The Freshmen

I love this song, although, reading the lyrics, I realized I had no clue what the hell it’s about! Abortion, maybe? Definitely a suicide in there.

THE VERVE PIPE

The Freshmen

When I was young I knew everything

She a punk who rarely ever took advice

Now I’m guilt stricken, sobbing with my head on the floor

Stop a baby’s breath and a shoe full of rice

I can’t be held responsible

‘Cause she was touching her face

I won’t be held responsible

She fell in love in the first place

For the life of me I cannot remember

What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise

For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins

We were merely freshmen

My best friend took a week’s vacation to forget her

His girl took a week’s worth of valium and slept

Now he’s guilt stricken sobbing with his head on the floor

Thinks about her now and how he never really wept he says

I can’t be held responsible

‘Cause she was touching her face

I won’t be held responsible

She fell in love in the first place

For the life of me I cannot remember

What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise

For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins

We were merely freshmen

We’ve tried to wash our hands of all of this

We never talk of our lacking relationships

And how we’re guilt stricken sobbing with our heads on the floor

We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip, we’d say

I can’t be held responsible

‘Cause she was touching her face

I won’t be held responsible

She fell in love in the first place

For the life of me I cannot remember

What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise

For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins

We were merely freshmen

For the life of me I cannot remember

What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise

For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins

We were merely freshmen

We were merely freshmen

We were only freshmen

from Villains (RCA Records, 1996)

For some reason it’s been stuck in my head today, though I haven’t heard it anywhere recently. Went a’googling and found this on a search of “shoe full of rice.” Interesting, if a bit anti-climactic. Whatever, it’s got a great arrangement and a haunting chorus and, like great poems, there’s enough leeway in it for individual interpretation.

Speaking of poems, I hit Acentos last night and it might have been the best one yet, energy-wise, at least. Oscar has really found his comfort zone and handled a light but energetic crowd quite nicely. Finally got there early for once – have I said how much I love living in the Bronx again? – and chilled at the bar, working on my “relevance of slam” essay that I’ll probably need to rewrite as this draft has gone off on its own direction.

Anyway, I suspected the turnout would be low as the feature, Toro, isn’t that well-known and most of the Borg probably wouldn’t hike up to the Bronx for him. Turned out “most of” was “none of.” Too bad as Toro put on a strong set, backed by guitar and djembe, with a mix of poetry and song, of sorts. He could front a grunge band pretty well and his performance made me want a band myself! Oscar suggested LeCharles Lites. (Have to ask him what that means, now that I think about it!) I’d love to front a Rage Against the Machine kind of group where the “singing” amounts to yelling yourself raw. With tight lyrics, of course!

A nicely varied open mic list included impressive pieces from Jayme (with a Marty McConnell-influenced delivery), Frog Prince (chock-full of comic book references) and this skinny white kid from Chicago (blanking on his name) who started out with a beatbox and then was like, “Nah, I’m just going to read a poem.” Nice job of winning over the crowd. Caught Lenny’s love poem for Fish (the person, not the food!) and had to smile at the pure sincerity and lack of pretense she brought to it, remembering what it was like when you first start out and are just doing it for the love. I closed out the open mic with a dirt-old piece, Confessions of a Serial Killer, that Toro’s hip-hop comments sparked a taste for. In the move, I dug up a bunch of old work, including my first chapbook and the first issue of my old zine, zuzu’s petals. Have to re-type my review of It’s a Wonderful Life and post it on my web site so you can see what kind of twisted mindset I had back then. That’s actually the issue of zzp that brought Salomé and I together! But that’s a story for another time…

SIDE NOTE: I can’t remember if I did this or not, and I’m too lazy to check, but let this be a reminder to all to get their copy of 5 PAST 13. Not only is it an amazing collection of poetry celebrating five years of a little bit louder, it’s also the only way NYC-Union Square is going to get to Chicago for Nationals! Much as part of me hopes they end up on a bus to remind themselves of where we started and why, it IS a long-ass ride and they won’t have Staceyann to entertain them this time. Get them on AirTran, at least! 😉

Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.