They were quick to respond to their falling share of the youth market as clubbers decided they had a different drug in mind for their night's entertainment. Realising that a frothy pint of 'Arkensall's Best' was not the thing to be seen with at a rave, they hurriedly brought out a new range of alcoholic fizzy drinks and 'designer' bottled lager covered in rave style graphics - and the clubbers swallowed the scam whole. And of course, it's not just the alcohol industry that has found itself dancing gleefully to the sound of the techno cash tills ringing. Throughout the land, entrepreneurs have sprung up ready to give the kids what they want - for a price and at a nice profit to themselves of course. Bearing precious little regard or passion for the scene, these new club moguls will say and do anything to get a piece of that lucrative clubland action.
Rave is big business.
And some . Unconfirmed rumours abounded that Palumbo had also sent out 'spies' to rival clubs with instructions to phone the police if they witnessed any drug dealing going on. In 1998, Palumbo launched a new dance magazine, Ministry , predictably rammed full of the usual photos of saucy ladies flashing their tits and the usual feeble attempts to sound convincingly 'underground'. For all his puritanical talk of the evils of drugs and the 'weakness' of smokers, Palumbo apparently seems to suffer no moral dilemmas from owning a business that effectively thrives on a drug influenced music scene and accepting money from the tobacco industry he supposedly loathes. Mean Fiddler were one of the first organisations to start charging support bands to play in London.