Photo by Erik Christopher Lopez

From ANDRAS JONES: FUZZBEE MORSE, with his flute, his guitar, or his piano, has shown up on the soulful periphery of several previous musical divinations on this episode. Now we settle upon Fuzzbee, not as the player of tunes, but the teller of tales. Tales of Joni.

The answer to Fuzzbee’s question for The Pop Oracle is performed by KAITLIN WOLFBERG and EMILY ELKIN with Fuzzbee himself on keys. I mentioned earlier, the alignment of the WOLF in Kaitlin’s name with “The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey” but only now do I realize that Emily’s name also has a majestic ELK-in it. Emily and Kaitlin live with these ani-monikers all the time so I’m sure it’s no big deal to them but, listening back, it’s like the studio was going all “Where The Wild Things Are” on me. And what the heck kind of animal is a Fuzzbee?

This is when the episode really began folding in on itself. Dig the reflective nature of Fuzzbee playing on the randomly chosen answer to his own question, which is being sung by the Wolf, whose Joni statement on our Wild Honey episode got this whole thing rolling. Everything seems placid in the baffled bubble of the studio, filled as it was with the most gorgeous sounds and sincerest love for Joni Mitchell, but unbeknownst to me, outside the inner sanctum a mercurial madness was seeking expression. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, and maybe it was the steadily diminishing contents of the Starburns bar, but the psychedelic aspects of our synchronicity trip were starting to kick in. Without the containment of our usual sessions, (when we are all along for the ride in the same little room) this evening the participants were scattered between the studio, the control room and the Starburns lounge, leaving several of the more sensitive types at the mercy of our readings without really knowing what they were a part of. That’s sloppy showman/shaman-ing on my part, leaving ample flaws in the weave of our creation through which chaos might assert itself. And assert itself it did. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s drop for all that schadenfreude fun.

For now, enjoy this reverie with the menagerie…for free.

FOR FREE

I slept last night in a good hotel
I went shopping today for jewels
The wind rushed around in the dirty town
And the children let out from the schools
I was standing on a noisy corner
Waiting for the walking green
Across the street he stood
And he played real good
On his clarinet, for free
Now me I play for fortunes
And those velvet curtain calls
I’ve got a black limousine
And two gentlemen
Escorting me to the halls
And I play if you have the money
Or if you’re a friend to me
But the one man band
By the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good, for free
Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never
Been on their T.V.
So they passed his music by
I meant to go over and ask for a song
Maybe put on a harmony
I heard his refrain
As the signal changed
He was playing real good, for free

Joni live on the Conspiracy of Hope Tour
with Fuzzbee’s “trusty Gibson Strat”.