Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want

Above: heading across a frozen lake to the cottage this past weekend.

Last night, I went to the Spice Girls concert in Toronto.

I blame my friend Craig. He, Jeff and I were trying out the Winterlicious menu at the Autogrill when he jokingly suggested we check out the Spice Girls concert. I took him up on it.

My main reasons for doing so:

- Because I've never been in the Air Canada Centre before.

- Because it's been a long time since I've been to a pop rock concert.

- Because Craig asked.

- Because I was curious. They were the first major British pop music phenomenon of the mid-90s and no matter what you think of their music, you can't deny their influence on pop music culture and marketing.

Jeff (not surprisingly) opted out of our Spice Girl adventure, so Craig and I went without him. We got our tickets at a drastically reduced price, probably because the show had already started (we missed about 10 minutes).

BlogTO has a great post about the concert as well as photos, but I had a somewhat different perspective. I was unfamiliar with most of the songs (except for their cover set), don't own any Spice Girl albums, and the bulk of my Spice Girl knowledge comes from conversations with my friend Allison, who teaches grade school so was witness to the Spice Girl craze at its height.



Despite my Spice ignorance, however, I had a ton of fun. The Spice Girls had quite a few male backup dancers, an impressive light show, parts of the stage that went up and down for interesting entrances and exits, rhythm steam effects, exploding glitter confetti, and made creative use of the various media screens. Plus I'm a sucker for girl groups. :-)

But I got the biggest kick out of the energy in that place. It seemed like everyone around us was deliriously happy, dancing and waving and singing along on the lyrics. The Spice Girls themselves exuded confidence, benevolence and seemed to be having fun on the stage. I realize that things may be very different once they're off-stage and our seats were too far away for us to see the expressions on their faces, but their energy was contagious.

So Craig and I had fun dancing and yelling along with the rest of them, though I admit to plugging my ears when the screaming escalated beyond a certain decibel level, usually when Posh Spice had a close-up on the tv screens. Is this extra popularity just because she's married to David Beckham?

And wow, were there a LOT of cameras and camera phones in that place; I could see a zillion glowing screens wherever I looked. I had asked Jeff to take my camera home because I figured photography wasn't allowed, but I was WAY wrong.

I'm not about to go rushing out to buy any Spice Girls albums but I have to say, they put on a good show.



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