Sugar and spice and all things hyped ad nauseam

I have always had a special place in my heart for female vocalists, and love them all from Peggy Lee to Cass Elliot to Linda Ronstadt to Juice Newton to Jann Arden to Holly Cole to Kiri Te Kanawa to Jo Stafford to Lena Horne to Sarah Vaughan to Ella Fitzgerald to Cyndi Lauper to Dusty Springfield to Diana Krall to Madonna (at moments) to Deborah Harry to absolutely too many more to mention.

And girl groups; crazy about those from the golden era of The Shirelles, Crystals, Supremes, Vandellas, Shangri-Las, the Ronettes (Be My Baby; must agree with John Lennon that it is one of the sexiest songs every sung and yet it contains no smut) and hosts of others. I even like the later girl groups like the Go-Gos, Bananarama, and so forth.

And then there are the Spice Girls. I thought they’d died, but suddenly here they are again. This past weekend they kicked off their North American Tour in Vancouver, and to read of the joint orgasm all the music scribes in otherwise respectable newspapers were having, you’d think that Christ had dropped into town again. Vancouver likes to think that it isn’t still a small town, and then something like this happens and you know it is.

Anyway, I never did ‘get’ the Spice Girls. Never did the first time around about a decade ago and don’t know why there seemed to be some sort of need for a ‘second time around. It’s probably not for me to say, but I always regarded this quintette of moderately comely Brit girls as a victory for studio sounds and lots of hype – kind of like the Monkees at an earlier time, except that they turned out ultimately to be actually talented. Haven’t quite seen that with the SG yet, but I’m in really no position to judge.

For the uninitiated, I think the SG consist of people like that anorexic Beckham chick with the sour puss and silicone boobs out to here, and the one who had an ill-considered liaison with the formerly funny Eddie Murphy, and somebody named Posh and then I think Sneezy, Grumpy and Dopey, but I can’t be certain.

Anyway, I commend the SG for their promotion machine. I mean, we’ve just been inundated with them constantly and consistently for it seems like weeks.

I really am in no position to judge the SG, since I don’t think I’m in the demographic of their fan base, which I suspect consists of 11 to 15 year old females. Why girls of that age would be interested in singers that would be around the same age as their mothers is beyond me. I doubt that the SG have a big male following, or at least I’ve never read of such being the case. That doesn’t suggest that young males have better musical taste, but that their interests go in other directions.

Anyway, let everybody have their fun but just let me say that I am really, really tired of Spice Girl hype and hope that they don’t consider a third incarnation a decade from now.