You Don't Mind Babe (Lo' Cup; Then Under) 5:38

This is The Beatles in five chapters.

Chapter 1:

A great movie has just ended. It’s that part of the film where the final shot fades to black and the credits start to roll on the screen. Audience members shuffle in the darkness to find their belongings and not kick over the last few ounces of coke-water left in oversize wax cups at the base of their seats. Lights undim and a line begins to form in the aisle as whispers move to speak. You should be annoyed, but you’re not. The fact that this is the routine every time you see a film has led you to expect such nuance. You remain motionless reading the actors billed fortieth and greater on the list. You wonder who they are.

You don’t know their name. How could you begin to look up their number?

“What is this music,” you think? “Who is this?” You know it sounds like The Beatles. Your music knowledge has put you that far. You think you could recognize the voices of John and Paul just about anywhere. But you wonder: “How come I have never heard this song?”

“It has to be The Beatles,” you say to yourself. You are amazed that you haven’t heard it before. As you join the back of the whispering chord of shuffling bodies ahead of you, so much of you wants to return to your seat and wait for the final credits where directors reveal the music in the film. You need to be confident in your attachment between song and group. With every inch you gain towards the up-ramp exit you look back over your shoulder hoping the credits have already gone through Key Grip, Best Boy, and the Vancouver catering crew.

Chapter 2:

You step out into the alley and spot a motley crew of swing jazz players on the midnight street.

An Asian man in Huckleberry Finn corduroys plucks at a standing bass. A rolly-mustachioed hipster in a bowler hat picks his way through a banjo. A humble acoustic hides on a milk crate in the shadows of a newspaper dispenser. A young lady in men’s trousers with suspenders and a white collar blows staccato into a French horn.

Noticing two homeless people high on meth dancing to your left, you think: “How surreal.” One is a tall black man in his sixties and the other--a white woman in her thirties. Possessed with both neurotoxins from the crank and the sounds of bluegrass jazz, the dancing duo swings off the sidewalk and into the taxi-crowded street eliciting a droning of car-honk.

You close in on the college quartet thumbing your way through pockets for loose change. A guitar case is propped open collecting coins like a shopping-mall fountain. The crowd is small, but the players are in it for themselves. You realize an eerie similarity to the song in the film.

You spot a Puerto Rican toddler holding his Abuela’s hand. You can see it in his eyes that this is the first time he has ever experienced panhandling. Realizing the immigrants don’t have enough money to be tossing into the street, you approach the niño and squat to eye-level. Placing two singles into his hand you point at the open case. Abuela nods to her grandson in confirmation. The bambino shyly steps forward and snowflakes the money from his hand. He runs back to his Abuela with joy and pride. You have already walked on.

Chapter 3:

You enter a hotel you have never been in before. The lobby is buzzing with social class and you feel like you have stepped back in time.

“Good Evening and welcome to Slaggers. Featuring Dennis O’Bell.”

A piano takes centre stage while Tom Collins’ clink and young ladies smoke cigarettes from long, thin holders.

“Let’s hear it for Dennis. Ha-hey.”

“Good evening,” he dares, and waits for attention.

“You know my name.” There’s a light applause, you included. “Well then look up my number.”

Frozen in your tracks, you pan the room in search for Gatzby. There is a grand bandstand in front of a velvet red curtain at the rear of the lobby barroom. A rotating stage centers the tuxedoed soloist. “Is this Dennis O’Bell?” you wonder.

The pianist is swanky. “Slick,” you say aloud under your breath. You think you recognize him to be a young Paul McCartney, but he is too distant to tell, and the crowd is too thick in between. They chop by you like blank faces on a moving train obscuring a good look at Dennis O’Bell. “Have I heard this song before?” you think. “I mean; other than tonight? I must have. But what is it?”

Piano chords three-beat to a pause. “Ohh. You know, you know, you know my name.”

Dennis O’Bell is losing his edge of cool and entering a carefree dominion. The bandleader/announcer is standing to the far left, really grooving. “Man—that look’s like a young John Lennon.” Everything’s got you thinking in quiz form.

He is singing along off mic, making faces that resemble a walrus. Having no consciousness of being watched by society’s finest, he lowers his chin into his neck and dips his eyebrows in search of new voices he didn’t know were there. The bandleader is goofy, a comedian more than a conductor. Dennis O’Bell smiles at him, dipping his chin to a raised right shoulder without breaking stride on the piano. The two of them are working in harmony like it was meant to be. The off mic bandleader barks like a dog. The music begins to fade.

“Ah, let’s hear it. Go on Dennis. Let’s hear it for Dennis O’Bell!”

Chapter 4:

The piano rotates away from centre stage and two monkeys in German trousers with suspenders appear on tricycles. The bandstand transforms into a circus ring. Dennis O’Bell and the Walrus trolley from stage-left to stage-right and back again on a handcar pump you recognize from old Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin skits. Dressed in blackface, they bob and roll across the stage. They are both acting silly for silliness sake.

The Walrus repeats every phrase Dennis O’Bell makes, mocking a parrot.

“Is this the same song?” you ask yourself as the charade continues. You can see it in the Walrus’s eyes that he can’t hold the skit any longer. His face cracks to laughter. They look you right in the eye.

“What’s up with you?” They laugh. “You know my name.” Freeze.

“That’s right.” Freeze again.

“Yeah.”

Chapter 5:

A piano solo leads in a high school musical like the soundtrack to Charlie Brown’s Christmas. A young kid who has just learned how to play the skins taps the high hat and stomps the kick drum.

The stage scrambles as young actors find their mark. The clowns and monkeys wave goodbye. The Walrus is blubbering. Thirty kids dressed up as ocean creature swim about the stage in a simple choreographed dance. The red curtain is raised to reveal a hand-painted blue setting that was done by Maxwell’s third grade class. An out-of-place hammer floats in the water.

Dennis O’Bell re-enters the stage for his final bow. He is back in his tuxedo now, but his blackface makeup has yet to be removed. The Walrus convulses around him making strange, gruntled noises. Miss Rigby, the seventh grade math teacher, plays proudly on her upright piano.

“How did I get here?” you ask. But you are not surprised at the oddity of your situation. It’s just been one of those nights. Dennis O’Bell grunts like a boxer.

“Heavy, heavy,” the Walrus groans.

Spotlights shine onto a xylophone and trumpet that have come onto the stage. It is the same band from the alley. They strut and circle Dennis and The Walrus who are pumping interlocked fingers on both sides of their chins. The dancers push back leaving the band and its actors to bow.

You can’t help but dance. You shyly sway your hips and move your arms.

The curtain drops.