Cherisse Moe

The count­down to Car­ni­val 2K11 is on and mas bands are busy prepar­ing for what many con­sid­er to be The great­est show on earth. Spice Car­ni­val band is no ex­cep­tion. Known on the street as the band with the at­trac­tive women, Spice made its Car­ni­val de­but in 2009 and al­ready has quite a num­ber of suc­cess­es un­der its belt. Last year the large band scored big, cap­tur­ing the King of Car­ni­val crown, por­trayed by sea­soned mas­quer­ad­er Cur­tis Eu­stace, third place in Down­town Car­ni­val and the ti­tle for the Most Colour­ful Band, and fifth place in the Pa­rade of The Bands and the ti­tle for Most Cre­ative Band. In its sec­ond year, Spice al­so man­aged to triple its num­ber of mas­quer­aders from 800 to 2,500, and ac­cord­ing to band of­fi­cials, that num­ber is ex­pect­ed to in­crease by an­oth­er 500 when Car­ni­val rolls around again in March. What's the se­cret? Spice ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Jean-Paul Pouchet says it's all about giv­ing mas­quer­aders "the great­est ex­pe­ri­ence on the road."

Out­side the box

Pouchet says band mem­bers are al­ways think­ing out­side the box and will, for the first time, of­fer mas­quer­aders clus­ters of sec­tions, in­stead of in­di­vid­ual sec­tions. Each clus­ter, he says, will be un­der four themes–Di­a­monds Are For­ev­er, Rib­bons Of Loy­al­ty, Out of the Vine­yards and From Paris With Love. The band's pre­sen­ta­tion is ti­tled The Sig­na­ture Col­lec­tion. He ex­plains that in­tro­duc­ing the clus­ters give mas­quer­aders the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be close to friends who may pre­fer a dif­fer­ent cos­tume. "The sec­tion line up every year is al­ways a very big point for the mas­quer­aders, as they want to know where their sec­tion is from their friends. If you are in the same clus­ter, you won't be that far away from each oth­er," he says. He says Spice will al­so launch its Sig­na­ture Line, which will fea­ture five more elab­o­rate cos­tumes from se­lect­ed sec­tions.

Qual­i­ty prod­uct

Prid­ing it­self on of­fer­ing a qual­i­ty prod­uct for cus­tomers, Pouchet says val­ue for mon­ey is al­ways on the band's front burn­er. De­scrib­ing Spice as a "fam­i­ly ori­ent­ed band" The Pe­tit Val­ley res­i­dent says, "We spare no ex­pense in the pro­duc­tion of our cos­tumes. We treat our mas­quer­aders like fam­i­ly. When you be­come a "spice­quer­ad­er" you be­come part of the Spice fam­i­ly." Al­so new is the band's cat­a­logue, which Pouchet says is akin to a mag­a­zine and seeks to ed­u­cate mas­quer­aders in gen­er­al and vis­i­tors in par­tic­u­lar about Trinidad's Car­ni­val. "We are the first band to do a 360 tour of our show room. Peo­ple can fo­cus on what they want and even for­eign­ers can get that feel of com­ing to the show room with­out be­ing there phys­i­cal­ly." Mean­while band leader Anya Elias ar­tic­u­lates that Spice of­fers "a to­tal­ly all-in­clu­sive ex­pe­ri­ence." Elias says the mas­quer­ad­er play­ing with Spice need not wor­ry about any­thing else but hav­ing a good time. Food, an open pre­mi­um bar and se­cu­ri­ty will be tak­en care of.

Spice 2011 pre­sen­ta­tion

Di­a­monds Are For­ev­er:

�2 Ju­bilee

�2 Sha Ja­haan

�2 Ca­nary Frost

Rib­bons of Roy­al­ty:

�2 Car­ni­val Vi­cu­na

�2 Du­pi­oni

�2 Pe­ru­vian Splen­dor

Out of the Vine­yard:

�2 Bor­deaux Beau­ty

�2 Vines of Syrah

�2 Tus­cany Sun­set

From Paris With Love:

�2 Haute Cou­ture

�2 Vogue

�2 Tres Chic

Walk of Fame

(An in­di­vid­ual sec­tion)