Summer of Spice TWO GENERATIONS BECOME ONE ON THE GIRL POWER TOUR by Austin Graham Summer is the time when students from elite institutions of education all over the nation remember that they were raised on Taco Bell and Slurpees just like the rest of America's youth. So we trade in Henry James for People. Citizen Kane for Armageddon. Waiting tables or doing grunt internship work makes your mind think slower than the line for Ben and Jerry's in Newcomb last semester, and your taste for High Culture is fried. It's time to reach for some Pop. Usually we join America's mass culture in the movie theaters, but this year there wasn't any kind of universally successful blockbuster like Jurassic Park or Independence Day. My informal survey reveals that MTV won the Pop Culture first place trophy this time around: U.Va. folk everywhere watched our Real World representative and the premiere of Dave Matthews' "Stay" video. If you're going to experience mass entertainment in the raw, though, you have to do a little more than flip a switch and settle into the couch. Thus we finally get to my point: I saw the Spice Girls live in concert this summer, and man it was great. I think I learned more about the ultimate mass culture phenomenon that is the Spice Girls in the hour before the music started than in the rest of the evening. The crowd was the living personification of a generation gap, one side with childhood memories of Woodstock and the other not even able to comprehend such an orgy of political and cultural unity. Something miraculous happened at the Spice World Tour, though: an even more diverse audience than its '60s counterpart put aside all differences and had an outdoors communal experience. It was touching to see the meaningful bonds forming between parents and their daughters, breaking down the barriers and misunderstandings that result from age differences. The six-year-old (in shiny Adidas pants, an ill-fitting bikini top, and glitter) holding hands with her middle-aged mom (in go-go boots, halter top, and cut-offs that enhanced the cellulite view) were the best examples of how the Spice Girls can unite all of us in the common pleasures of dressing without taste. Consensus was everywhere that night as old and young fans alike booed the tacky Revlon commercials on the giant screen, not to mention agreeing that $27 was a great deal on the Spice Girl stringy tank tops. Yet the show wasn't exclusively about creating one big hand-holding Spice family, for the Girls were wise enough to address the unique needs of each audience demographic. There were glow sticks for the youngest girls to buy and wave for five dollars apiece(marked up from a twenty-five cent value, the vendor admitted to me). Harried fathers in need of a drink could get beer. And for me and the three other guys in the crowd who weren't escorting daughters, the Spice Girls got naked! They chatted between numbers about how hot they were (yes, yes, insinuations abounded all night), and Scary wondered if maybe they should take their clothes off. A distinct minority of us roared our support, and they disappeared behind some stage sets while the Spice Boys dancing troupe, the male sex objects the Girls ridicule and frustrate during breaks, provided an interlude. The scenery opened up again, and there they were, all nude. Of course they were mostly obscured, sitting backwards in chairs to keep everything tasteful, but to make up for that they sung a provocative song with "the girl wants to get naked" as the refrain. The young majority was not pleased. Talk about misunderstanding your fan base. Amidst the confusion, my traveling companion wryly wondered if the Girls would be singing and demonstrating "2 Become 1" afterwards, but alas, it was not to be. Still, that particular moment more than backed up a summer Time article I read arguing that the Spice Girls don't forget to bring the death of feminism as we know it everywhere they go. As a visual show, the Spice Girls are a confusing lot. Latecomers like us were at a major disadvantage, exiled to the very last row because of Virginia Beach tunnel traffic. From that distance it was impossible to tell Sporty from Posh, especially considering that they changed clothing 10 times (counting the nudity), usually immediately after I'd gotten each outfit matched with a girl. Watching the big overhead screens was distracting as well, because they played a pre-recorded version of the entire show that the Girls did their best to imitate live. Thus every "spontaneous" flip of the arm or sassy leap about the stage had been scripted, rehearsed, and body-synched beforehand, very much like an AVP performance. Watching for Spice errors and memory lapses became popular sport for the sharp-eyed. It's been widely speculated that the Spice Girls are nothing more than convincing lip-synchers, but it all sounded real enough to me. Posh, in fact, could have used a lot more studio enhancement than she got that night. The sound was unchanged after Ginger's absence, and the only evidence of her ever being in the group was a few clips from the old MTV videos from which they couldn't expunge her. The audience reacted favorably each time she appeared on the screens, and I sometimes found myself nostalgic for the pre-layoff days when these heroes of little girls everywhere were still above the pettiness of the corporate world around them. I suppose every Cinderella story has an ending, though, a point that the Girls hammered home in the obnoxiously titled "Viva Forever." It was their closing number, imploring their fans to carry on the Girl Power spirit after the rest of the band goes the way of Ginger. I was given the concert ticket for my birthday, back when I couldn't figure out whether I listened to the singles because I got a kick out of lame masses-targeting fluff or because I somehow found musical merit. These are issues we aren't meant to fully understand, I think. I'd have to say I came away from the show closer to the actual fan side, since the crowd enjoyed the whole spectacle so much that you'd have to be a real Grinch not to have had a good time. I shared the two-fingered "V" sign that the Girls have shamelessly ripped off as their official symbol with a few children once it was all over, and my college pal and I wrote "Girl Power" in the windshield dew before driving off to find some gorditas for our midnight dinner. The magic of June is over now as the leaves prepare to turn, I fall asleep over my Norton Anthology, and Posh tries to think of ways to disguise the onslaught of pregnancy. Reality has set in and the rosy old days fade, but I and a few million other Spice groupies will remember the Spice World concert tour the way most people remember one-week romances at the beach. Ahh, summer.

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