Songs About Janice

As anybody who has listened to the Townedgers and the music of the past 30 years a lot of songs were based upon my experiences and crushes and loves on girls that I knew and at one time was a part of my life.  But back in 1976 I really couldn't translate them very well into songs.  A few of them were based upon Janice Berns, a skinny tall girl who somehow developed a crush on me during my sophomore year  in high school to which I had to endure her shenanigans and her girlfriends at that time.  But then again a few factors came into play as well. 

A year before hand I ended up falling head over heels over some girl in Jackson Michigan in 1975 and turned my world upside down.  Problem was I would never see her anymore after the summer of 1976 even though we promised each other to be true and faithful.  Janice on the other hand came into my life and for all of rest of 76 and part of 1977 we were the Bickersons of high school.  Her and her friend Anne would constantly come to my locker and bug the hell out of me.  Looking back on hindsight I really blew that one.  Janice was attractive, straight honor student, cheerleader and here she was bugging some lowlife across the tracks that had only interest for records, beer can collecting and gave his heart to somebody else at that time.  I mean Janice did have a crush on me, one day in American Studies class she mentioned something about sitting on my lap and I dared her and damned if she didn't plopped herself on my lap.

For most of that time I resisted but finally when it came to pass that the Michigan love interest was gone forever more, they were playing Chicago's Colour My World and her friend said that Janice wanted to slow dance, so I basically went up and grabbed her hand to go to the dance floor and you think that would have been the start of something new.  She grabbed herself away from me making me look like a fool and I called her a few choice names and stalked off but Sue instead came up and we finished that dance but I livid with Miss Berns.  The next day, somehow she found me at my grade school and we just sat and argued big time.  Somehow she mentioned she loved me that and I blew her off.  Look at that another chance done by the wayside.  And that turned out the be the cause and effect of the rest of the 70s, we both made feeble chances for a date but never seem to be on the right page. Circumstances also didn't help either, she became a cook at Applegate's Landing, some fly by night pizza joint and I became a dish washer which put more salt into the wound.  But I don't think she ever dated anybody till I left school and I did see her with somebody a year later and was finally free from her but then got mad of the fact that it wasn't me that was with her.

Somehow in the course of that time, something in her changed and she became more bitter toward the town or maybe of the fact that she took a chance on a loner.  Even up to Town's Edge Rock in 1983 I would have welcomed her into this life but I think I've seen her one time and she looked withdrawn and angry at the world.  She dated a friend of my brother but sometime in 1984 she moved to Texas and married somebody that kinda looked like me in 1986 and outside of a 10th year high school reunion has simply dropped off the face of the planet or at least here in town.  Even her high school friends have said they haven't heard from her in years either.  It seems once she left town, she left everything behind in memories.  Some people are like that I guess.

Even during the echophonic era I wrote a song that did mention Janice, Four In The Morning I think it was called but the tape got erased and it wasn't a good song anyway.  In 1985 I did write Song For Janice for the Rock And Roll Made Me What I Am Today album but on the CD version I left it off.  When she got married, my reaction was Running In The Rain off Wapsi Dreaming and it remains one of the most requested song in my reportorial output.  Later on, she was the subject of note on We Never Danced to which I revisited my feelings of anger when she didn't want to dance with me even though she told everybody in earshot that she did.  Last Train Home off Moonlight Chronicles in 1989 dealt with the playground argument of the next day after the dance to which the line utters Janice I wish I never met you probably had her echoing the same thing.

As you get older you wonder what if, what if we could have been together. On High School Sweetheart (1994-Weather On The Nines) I start the song out with Doesn't anyone remember Janice? To which I remember the good times that we did share in the brief time we were together around the town but perhaps the damming second chorus of

Teenage Dreams
Forgotten It Seems
And the rain falls on our parade
All dressed up and nowhere to go
I think we both stood each other up

37 years down the road, that line sums up the legacy of Me and Janice, of how a failed concept of having a teenage crush on somebody who wasn't interested at the time who turn somebody into a life of bitterness although I could be wrong and Janice might still be living and still married to same guy.  I seriously doubt that we'll ever crossed paths again. Or what if I never went to Michigan and fell into an infatuation which blew up in my face as well. And then trying to win Janice back in the best way I knew how and that didn't work either. 

What does she mean when she said she's my life
The only social life that I'll ever had
Making mistakes just like in the past
I guess she's the one that knows me best

Janice said the day after the failed dance that she was the only social life that I ever had which even made me laugh in her face even more but in a way she was somewhat right.  I didn't date much if at all in high school outside of Penny which we did have a few dates but Janice and I was never on the same page, even when I wrote the chorus of The One That Knows Me Best in 1999.

As time goes by, the memories of high school fade into nothingness and perhaps she did marry the man of her dreams, they are still together and doing quite well out there in Texas just like the song Running In The Rain suggested.  I also think she's doing a lot better now like the Last Train Home song suggested as well.  She's a president of Ladies Auxiliary, and of a Catholic church.  Ah, the power of the internet.

I guess in the outcome of life we were a clash of the air masses.  I don't think she would have approved of my music and the extensive music collection over the years but that's all right.

I wish them the best of life.