The Brutality Report - Give Me Just a Little More Time

Late Eisenhower/early JFK was an especially brutal era for American popular music, a medium whose deceptively perky pep masked all manner of existential depravity. It was a dark time masquerading as a light time. The late 50s/early 60s Dead Teen genre ("Last Kiss," "Teen Angel," "Tell Laura I Love Her") sent stern warnings to high school girls to cover up, lest a glimpse of bra strap distract their boyfriend into hurtling Dad's Buick down a ravine. In 1957's "Bye Bye Love," the Everly Brothers actually sing the line "hello emptiness," the most brazen incitement to suicide in pop music history. Then there's 1961's "Runaway," in which Del Shannon walks the rainy streets, pondering where his missing girlfriend will stay (and, presumably, if she has been murdered, dismembered, and/or dissolved in an oil drum of lye).

Harsh stuff. And yet the harshest entry in this category comes from the next generation. The Top 40 of 1970 was still filled with icky love songs, but Vietnam, dope, beards, and tits were steadily leaching into the nation's consciousness. Love songs in 1970 were looking forward, not backwards. And yet Detroit soul group Chairmen of the Board dared to hark back to the emotional viciousness of the previous decade. "Give Me Just A Little More Time" could easily be a song from the late 50s, with all the horror that implies. Listen closely to the vocals here:

COB's lead singer, General Norman Johnson, goes balls out on this recording. Beyond balls out. Balls in? Either way, it's an emotionally wrenching delivery. He's pleading, in the street, in his underwear (and they're tighty whiteys, not boxers). Children are laughing. It's gross, abject, sucky to behold. Some artists take flak for inauthenticity; this guy is TOO authentic. He needs to phony his routine up, stat.

Worse, Pleady McGee uses the word "we" nine times in under three minutes. But there is clearly no "we" by this point. The relationship he sings of has already imploded. This song isn't going to help anything. Any former significant other is going to be massively grossed out at such a simpering display of self-degradation. "Give Me…" is a postmortem. And yet he staggers on, still negotiating without fully making sense:

You're young / and you're in a hurry / you're eager for love / but don't you worry

What makes the whole sorry display so utterly mortifying is that we, the listeners, aren't just spectators. We've all been inside this song, at one time or another. Is the tongue roll (2:16) a bizarre last-ditch attempt to seem "cool" to a younger woman? Or is it a weird brain glitch due to personality disintegration? Be honest. You've done weirder things in the heat of a breakup than merely make random mouth sounds. Johnson's plea for more time is universal. It's deathbed stuff, far too real for the airwaves. Somebody should've shut this song down before it even got to the mastering plant.

Ever wonder what the next step is beyond Extreme Degradation? How about Ultimate Extreme Delayed Degradation? In 1992, Kylie Minogue covered The Chairmen's hit from the perspective of the jilting lady:

Throughout the entire song, she mercilessly taunts poor General Johnson, even kicking off the whole grotesque mockery with a tongue roll. It's as if the pretty lady at the heart of the original thought it over and said, I just gave you another 22 years, and the answer, you befuddled, simpering Pap smear of a man, is still “no.”

SAM MCPHEETERS

http://twitter.com/sammcpheeters

Previously: Uncontrollable Shitting