SOUNDTRACK: THE BEATLES-Help! (1965).
At last, a Beatles album that I knew from start to finish. And here it is, another soundtrack album. This disc is the first that starts to really embrace the diversity that The Beatles were capable of.
The title track starts out with the fairly shocking screams of “Help!” but it settles nicely into a poppy Beatles track. Of course, I’ve yet to see the film of Help, so I don’t know how these songs fit in the movie. But as with A Hard Day’s Night, the first half of the songs were in the movie and the second half were not. And somehow I’m surprised that “Act Naturally” (one of their funnier songs, even if they didn’t write it themselves) was not in the film.
Their other cover, “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” is probably my least favorite track (I just don’t like their cover choices). But by then, the disc has well proven itself to be fantastic.
This also leads me to my first “huh?” moment with Beatles lyrics. I have never understood “Ticket to Ride.” “She’s got a ticket to ride and she don’t care.” Okay. Why should I care, then? I suppose the verses reveal more of the story, but from a chorus point of view, that’s a head scratcher.
To me, this is where The Beatles became THE BEATLES.
Oh, and did you know the semaphore doesn’t actually spell “HELP”? They were going to do that, but the photographer didn’t like the way those semaphore letters looked. So, he created this arrangement, which spells “NUJV.”
[READ: May 25, 2010] “please, thank you”
This story is written from the point of view of a stroke victim. Mr Sanchez had a stroke and is hospitalized. And we see him watching, unable to communicate, frustrated as people–nurses and others–hover around him, asking questions, turning on lights when he’s trying to sleep, and–the nerve–speaking to him in Spanish as if that was why he didn’t answer.
As the story progresses, we watch Mr Sanchez get stronger, go to therapy, feel better about himself and even, kind of, become friendly with the nurses and others who work in the hospital.
The story is basically that simple: regrowth after a stroke. However, the writing style–the first person narrative–was absolutely compelling. I enjoyed that the story was from his point of view, so we learned details as he felt they were worth revealing. I enjoyed slowly learning more about his family. And I really enjoyed learning why the story was written with no capital letters.
And what I really liked about it was that even though we feel glad for Mr Sanchez that he is getting better, it’s a very unemotional story. It was very cool.
But even cooler was when suddenly out of nowhere, the story addresses the issue of Mr Sanchez’ ability to speak Spanish and what it means to some of the workers at the hospital. And, when we learn of one of those worker’s own difficulties with a language issue (in a Walmart), the story suddenly becomes about so much more.
This is my second Gilb story in a few days (he must have a short story collection coming out soon). They were very different and both were really good.
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