales would not be impacted in the least. Hey, if something happens to the Veep, does that mean George Dubya will be our next President?