I’ve spent much of the past hour rifling through year-end revenue statistics for amphitheaters, festivals, concerts and tours, trying to come up with a joke smart enough to make fun of the 138,322 people in New Jersey that made Bon Jovi’s 10-night run with My Chemical Romance, Daughtry and others the fourth highest-selling concert in the world this year. But my brain’s slow today, and the best I can do is plagiarize this hilarious Triumph the Insult Comic Dog video.

Police

The craziest statistic from the industry this year, however, comes not from my sheets but from a note off the PR Newswire. You guys know The Police, right? They’re that trio from back in the day — one wears sleeveless tees and may or may not fuck for hours, one looks like a combo of Andy Dick and Ted Danson and the third guy, um, plays guitar (yeah, I got nuthin’ for Summers). These folks are already pretty rich, but now they’re swimming in raw sewage, and they love it.

The Police played 84 dates in 2007, certainly a hectic schedule for aging rockers. But the 84 dates on their global reunion tour translated into nearly 2.2 million tickets sold worldwide, and the band’s tour grossed nearly $243 million. And lord knows the trucks and planes and bank vaults are ready for another round of Cash Grab in 2008 as the band hits Japan, China, Australia and Europe. We can just read Sting’s mind now: Just a few more hundred million and I can go back to never speaking to these guys again. And pay me in Euros, yo!

But this begs the question: Can Zeppelin pull off the first $1 billion reunion?

Slade Sohmer

In 2006 Slade Sohmer founded Hidden Track along with current EiC Scott Bernstein. Slade ran the site until 2008, establishing a scope of coverage and level of professionalism that still exists today. In 2010 Sohmer founded HyperVocal with Lee Brenner and the "purveyors of the vital and viral" have gone on to create a network of highly acclaimed sites that includes Headlines That Suck, Weeping Elvis, Distriction and Spike The Water Cooler.

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