ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the processes of ‘pleasure’ found in the Japanese rock fan context. Following on from Grossberg’s stipulation that fandom is defined as the consumption of the ‘cultural production of pleasure’, an analysis of these processes show how fans of a Japanese rock group, the Alfee, take pleasure from their activities and how fan identity affects their perception of their place in the world around them: in school, family and/or workplace relationships. Particularly noted are fans’ concert attendance and their interaction with one another in that context. There are obstacles which must be overcome when attending an Alfee concert (for example, school, work and family obligations). Part of the pleasure of attending a concert is overcoming these adversities, or ‘beating the odds’. However, once achieved, rock concert attendance has very strict rules, despite its ‘free-for-all’, festival atmosphere. Looking back on social interactions according to these rules, Alfee fandom provides a scale by which fans can view their own life course process in a pleasurable way as paced by the band’s twenty-year history.
