I told you so

Not the Spice of 'Live' pop

	'Saturday Night' gig displays Girls' meager talent by Tom Maurstad

Spice Girls' performance on Saturday Night Live last weekend was billed in NBC press releases and newspaper previews as the group's "first live television appearance". The phrase has a Beatlemania echo, a typical gesture in the campaign of orchestrated frenzy used to introduce the British pop sensation to American audiences.
Many of the differences between last Saturday and that black-and-white night in 1964 were encapsulated in the fact that the Beatles were introduced by a stern-faced Ed Sullivan, the elder statesman of entertainment, while Spice Girls were introduced by a smirking Rob Lowe, the sex-scandal celebrity.
The rest of the differences were unleashed the moment the girls started to sing.
If you didn't know better, you would have thought Spice Girls were five women who had won some sort of contest with a first prize of performing on Saturday Night Live. Not surprisingly, in recent months, there have been reports on the "persistent rumours" of Spice Girls' inability to perform live -- Milli Vanilli Syndrome.
So Spice Girls had something to prove. And they proved something all right, just not what they intended to prove. As it turns out, questioning whether Spice Girls can actually perform their songs live is like wondering whether Cheez-Whiz actually has any cheese in it.
The quintet of singers, whose debut single, "Wannabe", has become a fixture on radio and MTV, are the latest marketing assault on reality -- a real-life cartoon, Josie and the Pussycats come to life. Working out of a tradition owing more to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers than the Beatles, Spice Girls are five singing/dancing characters with distinctive looks and personalities, so fans can have fun choosing and arguing over favourites.
The Girls' "Wannabe" video is slickness itself, a swirling, candy-colored, three-minute rush of smooth singing and high-energy dancing. The Girls' live performance of "Wannabe", in jarring contrast, was amateurism itself, a stiff, off-key shamble of bad singing and shameless mugging. When the package becomes the product, the real thing is never as good as the simulation of the real thing.
The old-fashioned response while watching Spice Girls is dumbstruck amazement that such extraordinarily untalented individuals could be pop music's latest sensation. Simply put, Spice Girls can neither sing nor dance. With their off-key wailings as they swapped verses, it seemed likely that the Girls were lip-syncing their way through the perfectly crooned choruses.
And then there was the, um, dancing. You could almost see the Girls' lips moving as they tried to remember and work through the rudimentary dance steps pounded into their heads in a blitzkrieg of down-to-the-wire rehearsals.
What was most impressive about their first live television appearance was Spice Girls' inability to look into a camera without making some sort of funny face -- Jenny McCarthy Syndrome.
Though Emma (she's the cute and blond one) was a close second, Geri (she's the sexy and sophisticated one) won the contest to see which Spice Girl could wink at the camera most often -- to seal her victory, Geri jumped off the stage during the show's farewell to run up to the camera and kiss it. As the group worked its repertoire of winks, blown kisses, finger pointing and peace signs, the camera became a one-way mirror through which viewers could watch the five girls act out their pop-star fantasies.
For the young-girl audience that has adopted Spice Girls, maybe that is the real appeal behind all the hype confections. The advantage of wishing you could grow up and be a Spice Girl is that they have no superpowers or special talents whatsoever.
Little boys who dream of becoming a Ninja Turtle are bound to be disappointed. But judging from Saturday night, anybody could be a Spice Girl.

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