"I went through four years of my life thinking I was the only fan left," says Julianna. "It was really hard, because it made me [question] my faith in people. How could they love something so much for three years, and then all of a sudden hate it?"
But a funny thing happened on the way to the cutout bin: the Internet. After years of isolation, girls still clutching their Danny Wood dolls in Des Moines went online and realized they were not alone. To hear Amy Beth Lavelle describe it, she had pretty much put the New Kids in her rear-view mirror until she got a computer in 1997. "I went on a Yahoo search and found all these Web sites and kept up that way," says Amy Beth, who lives in Buffalo, New York. "It's kind of funny how it happened."
Today, there are more than 200 New Kids-related sites on the Internet, including the worshipful Day Dreaming of NKOTB (with Donnie Wahlberg wedding photos!), the cute Confessions of a Recovering New Kids Addict, and the official site, Keep Keepin' On, an exhaustive fan-operated site that the group adopted as its own. There are New Kid pages in French, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese, and each New Kid also has sites dedicated to his own exploits. Most of the sites feature photos, group members' personal histories, and trivia; some include chat rooms, memory pages, fan fiction, and even poetry (sample: "Jordan Knight, you're my one and only/Without you, I feel very lonely").
Laugh if you want, but the New Kids' passionate Web following directly contributed to at least one member's comeback. After struggling to get a recording deal, Joey McIntyre cut his solo album, Stay the Same, on his own, and then hawked it on his Web site. With minimal radio airplay, Stay the Same sold more than 2000 copies online, and record companies took notice. McIntyre signed with Columbia, the New Kids' old label, which then released the album under its own name, launching Joey Fever, Part II, in earnest.
"My roommate was in the shower listening to the radio, and she comes out saying, 'Omigod, Joey McIntyre is on the radio!' " Julianna Mardo recalls. "I ran into the room and turned on Kiss 108, and found out a day later that he was having a concert [in Boston]. I couldn't believe it. It all started again. It was dead for years."
The new New Kids shows are quite different from those heady Magic Summer days, fans report. For one thing, the venues are considerably more intimate. Joey and the gang once played Foxboro Stadium, but his solo comeback tour was launched with two club dates (both sellouts) at the Paradise. And the fans, of course, are older. "When Joey broke into 'The Right Stuff' [at the Paradise], I had a beer in my hand," says Julianna. "It was such a mind tease: I'm not 12, I'm drinking a beer, and Joey McIntyre is on stage."
Jordan, who made his eponymous solo record with help from megaproducers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, chose a more conventional touring route, opening for New Kids wanna-bes 'N Sync (a line-up that could be compared to Mick Jagger warming up for the Black Crowes). Julianna, who plunked down $100 for a ticket just to see her dream boy sing four songs at the FleetCenter, says she was one of the oldest fans in the arena.
