Spice Girls reunite in Vancouver

by Kaitlin | December 3, 2007 at 10:14 am

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Backlash, smacklash. At least, that's what Victoria "Posh" Beckham, Geri "Ginger" Halliwell, Melanie "Sporty" Chisholm, Melanie "Scary" Brown and Emma "Baby" Bunton are saying today as their private 747 (see below) leaves snowy Vancouver for warmer climes down south, namely San Jose, California. By most accounts their tour kick off show last night (previewed by NP's Rob Peters last week) in the rainy city was a success. Like them or not, there's no doubting that this cash cow has already blasted Britney's MTV Awards appearance out of the water. And hey, if they can do it--ten years and seven kids down the road--why not? And at a reported 10 million pounds a piece for the tour, why not do it well?

Two hours before show time, throngs of girls waiting in line sang Spice Girls’ songs at the top of their lungs. Once inside, excited girls — a lot of them in makeshift Union Jack dresses and sequins — rushed merchandise tables with such urgency that more than one seller had to yell at them to get back.

If you weren’t carrying a glow stick, you were probably someone’s mother.

Victoria did not sing any numbers from her solo career like her bandmates.

Instead, the mother-of-three posed for her male dancers who were pretending to be paparazzi.

She appeared nervous at times during the show, and that may have been because her footballer husband was in the audience.

The Spice Girls’ management, 19 Entertainment, are sparing no expense on the highly-anticipated tour. The agency, owned by American Idol creator Simon Fuller, has hired top stylists, choreographers and designers to prepare the girl group for their travels around the globe.

The leopard print leggings, union jack dresses and Adidas tracksuits of the 90s have been pushed aside for elegant, contemporary high fashion pieces designed by Roberto Cavalli. And the band are touring the world in a Virgin Atlantic 747 jet, and running an online competition for fans to choose the name of the plane.

There is a certain philosophy of thought that would argue that reviewing a Spice Girls concert is sort of like doing a foodie review of McDonald’s, that the product on display is so pre-packaged, manufactured and predictable that it would be a pointless exercise. Having gone to the girls’ tour kick off last night at GM Place I figured it was for the best that I did, and allowed the review to act either as an apocalyptic warning driving some away from future tour dates, or for some or a siren’s call for others enticing them towards the shallows to catch the last gasp of the 1990s’.

Think of the things we have now that did not exist at the height of the Spice Girls popularity, before their long breakup that their record label struggled against following the departure of Geri Halliwell. We have iPods, Wikipedia, The War In Iraq II, September 11th, lol cats, cellular telephones with tiny cameras in them, the word “blog” and Paris Hilton. The Spice Girls meanwhile have been frozen in carbonite, ready to be unleashed again when the moment is right.