[Intro - lone slide guitar and boot stomp] Gather 'round I got a tale about a man who knew better And did it anyway [Verse 1] I had a station and a signal and a shed out back Little steel box hummin' on a dusty old rack It played clean, it played long, it played all night through Wasn't broke, wasn't fancy, wasn't nothin' to do But a man with a wrench sees a bolt he can turn And a man with a config finds a bridge he can burn So I reached for the shiny and I reached for the new And I broke the only thing that was already true [Pre-Chorus] Oh the pages loaded faster And the padlock turned green Prettiest little server that you ever have seen But the music? The music kept dyin' at the vine Twenty minutes of gospel then a flatline [Chorus - group and choir] Keep it simple, boys (keep it simple!) Keep it simple, girls (keep it simple!) Don't go buildin' a cathedral on a creek Let the water run Keep it simple, Lord (keep it simple!) Keep it simple now (keep it simple!) The devil ain't in the thing you never done He's in the clever one [Verse 2] So I chased it like a hound with a hole in his nose Added cache, added queue, added Lord only knows Wrote a watchdog for the watchdog and the watchdog laid down Bought a bigger machine, hauled it back into town Blamed the wire, blamed the weather, blamed the wind and the rain Blamed everybody breathin' but the man to blame Three long nights, and the coffee gone cold And the ego of a young man finally sold [Bridge - stripped, harmonica and voice, near silence] So I quit my guessin'. And I got to lookin'. tcpdump. Port four four three. Wrote it down and I set it free. Opened up the capture and I read it like a psalm And the truth was sittin' plain and it was terrible calm. One connection. Every channel. All in a lane. Multiplexed the river down a single drain. Window shrinkin'. Flow control cinched to the bone. Long-lived audio don't want a shared road home. It wants one dumb socket that just holds on tight It don't want a smarter one. It just wants the night. [Verse 3 - band kicks back in hard] One line. One config. That's the whole of the sin. Took the two right out and let the one back in. Fell back to plain, like a plow through the field And the signal ran forever and the wound was healed Seven hours. Twelve. Then a day and a half. Nothin' broke, nothin' bled, and the shed had the last laugh. Ripped out every clever thing I ever put in And the simple thing was standin' where the clever had been [Final Chorus - big, full choir, hand claps] Keep it simple, boys (keep it simple!) Keep it simple, girls (keep it simple!) Don't go buildin' a cathedral on a creek Let the water run Keep it simple, Lord (keep it simple!) Keep it simple now (keep it simple!) The devil ain't in the thing you never done He's in the clever one [Outro - slide guitar and stomp fading] Read the packets, son. Not the manual you assumed. Simple ain't a shortcut. Simple is the room. Radio's still runnin'. Been runnin' all along. [End]
