Help! – Revisiting The Beatles’ Music at Cvetličarna (2016)

Poba Last updated 19 July 2019

Location: Ljubljana / Cvetličarna / Slovenia
Date: 21.04.2016

Help! A Beatles Tribute Band is an American-Slovenian crew that brings any listener closer to the story of The Beatles. The band has only been around for a few years, but these are musicians with serious mileage and a sea of gigs under their belts from the lineups of earlier bands. The guys grind, playing pretty much nonstop and in just about every village. That hard work is slowly but steadily opening the doors to bigger and bigger venues. Even though the band already has a solid reputation in the west of the old continent and plays abroad regularly (with regular invitations coming in from outside Slovenia), the road to the trust and affection of the Slovenian audience is usually a bit thorny for a Slovenian act. Help! worked their way into Slovenian hearts gradually, and it felt that way here too. The band’s show at Cvetličarna with special guests counts as a kind of breakthrough event, one that finally puts Help! more firmly in front of the eyes (and ears) of the wider Slovenian music public. From here on, there’s no going back. Only forward.

The band put on a two-and-a-half-hour concert spectacle at Cvetličarna with 46 songs in total, a 15-minute break in the middle and a change of outfits. They invited four eminent guests onto the stage, people who shape the face of Slovenian mainstream music and are way too well known among the folks. Some 500 heads came to enjoy a reconstruction of the life and work of the group that, by arriving on the scene, changed the world forever.

In the first half the band mostly played songs from the earlier period, though that wasn’t a hard rule. Those songs just took the lead in the repertoire. The refreshed lineup (the Lennon spot is now held by the young but incredibly talented and confident Matic Pelcel) also let the band freshen up the set list. They slipped in songs that demand higher vocal intonation, while also letting the band’s boss, the unshakable Ernie Mendillo, relax comfortably on bass whenever he isn’t handling the lead vocals. Performance-wise, Help! remain thoroughly convincing. They play superbly. They’re superbly tight. As is always the case with The Beatles’ music, one observation stays constant. The Beatles’ music remains incredibly infectious for any ear, but playing it can cause quite a few headaches. Not “can.” It does cause them, so it takes a huge amount of rehearsal. As for the vocals, there’s nobody in the band who happens to sound like any of the original Beatles, but everything is sung perfectly correctly, and, most importantly, sung in proper English. On top of all that, the confidently delivered backing-vocal harmonies were a treat too, which takes an extraordinary amount of skill and grinding in rehearsals. So this crew’s cohesion and focus are outstanding. Just look at the stage, look down at guitarist Žiga’s feet, armed with a horde of effects pedals, and the answer on perfectionism is right there.

The crowd reacted emotionally all the way through, which was only to be expected, and a bunch of girls even screamed on purpose, trying to catch some of the hysteria that clung to The Beatles’ concerts. Among the special guests, the legendary Oto Pestner (Nowhere Man, Drive My Car) fit into the script excellently, as expected, while Neisha (Imagine, Let It Be) “took over” almost the entire stage, which her interpretation of the classic Let It Be especially called for, delivered with so much heart and feeling that it added a special charm to the whole event. Hamo (Something, Helter Skelter) provided a bit of provocation by showing up on stage in a Rolling Stones shirt, and Help! demanded an explanation from him: was he sure he’d ended up at the right gig? The least convincing of the special guests was Tanja Ribič, who tackled Harrison’s otherwise fragile and gentle Blackbird in a somewhat sloppy way, repeatedly sitting too low with her vocals in this one. For the big finale the band saved Hey Jude, where, as expected, it invited all the guests onto the stage. Among them were two who had stayed “invisible” until that moment: “Mr. Everywhere” Martin Janežič “Buco” (The Sausages) and Rok Ferendža (Rok”N’Band), who added a bit more spice to the proceedings.

The obligatory encore delivered the “missed” Yesterday, the surprise Eleanor Rigby, the finale (Don’t Let Me Down) and a closer that, by its very title, announced the goodbye (I’m Down). In almost three hours the band thus worked through the bulk of the hits in grand style. Sure, some might miss another gem like Taxman or Norwegian Wood, but the repertoire they played more than satisfied the crowd and more than lived up to the name “Help! a Beatles Tribute.” Which counts. So the band competently revived the mission of the giants The Beatles, and let’s hope the next similar event is organized at an even bigger venue and with an even bigger turnout.

author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik