A step back into the 90's : The Spice Girls Exhibition @ Leeds Museum

Shang Ting and I decided to take a morning out to check out the very popular Spice Girls exhibition at Leeds Museum in all it’s glory. Although Hebe Media was at the press launch, the exhibition wasn’t fully set up so we decided to hit the Leeds Museum during the half term to see how much of a trip down memory lane it actually was.

Back in the 90’s, my friends and I would get up at the end of every English class and pump out the newest Spice Girls single instead of reciting a poem or reading a journal entry for example. I, due to a bad hair dye situation, always performed as Ginger Spice, while my other friends took the roles of Posh, Sporty, Baby and Scary. We loved the Spice Girls, especially with Mel B being from Leeds, they were such a unique idea (which doesn’t exist much in the pop music industry anymore) and they were all about GIRL POWER!

Yeah they weren’t the best singers, yeah they were a bit ‘too’ in your face at times but my friends and I bought every single, every poster and I ‘ehem’ loved Spice World: The Movie.

When we arrived at the exhibition, it was set up as if you were going on tour so there is a life size doorman(not real) and access passes waiting at the entrance then you chose to have an artist pass or a managers pass. Throughout the exhibition there are posters, costumes and an unbelievable amount of magazines including the actual 'Spice' magazine. You can also sit down and catch a bit of Oscar nominated, Spice World: The Movie, which we did... and got sucked in for about 15 minutes; you can't beat a bit of Richard E Grant and Hugh 'House' Laurie at their best! :S

Throughout the exhibition there were lots of things for the kids to do, such as dress up in outfits similar to those of the Spice Girls. There was a stage and a judging panel where kids (or big kids like us) could sing Spice Girls songs using the stage and the Singstar karaoke set up while their friends and family watched and rated the performance using numbered paddles. There were also opportunities to write notes for the Spice Girls and draw pictures of pop stars using templates

Some very good creative efforts on the picture wallLooking at the whole collection that Liz West has provided for the exhibition, I was thinking at one time or another I owned so much of the merchandise that was there: the magazines, the CD’s, the videos, the Easter eggs and yes, the chunky Buffalo trainers!

It was a nostalgic trip down memory lane. I found myself behaving like a child when I saw anything that made me feel 12 again. Gasping at the exact edition of TV Hits I remember having or spotting the 2 Become 1 special edition CD with poster which I still have somewhere at home now.

Liz West introducing the exhibition at the press launchI do think I will visit the exhibition again when the kids are back at school because I didn’t get a chance to sing on the Singstar machine!!! The kids hogged it the whole time. And yes I am an adult but c’mon, they are too young to even know who the Spice Girls are ;-) The exhibition was made for my generation!

Overall: Anything that makes me feel like a kid again is fine by me, so if you loved the Spice Girls at one time or another, go check it out. It was fun and the collection is great. I do think Mel B should have got herself over to open the exhibition though! Actually I would have much rather had Leigh Francis as Mel B! Crab Paste!

Favourite part: Although the draw-a-popstar part was nice, as I love seeing children being creative, I would have to say the Post-It note message wall was my favourite part. Here at the Hebe Office we are big fans of post-Its and we understand the power they hold.

Oki-Ni 2011 collections is announced in epic style

We love Oki-Ni. Indeed, hardly a week goes by where someone in the team isn't caught slacking in order to scan their online gallery / store in order to find an addition to the weekend's wardrobe.

Last week Oki-Ni released this video as a way of introducing the spring-summer 2011 collection. Stunning film work and a gorgeous slab of CFCF's new EP The River makes this, for my money, one of the best bits of video released online during 2010... not that I've seen it all!?

Oki-Ni, which Shang Ting informs me is Japanese for "with appreciation", made its name producing limited edition fashion items born from collaborations between established brands and up-and-coming designers. It all began in 2001, and since then the brand has stayed firm to a set of values that have seen it evolve into an online destination for connoisseurs of style.

This year Oki-Ni also launched the Mix Series, which has allowed the brand to collaborate with musicians and DJs, and to showcase the outcome via a free monthly podcast. They commission sleeve art for each edition, and the artwork is used for a limited edition run of t-shirts. 

The Music Scene in Madrid

Indras playing in the James Joyce pub near Plaza Cibeles, Madrid

I lived in Madrid for almost 3 years. I was an 18 year old girl in a new city. I quickly got into the music scene, which back in 2003 was awesome. Almost every bar and nightclub had live bands and so much fresh new talent. The bar I worked in, Oneills, played host to some of the best new bands from all over Europe.

I soon became a 'groupie', following loads of Spanish bands. Although it's hard to pick the best bands I followed around Madrid, my favourite bands were Sexy Sadie, a Spanish band who sing in English but who are no longer together, Indras, a great band who aim to have a similar musical style Beatles but Spanish and Los Reyes del KO, a soulful band with amazing rhythm.

The best music venues over in Madrid include Bourbon Café, a country music style saloon bar which is home to Jazz, country and reggae music and had live beats flowing along with the dance tunes late night, the then Chesterfield Café, which is named the Orange Café, which is home to a very popular Erasmus night and Honky Tonk another popular music venue used by semi famous bands who are popular on the Madrid music scene. There is also Moby Dick Club up near the Bernabeu Stadium, where I had the pleasure of discovering one of my favourite Spanish bands Sexy Sadie.

A lot of the venues I used to hang out at are still popular now in 2010. The Sala Arena club still holds top gigs and La Riviera, where I saw Travis woo the crowd and sing Flowers with just an acoustic guitar and nothing else, is an amazing venue where MGMT and Motorhead are both performing there this month.

