Tuesday, 1 September, 1998

Vancouver Spice show suited winner

In July, Jam! ran a Spice Girls trivia contest with a trip to see the girls in Vancouver up for grabs. The grand prize winner was Deb Philippon. Here, we feature a review of the August 15th show by her 16 year old son Ryan.

First of all, I'd like to thank the people at CANOE for giving me the opportunity to see the Spice Girls live in Vancouver.
 
We ended up having about two days to see British Columbia. On the first day we took a tour of the harbour. The view of the city from the water was amazing.
 
The second day gave us the opportunity to take a bus up to the top of Grouse Mountain where I had a very good chicken sandwich. That afternoon we walked down the mountain to the 230 foot high Capilano suspension bridge. Walking down the trails by the river was an experience in itself.
 
That evening we got to the real reason we were in Vancouver. The Spice Girls arrived at GM Place at 7:00 and began with their normal opening of "If You Can't Dance". The rest of the first half passed quickly, skipping from one song to the next without many pauses or audience participation.
 
After a thirty minute intermission, the second half of the show involved much more speaking to the audience and songs not on their previous recordings. Mel B and Mel C sang a duet and Emma sang a really good solo as she brought a young girl from the audience on stage.
 
The girls ended the concert singing the song "We Are Family" with the nicely added touch of British and American flags flashing on the giant monitors above (although it probably would have been a good idea to switch the American flag to a Canadian flag for the Canadian locations).
 
In all I thought the concert was really well done and the stage looked very impressive with the big lit up star scape behind it. And being able to spend time in Vancouver really topped off a very enjoyable vacation.

Set List