I’ve been meaning to write this for a long time. You know all the fuss about Joshua Bell’s unheralded rush hour performance in the DC subway system, and how everyone was gasping for days about how they couldn’t believe such a travesty could take place and how it was a sign of the apocalypse, the deadening of the senses of the modern age?

Joni Mitchell wrote a song about it THIRTY YEARS AGO. It’s call “For Free,” it’s on Ladies of the Canyon, and the most salient verse goes:

Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never been on their TV
So they passed his music by

Next, Gene Weingartner is going to do a sociological experiment involving Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts and is going to be clucking for hours when someone gets shot.