The Oklahoma City Thunder Need HELP!

#13 The Beatles: HELP!

I don't watch the NBA.  I wouldn't say I hate it but I find it boring for many reasons. I don't care for the players, I don't care for the lack of effort, I don't care for...well you get the point. I don't care. Actually, I'll go ahead and say I hate it. However, tonight is the one night of the year I'm actually tuning in to the NBA. From what I can determine, based on my limited knowledge of NBA, Lebron and the Miami heat are villains. People don't want Lebron to get a championship, ever. Well the upside of the Heat winning is everyone can finally shut up about wanting Lebron to lose. If he never wins a championship all the world will get is years of anger aimed at someone who I really don't care about. So maybe, just maybe, the Heat winning would be good. But no, everyone wants them to lose.  For this to happen, Oklahoma City better get it together pretty quick. Its just after halftime and it is currently 59-52. OKC needs some 3 pointers, some defense, but mainly what they need is....

HELP!

The Beatles know a thing or two about that, and they do it far more interestingly than any NBA team ever could. In 1965 The Beatles starred in their second movie, HELP! The movie is rather entertaining, and is a great way to listen some classic songs. But this isn't a movie blog, so lets talk about the soundtrack of the album, strangely called: HELP! The copy I have in my collection is the American release, the British release is actually a double album which contains 14 tracks. The American release features only twelve tracks, five of which are instrumentals. The cover features the Fab Four spelling out, in semaphore, NVUJ. Wait..shouldn't that be HELP? Nope, the semaphore for HELP just wasn't interesting enough, so instead The Beatles just put their arms up in a more visually pleasing way and just happened to spell NVUJ instead. Now that we have that explained, lets get to the music.

Side one starts off with a little brief intro of spy like music, it feels very James Bond. It then launches right into the title track, "HELP!" Immediately in the song you will notice the harmony vocals which compliment very well throughout. The dueling lead vocals are both John Lennon, using the magic of dubbing, then finish off with Paul and George doing backing vocals. You also hear a great descending electric guitar riff that apparently was pretty tricky to get right. If you listen carefully you'll hear John Lennon thumping a beat on his acoustic to help his fellow guitarist nail the timing. The chorus features Ringo laying into the ride cymbal with a good hard crashing sound, this gives a great wall of sound for the whole chorus...or is it prechorus?  Whatever, either way its a great. Next up is "The Night Before," a song that uses the Call and Response vocals that we all learned about in the last entry on the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers. The Stones used this technique in the blues, where it is expected. The Beatles decided early on to use it in a pop song, a very interesting choice. Like a lot of Beatles songs, this one uses some perfectly timed minor chords to change the overall sound of the song. The songwriters handbook has a lot about minor 4th chords, and point to Paul McCartney as one of its biggest fans. Its hard to listen to this song without bopping your head. The rhythm really drives forward and even throws in a little Latin sounding drumbeat during the bridge. The solo for the song features an interesting sounding guitar, harmonized? doubled? Whatever it is, it stands out...that's a good thing in this case. Since this is a soundtrack album, a few instrumentals can be found. The first uses some sitar and provides a great mystery/suspense sounding mood. Back to regular Beatles tunes we get "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," arguably the best song on the album. This also ranks up as one of my favorite Beatles tunes, top 10 I would say. The constantly changing, constantly charging ahead chord changes are thanks to a 3/4 shuffle time signature. The descending chords leading into the chorus play just perfect in the waltz time before they go back up for the first chorus line.  The solo's in the song are played on a tenor flute, an instrument I have to admit, I've never heard of before. The song features a mistake in the lyrics by Lennon, singing "Two Foot Small" instead of "Two Foot Tall." He decided to leave it in the song because he was quite aware of the painstaking effort people were putting into analyzing everything in their lyrics (see I Am the Walrus). The George Harrison penned song, "I Need You" features some fairly simple, yet effective guitar technique; volume swells. Its pretty easy to accomplish, strum the chord, then turn up the volume. Harrison used a volume pedal to achieve this, while others will use the volume knob on the guitar. The song features an interesting sequencing of chords and gives a little preview of what was to come by George on Rubber Soul, in particular "If I Needed Someone." The side closes with another instrumental, this time using a very ceremonial/anthem like sound. It also features a break of very grand orchestral music that would feel right at home on the Fantasia soundtrack.

Side two begins with "Another Girl" primarily written by Paul and featuring a very strange slightly off tune, slightly bendy sounding guitar. The guitar work was done by Paul, when he had a clear idea of the guitar sound he wanted, he sometimes just did it himself. Next up is another instrumental, this time featuring "Hard Days Night" and "Can't Buy Me Love" on the sitar and some other unidentifiable (at least to me) instrument. Something kinda flute like..er...recorder...whatever. The next song gets us back to 12 string heaven, "Ticket to Ride." The 12 string Rickenbacker guitar and fantastic minimalist drum beat open the song and carry the verses really well. The choruses step it up a notch and give a double time feel that gets your foot tapping along. Interestingly enough, this is the first Beatles single and only track on the album to go over three minutes. Another instrumental comes in next, this one featuring some suspense!  It works in the movie, but on the album, its kinda boring. The last real song on the album is "You're Gonna Lose That Girl." This song has a doowop sound to it and once again uses Call and Response lyrics. The guitar solo, though brief and fairly simple is quite effective in the song. The album concludes with another instrumental, this one far more irritating than the others. It features the Eddie Van Halen of sitar solos and suffers from the unfortunate condition known as "too many notes."

While the album has its dead spots due to the soundtrack format, there are actually some fantastic songs on it. When its strictly the Beatles playing and not some orchestra, the results are quite satisfying.

As far as the Oklahoma City Thunder go, well, they didn't get the help they needed. With four minutes left things are looking pretty grim. That sounds to me like four minutes until I can go back to ignoring the NBA.

Strongest Song: You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
Weakest Song: the instrumentals.
Song You Know: HELP!, Ticket to Ride
Why You Might Hate It: well...it is a soundtrack album.
Buy It?  Get the MP3s of the essential tracks, anything not labeled "instrumental"