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04/17/2020

Happy Hour with Jimi Hendrix

With our recording studio at KZSU temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, professor Robert Harrison has decided to open the Entitled Opinions Happy Hour Bar, offering up some small shots of poetry, on the house! We inaugurate our happy hour this week with a few choice lyrics from Jimi Hendrix. If you are interested […]

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To all you listeners of entitled opinions, this is your host Robert Harrison.
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Coming to you from Lockdown City.
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As some of you know, KZSU is closed to studios for the spring.
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And that means that Victoria and I can't bring you a full season of
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Crossfire shows as we usually do at this time of the year.
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The full feast is on hold, but don't despair.
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We've decided to open the entitled opinions happy hour bar.
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And offer you up some small shots of poetry on the house.
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No intros, no commentary, just some lyrics distilled down the hatch.
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We're inaugurating our open house happy hour today with a few choice shooters from our old friend Jimmy Hendrix.
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Jimmy Hendrix, the lyricist was almost on a par with Jimmy Hendrix the guitar player.
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A fact that sometimes gets lost in all the noise and distortions that surround him.
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So here are the lyrics of some of Hendrix's songs that I've selected to read aloud for you.
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For those of you who might want more, I refer you to the Jimmy Hendrix solo show that we aired back in June 2009.
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Stay tuned, single mod Jimmy coming up.
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Jimmy Hendrix, my friend.
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Well I'm looking through Harlem, my stomach squeal just a little more,
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a stagecoach full of feathers and footprints, pulls up to soapbox store.
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Now a lady with a pearl-handled necktie tied to the driver's fence, breathes in my face, bourbon and coke possessed words.
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And haven't I seen you somewhere in hell or was it just an accident?
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You know how I felt then, and so, before I could ask, was it the east or west side?
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My feet they houled in pain, the wheels of a bandwagon cut very deep, but not as deep in my mind as the rain,
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and as they pulled away I could see her words stagger and fall on my muddy tent.
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Well I picked them up, brushed them off to see what they say, and you wouldn't believe.
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Come around my room with the tooth in the middle, and bring along the bottle and a president.
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And sometimes it's not so easy baby, especially when your only friend,
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talks, sees, looks and feels like you, and you do just the same as him.
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Gets very lonely up this road baby, but I've got more to say.
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Well I'm riding through LA on a bicycle built for fools, and I've seen one of my old buddies,
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and he say, "You don't look the way you usually do?"
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I say, "Well some people look like a coin box."
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He say, "Looks like you ain't got no coins to spare."
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And I laid back and I thought to myself, and I said this,
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"I just picked up my pride from underneath the payphone,
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and comb this breath right out of my hair."
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And sometimes it's not so easy, especially when your only friend,
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talks, sees, looks and feels like you, and you do just the same as him.
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Just got out of a Scandinavian jail, and I'm on my way straight home to you,
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but I feel so dizzy I take a quick look in the mirror to make sure my friends here with me too.
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And you know good well, I don't drink coffee, so you feel my cup full of sand,
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and the frozen tea leaves on the bottom,
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sharing lipstick around the broken edge, and my coat that you let your dog lay by the fire on,
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and your cat he attacked me from his pillbox ledge,
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and I thought you were my friend too.
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Man, my shadow comes in line before you.
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I'm finding out that it's not so easy, especially when your only friend talks, looks, sees, and feels like you,
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and you do just the same like him.
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Lord, it's lonely here. Yeah, pass me that bottle over there.
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Burning of the midnight lamp.
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The morning is dead, and the day is to...
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There's nothing left here to meet me, but the velvet moon.
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All my loneliness I have felt today is like a little more than enough to make a man throw himself away,
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and I continue to burn the midnight lamp alone.
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Now the smiling portrait of you is still hanging on my frowning wall,
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but it really doesn't bother me too much at all.
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It's just the ever-falling dust that makes it so hard for me to see that forgotten earring laying on the floor,
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facing coldly towards the door.
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I continue to burn the midnight lamp Lord alone, burn, lonely, lonely, lonely.
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Loneliness is such a drag.
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So I sit here and pace that same old fireplace gives rise to the same old explosion going through my mind,
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and soon enough time will tell about the circus and the wishing well,
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and someone who will buy and sell for me, someone who will toll my bell,
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and I continue to burn the same old lamp alone.
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Yeah, lightning, can you hear me calling so lonely,
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gonna blow my mind? Yeah, lonely, lonely, my mind.
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The wind cries, Mary.
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After all the jacks are in their boxes and the clowns have all gone to bed,
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you can hear happiness staggering on down the street, footprints, dressed in red,
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and the wind whispers, Mary.
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A broom is drierly sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday's life,
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somewhere a queen is weeping, somewhere a king has no wife,
