The Spice Girls: One concert, 85 minutes of joy

Within minutes of my arrival at The Spice Girls concert at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles last Friday night, I had already stopped counting the number of women dressed as Ginger (skin-tight Union Jack dresses, boobs for days) versus the number of women dressed as Baby (pink baby-doll dress, giant white platform boots).

There were too many flying past for me to take an accurate census. And those Spice-impersonators traveled in packs of other young women. And those packs (many of them in mid-sing-along to “Wannabe”) merged with other packs, forming bigger, screamier mobs until finally, inside, they were one monster mass of overpowering female energy that engulfed and deafened me and my small band of gay male friends.

I tend to avoid acts in big arenas. And I tend to avoid pop shows. The last band I saw perform live was doom-metal band Sunn 0))). That show took place in a club and every person there looked like me: boots, jeans, black T-shirt with the name of a contrasting but complementary band on it. And paying $140 for a ticket to anything is on top of my list of Ways I Don’t Waste Cash. But my partner begged for the budget-denting evening out. And he doesn’t beg for that sort of thing very often. And he’s pretty adorable when he does. So off we went.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I wasn’t into seeing The Spice Girls on this reunion tour, or that it was some gross hipster ironic gesture. Like every other reasonable, fun-loving person on Earth, I love them. It’s like loving chocolate cake or baskets of puppies under a Christmas tree. I like everything about them: their look, their music, their Riot Grrl-inspired cartoon feminism, their cheekiness and the movie “Spice World.”

I have suspicious thoughts about people who actively anti-Spice. I was ready to dance, to sing along, to bellow my loud support for recent immigrant Posh. I was even ready to buy a T-shirt, but the best one — featuring a sort of shopping list that read: BABY, GINGER, POSH, SCARY, SPORTY — was only available in women’s sizes. That bummed me.

Girls night out

Jonathan Hayward / AP Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice) proves she's the Spice with the pipes, and the guns.

That T-shirt problem was emblematic of the evening. My male friends and I were more-than-welcome visitors to the party, but the party wasn’t for us. I’d wrongly assumed that the night would be an event on par with a Madonna or Cher show, one that would rally equal numbers of women and gay men in support of the cause. But it didn’t. And it didn’t in a big big way. My gays and I were little specks of male flotsam on a giant lady-ocean.

The primary demographic looked to be 15 to 25, but that was by no means the only represented group. They were young, they were old, they were all types of woman. I swear that the three bust-augmented, meticulously made-up, obviously extension-wearing fans in front of us were strippers out for a night off from the pole. I knew it even more surely when one of them turned around and began actively flirting with us, ignoring what I always assume is our obvious homosexuality. “What Spice are you?” she purred to my partner, in a way that made me question our obviousness.

“Tubby Spice,” he shot back. “And this is Baldy Spice,” he continued, pointing at me. Then she turned around and continued sipping her margarita.

On with the show
Finally, at 8:44 p.m. (show time on ticket: 8 p.m.), after a short video of five elementary-school-aged Spices unleashing butterflies into outer space played out on the giant arena screen, five women in glittery gold Roberto Cavalli outfits rose out of the stage and launched into the Carnaval-like stomp of “Spice Up Your Life.”

The high-pitched combination squeal-roar shot to an ear-piercing decibel and didn’t let up for the next 90 minutes. Racing through their post-“Wannabe” hits, “Say You’ll Be There,” “Stop” and “2 Become 1,” the five shiny members of the group (Posh, in metallic gold leggings, resembled the robot from the film “Metropolis,” and I hope that was intentional) took turns at solo material.

Richard Lam / AP No that's not a robot. That's Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) decked out in metallic gold.

Eddie Murphy’s babymama Scary dragged an unsuspecting man from the audience, locked him in a stockade and covered Lenny Kravtiz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way.”  Baby and Sporty, the two with the best voices and the most successful post-Spice solo careers, took their turns. Ginger led a thunder, lightning and bare-chested-male-dancer sing-along of “It’s Raining Men.”

And Posh? She put on a dress and walked down the runway stage to RuPaul’s “Supermodel.” Maybe because of civic pride, a welcome-to-our-city gesture, she got the most applause. She is sort of built for Los Angeles, after all: she’s the joke who’s game to laugh at herself first, the one who’s smarter than the joke. (My partner to me, as a visibly perspiring Posh, in close-up, flashed onto the giant screen: “Look, she sweats!” to which I responded, “That’s what artists do.”) Anyway, she definitely chose the right city. Angelenos will help nurture her and Mr. Posh and whatever plastic surgery adventures they choose to have while blessing us with their presence.

85 minutes of Spicy joy
But back to the show. They all took turns wearing their iconic outfits; a disco medley of songs not originally performed by Spice Girls took place and it threatened to Village People-ize them for a moment; some goofy, mostly inaudible-due-to-screaming stage banter about nothing happened; this one really wasted woman behind our row had to be repeatedly escorted back to her seat by security because she was flailing around in the aisles, hollering lyrics to every single song with all the drunken lung power she possessed; the male dancers cluttered the stage for a bit; and then the group’s last single, “Goodbye,” closed the show.

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But we all knew that the encore was coming. And we were ready to sing even more loudly than we had in the previous 85 minutes. Scary introduced it coyly: “It’s the one with the zig-a-zig-ahh, I think.” And really, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard thousands and thousands of women, shouting, “ I WANNA HUH! I WANNA HUH! I WANNA HUH! I WANNA HUH!”

If you’re a guy, you’ve definitely not gotten any closer to what it must be like to attend a middle-school slumber party. And if you’re a non-fan, you’ll probably never get why jumping up and down to that “zig-a-zig-ahh” song, while the five cool Britons do the same, can fill you with so much joy. I don’t get you non-fans. We’ll never be close, you and me. Because if you wannabe in my life, you gotta get with my friends. And my friends’ names are Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty.

Dave White is the author of “Exile In Guyville.” Tell him what you really really want at www.imdavewhite.com.

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