The Free Lane
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
Tuesday night the meter sat still,
One little door didn't count a thing.
Word went round like a county-fair bill,
Use the old app, the phone, that one thing.
We stacked our whole month on a gift,
Nobody wrote it down on a page.
The paper said one thing, the glow said another,
And I know which one gets changed.
Oh, an accident ain't a promise,
A gap in the fence ain't a gate.
Enjoy the free lane while it's open,
But don't send nothing that can't wait.
When they close it up on a Monday,
Let it only change the bill.
Not the plan, not the habits, not the boys on the crew,
Just the bill.
By June we were routing by pennies,
Picking tools by what they'd not charge.
The best one sat idle, the cheap one got worked,
And the quality slipped out the back.
Then a wall came up in the middle of a job,
Like a gate swung shut in the dark.
Half of us swearing, half of us guessing,
All of us caught off guard.
Oh, an accident ain't a promise,
A gap in the fence ain't a gate.
Enjoy the free lane while it's open,
But don't send nothing that can't wait.
When they close it up on a Monday,
Let it only change the bill.
Not the plan, not the habits, not the boys on the crew,
Just the bill.
Ask what you'd do if it vanished tomorrow.
If the answer's "carry on, pay a little more,"
Well, friend, you're fine, take the sunshine.
If it's "we're done," then you've been betting the farm,
On a quirk and a wink at the door.
Oh, an accident ain't a promise,
A gap in the fence ain't a gate.
Enjoy the free lane while it's open,
But don't send nothing that can't wait.
When they close it up on a Monday,
Let it only change the bill.
Not the plan, not the habits, not the boys on the crew,
Just the bill.
Write down what you know and the day you last checked.
Budget on the paper, not the glow.
Enjoy the free lane, friend, while it lasts,
Just don't ship nothing slow.
The band
The On-Call
A weathered tenor, close-mic'd with a little rasp, telling it plainly. A specific person, a specific night and a lesson learned the expensive way - warm, and never preachy about it.
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 An Accidental Allowance Is Not A Plan.
If a tool is cheap or unlimited because of a quirk rather than a promise, treat that as a bonus you enjoy and never as something your workflow or budget depends on.
More by The On-Call
- Polite Till Friday 3:29
- A Fever's Just a Fever 3:42
- Nothing Saved Yet 3:27
- Something New to Try 3:03