Here is what Mostly Thru's publicist promised us about Tuesday's announcement, "all four ORIGINAL band members of America's [self proclaimed] most notorious rock band will make a colossal announcement in Los Angeles on April 15. This will by far be one of the biggest music announcements of the year!!". Now here is what they actually announced, "Motley Crue, the [self proclaimed] world's most notorious rock band, has revealed that this summer they, along with Buckcherry, Papa Roach, SIXX:AM and Trapt, will head out on the road for what will undoubtedly be the hottest ticket of the year for rock fans - 'Crue Fest '08'. The tour, produced by Live Nation, kicks off on July 1st and will hit over 40 major North American and Canadian cities by the end of August.... Mötley Crüe also announced the upcoming release of Saints of Los Angeles, their first new studio album recorded with all of the original band members in over a decade, hitting stores on June 17th "

Exciting huh? More important than a cure for cancer! Almost as thrilling as learning that the New Kids were back on the block. But colossal? In a molehill--we haven't had a gold record in a decade and had to get people to pay attention somehow--kind of way. On the brighter side, Buckcherry has a recent platinum album. Why they aren't headlining is a head scratcher, but Nikki is in charge of the label now after all.

We interviewed Satan shortly after the announcement to get more of his reaction and he told us, "This is just another in a long line of disappointments from these guys. I had high hopes for them. But then they went from shouting at me to wearing their mother's underwear. This is why they are only half as popular as Kenny G."

To which we had to ask, "Kenny G?"

"Yes," Satan responded. "Kenny G, Celine Dion, Neil Diamond, and even Alabama have sold twice as many records. Even Michael Bolton, Enya, Barry Manilow, Creed and The Carpenters have them beat. At least they are a little More Popular Than REO Speedwagon and Lionel Richie. They still have that... for now but I hear Lionel might be making a comeback."

God didn't return our call, but to offer some balance we tried really hard to track down Motley's fan to get a reaction, but the local comic book store was closed and we didn't know where else to look. We're sure we'll hear from cruekid to bitch that we promised not to post any more stories about the band. All we can say to that is they promised a colossal announcement, so we're even.

Now putting aside all kidding about the overblown hype surrounding this "biggest announcement of the year," let's take a closer look at what makes this lineup "colossal" and the bands involved recent popularity. Papa Roach and Trapt both enjoyed platinum success at the height of nu-metal craze. In fact, Papa Roach reached triple platinum status. But after the craze died, so did their mass appeal and the latest studio efforts from both bands failed to go even gold (according to the RIAA database as of 4/15/08).

Motley Crue's last studio effort, "New Tattoo," still hasn't sold the required 500K copies to earn them a gold record. It was actually far off the mark, only selling 203,000 in the U.S., a drop of 103K from their previous effort "Generation Swine," according to Billboard. That is interesting as the album must have "shipped" gold because Elektra had the RIAA give it a award. But we will grant that they still have nostalgia appeal as their repackagings of their past success in both CD and video form have both gone platinum. That being said, they can still sell concert tickets. In 2005, they had the 11th top grossing tour of the year, but one of the acts Satan mentioned earlier, Neil Diamond, outdid them by almost $8 million dollars. (He made his colossal tour announcement on Tuesday too.) Combine the numbers of Motley's 05 and 06 outing (including a run with Aerosmith) and they attracted 960,000 concert goers to over 125 concerts.

Then we have Sixx: A.M., Nikki's side project, which only had sales of 10,600 the first week the CD hit U.S. stores. This is after a major mainstream press hype effort.

Buckcherry is the only band on this bill with a recent hit. Their latest album did go platinum, fueled by the success of the double platinum single "Crazy Bitch".

Last year Buckcherry and Papa Roach teamed up with Hinder for the "Bad Boys of Rock tour," but even Buckcherry's platinum album and Hinder's triple platinum album didn't land this outing on the top grossing tours of 2007 list (to be fair, they did seem to play a lot of fairs). In fact, back in 2006 Buckcherry couldn't even sellout a 400 person capacity venue (Feb. 19, 2006 - Lee's Palace - Toronto, Ontario).

Will this HypeFest be successful? It should be. But will it be one of the "most important" tours of the year? Doubtful. Remember there is a lot of stiff competition from other tours with some real heavy hitting headliners. Linkin Park is just one and they had the 7th largest selling CD of last year. On the touring front, while we can't compare their concert draw to Motley's from 05/06, since they didn't tour then, in 2004 Linkin Park drew nearly 1 million fans to half as many shows (67).