Word: spicing
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After the media saturation and slick marketing of the largely untalented Spice Girls, I was pleasantly surprised by your article on the touring female music festival Lilith Fair [MUSIC, July 21]. These performers previously went almost unnoticed because they chose to make music that meant something to them, rather than attempt to become the next Big Thing...
...nemesis in "Jerry Maguire," could have lent a little more comic verve to his appealing but bland Mr. Nice Guy. Bacon merely drifts in and out as the perverse Mr. Wrong in one of his most forgettable roles. If anything, the movie could have used more of the potential spice of the two supporting females: there isn't nearly enough of Illeana Douglas or Olympia Dukakis as Kate's anxious, marriage-obsessed mother (a figure right out of the comic-strip "Cathy," but Dukakis could have added some much-needed edge...
Still, Lilith is a welcome development. Right now, pop music is flaccid. The prefab hype of Spice Girls, the sugar-shock kiddie ditties of Hanson, the admirable wholesomeness but inexcusable tiresomeness of Bob Carlisle, the horrific power screeching of Celine Dion--turn it off. Turn it all off. It's meaningless olestra music, artificial and nutrient-free...
Inside stores, Coke and Pepsi slug it out as much as anywhere, and you can't buy a soft drink unaffiliated with one of the two. Kellogg's cereals vie for space with Dannon yogurt products. In drug stores, Old Spice, Gillette and Secret occupy the deodorant shelf. Wrangler and Lee jeans, meanwhile, hang in the windows of clothing sellers...
Others have tried and failed. The ambient electronic group the Orb's newest CD, Orblivion, has sold only 65,000 copies in the U.S.; recent releases by such vaunted acts as the Future Sound of London and Underworld have moved fewer than 60,000--the Spice Girls sold more than that last week. Even the Chemical Brothers, after a media push that would make Madonna blush, has failed to crack Billboard's Top 10. And what's worse, these CDs have been creatively wanting--the Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole (Astralwerks) features a few songs that energetically blend rock...