Clean Slate (You Went First)
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
Clean slate! Clean slate!
I don't stand on what got left here
Clean slate! Clean slate!
Jesus, You set the table first
Not borrowed — not lucky — not maybe —
You gave me ground I own
Thank You, thank You, hey!
You start me from a stone I know
Ran it twice and it came back green,
third time red — what does that mean?
Blamed the ruler, tightened the screw,
added a wait, the crack still grew.
It was never the question, no,
it was the mess from an hour ago —
somebody's crumbs on somebody's plate
and I called it my clean slate.
Clean slate! Clean slate!
I don't stand on what got left here
Clean slate! Clean slate!
Jesus, You set the table first
Not borrowed — not lucky — not maybe —
You gave me ground I own
Thank You, thank You, hey!
You start me from a stone I know
I'm not walking the long way round
just to say that the chair's sat down.
Three lights on and one light out —
I put 'em there, so there's no doubt.
And when I'm finished I take it back,
no crumbs left on the track.
Copied homework won't hold a name —
God, You never played that game.
If the room was empty, would it still be true?
(Would it still be true!)
If nobody went first — would it hold?
(Would it hold!)
You went first. You went first.
Before the first light, You went first.
So I don't borrow and I don't beg —
You give the ground, You get the credit.
Clean slate — thank You, Jesus!
Clean slate — You went first!
Clean slate — thank You, Jesus!
Ground I own 'cause You gave it first!
The band
Sunday Riot
Young mixed lead, percussive verses, huge stacked gang vocals on the hook. Fast, chant-like and built to be shouted back - call-and-response, heavy repetition, restless and a bit cheeky, and certain of itself.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post A Test Needs A State It Owns.
A test that starts from whatever data happens to already be there is flaky by design, and the fix is to write the starting state directly rather than driving the UI to build it.
More by Sunday Riot
- Not the Clock 3:11
- Ask the Second Question 3:41
- Fix It And Still Fit 3:42
- Not Decorative 3:17