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Berkeley
PA’ZAZ’ZAZZ! The champagne cork flew, ricocheting
around the room
‘Tonight’s gonna be the Topper Jim’ The speaker and
his speaking fading getting swamped and swirled in
a pressing, laughing excited Tide. Newsmen, Cameramen,
Policemen, faces, sounds, shapings, mixings, mouths,
voices, glasses, smoke – boiling colours, noise
In Jimi’s mind, apart, a Spring-board, waited
In a corner, the local Police chief, his face lit
by hand held lamps was showing via a camera, all the
‘worried folk’ out there that he had the situation
under control
‘No, we don’t expect anything that we can’t handle’
The reassurance a measured soothing on TVs all
around the neighbourhood. His calm face wise, in
front of a Photo of the statue of liberty, projecting
trustworthiness had on his ‘Election year’ look
The Spring-board stretched ahead
A young girl, about eighteen, stroked the neck of
his Guitar
‘Jimi, will you see me after, after the show?’
Her tanned skin, her yellow gold hair had got her this
far, close enough to talk to him, the one they were
all talking about. She wanted something to talk about
‘Yeah I’ve laid him’
The first step on the Spring-board
Outside, tens of thousands of people, mostly young were
spread over the grass, in the trees, in the lake on
this warm half-term evening. Seething, milling held
together by the throb pulsing loud through huge speakers
pumping out the sounds of the ‘Warm up’ band. The
audience had paid, borrowed, stolen, climbed in, anything,
anything to be here To hear Jimi play
He felt the Spring-board quiver
Now, in the muscles of his mind he could feel, flight
‘About five or six minutes Jimi’
The vast blackness of Space, his playground, was getting
bigger in his mind. Waiting for him to spiral out Neon
purples, razor greens, glittering reds, Blues flakes,
splashing off and skimming by the stars. Painting out
his mood
Bounce
The faces around him were dimming. Their excitement was
now just a part of him skipping down his Spring-board
A Flash bulb ‘sparkled’ in the air
‘Hey Jimi have a smoke of this!’
Bounce
‘Any minute now’
The Bass player and the drummer nowhere near so high, but
psyched up all the same started to make their way to the
stage
Bounce
The colours, the sounds, the patterns and the pulses were
funnelling down, into his fingers shutting off the ‘real
world’ sounds
The warm California darkness, flash gun filling, the stage
and the first few hundred yards of the crowd in deep dark,
brown dark deep. The Stage lights switched off
The Bass and drummer weaved their way into place
Bounce
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