MUSIC

Pain & Gain - Retribution Song!
[written and performed by Ed Du Bois, copyright 2012]

Rarely does a single event change one’s life like the telephone call that I received on the morning of December 16, 1994. I am a private investigator and accustomed to odd calls, but this was different. The caller was Marc Schiller and he desperately needed my help. He described a jarring account of his 30 days of captivity, extortion, beatings, torture, and being left for dead. Schiller was now in Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital Trauma Unit. He just awoke from a coma and was sure that his tormentors were coming to finish the job. We had no time and the ‘Jackals from Hell’ were on their way to room 355! In a frantic scramble to save his life, Schiller was immediately taken to the Miami airport and flown to New York by air ambulance to heal, recuperate, rehab and hide out. The Jackals arrived at Jackson an hour late and were shocked to learn their prey had once again slipped through their bloody fingers.

Thus began one of my most heralded investigations. It has now been made into a major motion picture, Pain and Gain. Three-time Academy Award nominee, Ed Harris, portrays me. The cast includes Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Tony Shalhoub. The film is directed by Michael Bay.

This telephone call also began an 18 year relationship with my client, now friend, Marc Schiller - a true hero and brave survivor. I went the extra distance for Marc back then; confronted his Jackals from Hell, battled bureaucratic skepticism, law enforcement incompetence and misconduct. Best of all, I solved the case and put the Jackals in jail. I originally wrote the story Pain and Gain in a collaboration with writer Pete Collins and that story has now become the movie Pain and Gain. 

As a sideline to my investigative business, I play guitar and write songs. It doesn’t take much to stimulate a song in my mind so once I heard about the film starting production, I wrote Pain and Gain - the song. It is Marc Schiller’s 'Retribution Song' and he loves it! I took the rough song to the famous Red Rock Studios in Miami and played it for the owners, Clay Ostwald (of the Miami Sound Machine) and Tommy Anthony (of the Santana Band.) Both loved it as well and joined me on the final recording; Clay playing keyboard, Tommy playing lead guitar and myself as lead vocal.

I truly hope you enjoy this edgy, bluesy, rock and roll song. I enjoyed writing and performing it almost as much as I enjoyed testifying in court as I stared down The Sun Gym Gang!

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Pain and Gain - Retribution Song
LYRICS
They stole my money

Took my home
Left me on the street to die alone
I live in paradise so they say
Things… shouldn’t be this way
Pain…Pain and Gain.

Woke up this morning barely knew my name
My broken body may never be the same
For 30 days I was chained to a wall
Beaten and broken I lived through it all
I had Pain …….Pain and Gain

All alone in this hospital bed
Bad men coming I’ll soon be dead
I’ve got to move to a safe house soon
To avoid death by these burly goons
More pain…pain and gain.

These desperate men they can’t get enough
Ripped roid monkeys they think they’re tough
My private eye put them all in jail
A taste of poison gas they’ll soon inhale
They’ll have pain
Pain and Gain

My Mama told me not to be this way
She said revenge and hate is how the devil plays
But.. With all the nasty things they’ve done
Their troubles’ just begun
They’ll have pain
Pain and gain.
They’ll have pain
Pain and gain.

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