> join.  Similar commercial motivations underlie other fan activities,
> including paying "fans" to dance in the aisle of the Paramount Theater
> in New York during Frank Sinatra's early (first?) appearance there in
> ca. 1940.
>
When the Kinks were playing America for the first time, their manager would
arrive at the airport ahead of time and round up 50 or so teenage girls to
scream at the band when they arrived.
 
 
> Part of my sense of contemporary fandom comes from discussions with my
> nephew, a respectable operating systems programmer for the United States
> Army, and his wife, an equally respectable hospital administrator --
> both thirty-something -- who use vaction time to follow Grateful Dead
> tours.  They said that there was a hotline out there somewhere which can
> be called for the latest on the Dead, including an itinerary when they
> are on tour.  Who supports this hotline?  Again, who profits?
>
Whatever else I may think of the Dead, they're pretty respectable about
profiting from their fans. Most of the promotion and information updating is
done for little or no profit, whether it's done by the band corporation or
semi-affiliated people helping out.
 
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