Although there are so many areas in Madrid, the most popular include the Calle Huertas close to the centre of Madrid, which has some live music venues as well as open plazas, nightclubs and small disco bars.

I have to say though one of my favourite places to hang out was Malasaña, an area that was the centre of the cultural movement of reinvention and freedom of expression, La Movida. It's a place full of retro bars, gothic bars and plazas where you would stand out in high heels as everyone is just in converse, jeans and t-shirts. The range of music in this area is amazing, ranging from Punk Rock and heavy mental to Indie and the 80’s, the 80’s being my all time favourite musical era.

My music

One of the funniest experiences of my life was sitting in a bar in Madrid and hearing myself come on the radio! I featured on the track Bottle; from the album Forever Living Young, by Spanish band Blue Child recorded in Mallorca a couple of years earlier. I was a bit shocked to say the least when it came on the radio but it was fun. The band made a video too and apparently as I was 'absent' they replaced me with a mannequin… not sure if there is a hidden meaning there or not ;-)

The one thing I learned about the Spanish music scene while living in Madrid, Mallorca, Granada, Barcelona and Albacete (phew!) is that it is VERY hard for a Spanish band to made it big singing in English. Sexy Sadie are one of the very few Spanish groups who have made it singing in English. So I leave you with a video from them recorded at the Sala Arena, Madrid in 2004. I am pretty sure you can hearing me singing from the crowd. It was one of the best concerts ever. Enjoy!

Introducing: iCALLSHOTGUN

In October we blogged about an event called Fashion Vs Football where we discovered our 'new favourite band' iCALLSHOTGUN, a band from Leeds consisting of Iain Bolton, Giuseppe de Luca(Joe), Josh Weller and Graham Robson. I caught up with Iain for a coffee and a chat to find out all about iCALLSHOTGUN and what they are all about.

The story behind the band's early life is really interesting;

"It started when I was at uni, I knew Joe, our lead singer, from college… and then I wrote some music for uni and I just wanted to get a band together, just to play and be in a band again while I was at uni. Originally it was me, Joe, Josh and Sam who was the drummer"

‘Sam and I were at Bourbon (a popular music bar in Leeds) and they had a little ‘Does your band want  to play here’ thing and I just had a chat with the manager and I said ‘I’m in a band’ and I had all my stuff up on Myspace already even though I didn’t have a band so he gave us a gig and I had to get a band together. That’s how we originally started.

Just as the iCALLSHOTGUN story began to gather pace, there was an early, but completely amicable, change in line-up:

‘Sam and I set up a business and Sam wanted to concentrate on that so since the band was my baby I said I could carry it on. Joe worked with Graham so he learnt one of our tracks and came in and we played for the first time all the way through and he was bang on so we asked him to join.’

The speed of the band's rise was something quite remarkable. Very quickly they were winning competitions and playing big events, and being played on Radio 1, things that can take other bands years to achieve:

'We then all started writing together and we did quite a lot of stuff, like we were on Radio 1 and we went over to Austria and played at the Snow Bombing festival  in the King Of The Mountain Competition which was an internet voting thing. We put ourselves forward and we were chosen out of thousands of bands that entered. It was a public online vote that decided. 15 bands got through and then about 8 of those went to Austria for the competition and we won it! We have played a couple of showcases down in London and drummed up a lot of industry interest.We all write the songs now, we got a bit sick of the pop stuff so we wrote the song Evie and that got a lot of good feedback and we enjoyed playing it. It was just cooler. So we decided to keep writing together as a band.'

iCALLSHOTGUN, as Lee said in our previous blog, are ‘pushing musical boundaries’ so it is difficult to categorise the bands music style. We feel like it’s a mixture of sounds that makes them stand out from other bands. I asked Iain to have a go at describing their unique sound.

‘When we started out we were doing sort of power bubblegum electro pop but it was before all that electro pop stuff came out so it was a bit new but then all that electro stuff came out and we sounded really pop’

Now with their new style Iain describes their music;

‘It’s a bit of a cross, I would like to think we have our own style and I don’t think there are any bands out there doing what we are doing but all bands say that so it’s a bit of a cliché…. There’s a bit of dub step in there, a bit of indie-esq in there and a bit of electro in there. Its been described as dub-rock or dub-indie so anything with dub in the title’

Iain says the band think there are some good acts on the Leeds music scene but they wouldn’t class themselves as part of that scene as its more indie orientated and they are something different to that and he believes the UK has a good music scene but more record labels need to see the potential of fresh new acts and stop sticking to safe acts such as the X-factors acts and other manufactured music. I agree completely.

iCALLSHOTGUN have achieved some cool things so far and we predict there are many more good things to come. I asked Iain what he would say the bands greatest achievements are to date..

‘I think going out to Austria when we were just starting out and playing against some bands that had been going for a long time. We went out there not expecting to do anything, we just played and had fun, enjoyed the experience and ended up winning the King Of The Mountain Competition. More recently we got to play at Creamfields this Summer just passed. It was a half an hour set and on the main stage"

 I finished off by asking him about the small house party gigs they continue to put on and why they do it.

‘We play some wicked house parties which are really good fun. At one end of the scale you have Creamfields and Radio 1 but at the other end it’s always awesome to play little house parties where everyone is up for a good time… everyone is in it for the fun.’

I for one am looking forward to more gigs, more house parties and more tracks from this awesome band that stands apart from the rest. Although it’s hard to choose which iCALLSHOTGUN song I love best, I have decided to leave you with a live studio version of Evie, the song which I have been singing along to all day!

Leeds Lights 2010