Left: A reformed Spice Girls featuring plastic-fantastic Posh Spice. Right: Radiohead; which is to say Thom Yorke and everyone else… several have the surname Greenwood.
Time has a funny way of changing things while a static image of a group at their apex stays fixed in the general public’s mind. Take the Spice Girls, who rode a wave of astronomical popularity on co-opted girl power and tight sequined dresses in the mid-1990s. Since going defunct, Ginger went hippie-dippy, Scary bore a post-Norbit Eddie Murphy lovechild, Baby and Sporty decided black was a good slimming color, and Posh married Soccer Star David Beckham and modeled the latest line of Bratz dolls, in that order.
But neither time nor change nor Mrs. Beckham’s grotesque metamorphosis have eroded the love millions of fans have for the group, if Ticketmaster’s facts are accurate. According to the aforementioned monopoly, tickets for the Spice Girls London show sold out in 38 seconds. In less than the time it takes to brush your teeth, a million people reserved their seats. It’s less surprising when you consider what how global their fanbase was back in the day, as evidenced by their lyrics for “Spice Up Your Life”: “Yellow Man In Timbucktoo/ Color For Both Me And You/ Kung Fu Fighting Dancing Queen/ Tribal Spaceman And All That’s Inbetween.” Ticketmaster reports Tribal Spacemen made up a third of the London sales.
Meanwhile… meanwhilst? Is it meanwhilst? Meanwhilst, “Indie” demigods Radiohead are bravely forging ahead without a record label, releasing their new album “In Rainbows” on October 10. “In Rainbows” will be available for download through their website, at the cost of whatever you want it to be. It can also be bought in the form of a discbox…
What’s a discbox? Why, it’s pretty sweet:“THIS CONSISTS OF THE NEW ALBUM, IN RAINBOWS, ON CD AND ON 2 X 12 INCH HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL RECORDS.
A SECOND, ENHANCED CD CONTAINS MORE NEW SONGS, ALONG WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARTWORK.
THE DISCBOX ALSO INCLUDES ARTWORK AND LYRIC BOOKLETS.
ALL ARE ENCASED IN A HARDBACK BOOK AND SLIPCASE.
THE ALBUM DOWNLOAD AUTOMATICALLY COMES WITH THIS PACK.”
That sounds almost too good to be tru… damnit. It won’t be available until early December, and will cost a staggering $80 dollars. It’s a good thing for Radiohead that most hipsters have affluent parents.