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and the wind it cries, Mary.
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The traffic lights they turn blue tomorrow and shine their emptiness down on my bed.
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The tiny island sags downstream, because the life that lived is dead,
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and the wind screams, Mary.
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Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past,
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and with this crutch it's old age and it's wisdom, it whispers, "No, this will be the last."
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And the wind cries, Mary.
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Love or confusion?
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Is that the stars in the sky or is it raining far from now?
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Will it burn me if I touch the sun so bit so round?
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Will I be truthful in choosing you as the one for me?
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Is this love baby or is it just confusion?
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Oh, my mind is so mixed up going round and round.
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Must there be all these colors without names, without sounds?
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My heart burns with feeling, but oh, but my mind is cold and reeling.
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Is this love baby or is it confusion?
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Oh, my head is pounding, pounding, going round and round and round and round.
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Must there always be these colors?
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You tell me baby, is this love or confusion?
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We must get together and find out.
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Confusion.
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In from the storm.
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Well, I just came back today, I just came back from the storm, I said, "I just came back baby, I just came back from the storm."
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Well, I didn't know it then, but I was suffering, suffering from I love to keep me warm.
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It was so cold and lonely, the wind and crying blue rain were tearing me up.
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It was so cold and lonely, the crying blue rain was tearing me up, oh, tearing me up.
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I want to thank you my sweet darling for digging in the mud and picking me up.
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Thank you so very much.
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It was a terrible rain that was burning my eyes.
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It was you my love who brought me in.
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I love you so much, I'll never stray from you again.
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I just came back baby, I just came back to get my baby on her way.
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Castles made of sand.
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Down the street you can hear her scream, "You're a disgrace."
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As she slams the door and his drunken face,
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and now he stands outside and all the neighbors start to gossip and rule.
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He cries, "Oh girl, you must be mad.
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What happened to the sweet love he when me had?"
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Against the door he leans and starts a scene and his tears fall and burn on the garden green.
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And so Castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually.
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A little Indian brave who before he was ten played war games in the woods with his Indian friends,
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and he built a dream that when he grew up he would be a fierce warrior Indian chief.
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Many moons pass before the dream grew strong, until tomorrow he would sing his first war song
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and fight his first battle, but something went wrong, surprise attack, killed him in his sleep that night.
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And so Castles made of sand melts into the sea, eventually.
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There was a young girl whose heart was a frown because she was crippled for life,
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and she couldn't speak a sound, and she wished and prayed she could stop living,
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so she decided to die.
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She drove her wheelchair to the edge of the shore, and to her legs she smiled,
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"You won't hurt me no more."
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But then a sight she'd never seen made her jump and say, "Look, a golden wing ship is passing my way."
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And it really didn't ever stop.
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It just kept on going.
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And so Castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually.
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Little wing.
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Well, she's walking through the clouds with a circus mind that's running wild,
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butterflies and zebras and moon beams, and fairy tales.
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That's all she ever thinks about, writing with the wind.
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When I'm sad she comes to me with a thousand smiles she gives to me free.
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It's all right. She says, "It's all right. Take anything you want from me."
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Anything.
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Fly on, Little wing.
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Boldest love.
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Anger he smiles, towering and shiny metallic purple armor,
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Queen jealousy, envy, waits behind him, or fiery green gown,
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sneers at the grassy ground.
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Blue are the life-giving waters taken for granted.
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They quietly understand, once happy turquoise armies lay opposite ready,
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but wonder why the fight is on.
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But they're all boldest love.
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Yes, they're all boldest love.
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They're all boldest love.
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Just ask the axis.
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My red is so confident that he flashes trophies of war
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and ribbons of euphoria.
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Orange is young, full of daring, but very unsteady for the first go round.
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My yellow in this case is not so mellow.
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In fact, I'm trying to say, "It's frightened like me."
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And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from giving my life to a rainbow like you.
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But I'm, yes, I'm boldest love.
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I'm boldest love.
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Just ask the axis.
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He knows everything.
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Hey, I've got glasses and five feet of a drink
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