Arch Enemy -- "Heart of Darkness" (2001)

The illusion is dissolved

You are no longer in control

The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death.  (Check out Romans 6:23 if you don't believe me.)  

But the wages of sin isn't always death.  The wages of sin is also as follows:

  -- a house in Los Angeles, a house in Beverly Hills, and three condos in Chicago;

2009 Bentley GT

  -- a 2014 Range Rover HSE, a 2013 Mercedes G63 SUV, a 2011 Audi R8 sedan, and a 2009 Bentley GT sedan;

  -- three men's Philippe Patek watches and a woman's Tiffany watch;

  -- a 10-carat Tiffany yellow diamond ring, an eight-carat Tiffany diamond ring, a pair of Tiffany earrings with six carats in diamonds, a Tiffany bracelet, and a Tiffany necklace;

  -- 12 Bank of America accounts and a couple of Merrill Lynch accounts; and 

  -- a partial interest in Skinny Bikini Swimwear LLC.

Skinny Bikini's "Untamed Mistress" bikini

(If you'd like to shop Skinny Bikini's online offerings, click here.  Its two-piece swimsuits include the "Enticing Serpent," the "Russian Roulette," and the "Untamed Mistress.")

Less than a year ago, up-and-coming entrepreneur Lin Miao was a nominee for the Forbes magazine "30 Under 30" listing of innovative and influential young businessmen and businesswomen.

But it appears that's Miao's business success was not built on the rock, but rather on the shifting sands.

Lin Miao

Last week, Miao signed a consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission and surrendered all of the swag listed above in partial satisfaction of a judgment in the amount of $150,153,283 . . . give or take.

According to the FTC, Miao's company -- Tatto Media -- was guilty of mobile "cramming."  Crammers get unwary consumers to subscribe to daily horoscopes, celebrity news alerts, and other text-message services, then submit charges for those subscriptions to wireless providers, who are only too happy to tack those charges on to their customers' monthly bills.  

Since cell-phone providers bill you an arm and leg, it's a pretty good bet that you won't even notice an extra $9.99 or so each month -- which is exactly what the crammers are counting on.

When my kids were younger, they managed to get themselves subscribed to a couple of these services, and it was a major pain in the ass for me to get the charges off my cell phone bills.  You can call the marketers and ask to have the subscriptions cancelled and the unauthorized charges refunded, but you can imagine how far that gets you. 

And if you call your cell-phone provider to complain, it may say that the cramming isn't its problem -- despite the fact that it is the entity that is billing you (and keeping a nice piece of the action for its trouble).

But 2 or 3 lines is not only an insistent son of a bitch when it comes to such tomfoolery, he is also a law-school graduate.  I don't mind going all medieval on luckless customer service reps, and a few minutes of my special brand of verbal abuse usually does the trick.

Wages of Sin, which was released in 2001, was the fourth studio album by the Swedish melodic death metal band, Arch Enemy.  ("Melodic death metal" is also known as "melodeath," which has a nice ring to it.)  It is the first Arch Enemy album to feature German vocalist Angela Gossow.

That's right -- that's a woman singing . . . or growling . . . on "Heart of Darkness." 

Angela Gossow

Gossow was diagnosed with nodules on her vocal chords the year after she joined Arch Enemy, which almost ended her vocal career before it got started.  But she worked with famed vocal coach Melissa Coach, creator of The Zen of Screaming series of instructional DVDs, who is best known for teaching singers "extreme phonation" -- that is, SCREAMING.

Here's "Heart of Darkness":

Click below to buy a live version of the song from Amazon:

Cowsills -- "Indian Lake" (1968)

Swim in the cove

Have a snack in the grove

Or you can rent a canoe

Napoleon once said that "There is no such thing as accident.  It is fate misnamed."  (Napoleon was a wise man.  Except when he invaded Russia in 1812.)

So was it fate that when I dropped by the Hertz desk at the Providence (RI) airport last month to pick up the car I would drive during my annual Memorial Day visit to Cape Cod, I was given a Chevrolet Sonic with a Sirius XM satellite radio?  (A Chevrolet Sonic is a dog of a car, and I have feeling I was given one as punishment for declining to pay $15 extra per day to be upgraded to a Volvo S60.)

Chevrolet Sonic

And was it fate when I stopped at a Cape Cod bike store to rent some wheels, and heard the song that I had been listening to on the '60s on 6 channel on my car radio playing on the store's satellite radio?

I idly mentioned that to the bike store proprietor, and promptly found myself listening to a monologue that touched on (among other things) his Vietnam War wounds, what the Newport Folk Festival was like in the early sixties, the Providence gangster's daughter he dated when they were teenagers, and his high school friendship with Billy Cowsill -- the oldest of the Cowsill siblings who formed a band in 1965 and went on to record three top ten singles.

And was it fate that when my bike ride was over and I was driving back, one of the songs I heard on my Chevrolet Sonic's satellite radio was "Indian Lake," one of the Cowsills' top ten hits?

Here's the proof for all you doubting Thomases out there:

How many Indian Lakes are there in the United States?  Go ahead -- take a guess.

According to the U. S. Geologic Survey's "Geographic Names Information System," there are exactly 99 Indian Lakes.

There are 27 states with at least one Indian Lake.  Alaska, California, Georgia, and Missouri are among the states with only one Indian Lake.  Arizona, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas each have two Indian Lakes.

For some reason, there are an inordinate number of Indian Lakes in the upper Midwest.  Wisconsin has nine, Minnesota has 12, and Michigan has a whopping 25.  (It would seem that Michiganders aren't the most imaginative folks around when it comes to naming the state's natural wonders.)

Not Indian Lake

There are about a thousand lakes and ponds on Cape Cod, but none of them are named Indian Lake.  

What's the difference between a lake and a pond?  There's no clear answer to that question.  

Some biologists consider a body of water to be a pond only if it is shallow enough for sunlight to penetrate to its bottom, which allows rooted plants to grow there.  But that definition is not universally accepted.

Most people think of lakes as being larger than ponds, but that's not always the case.  For example, two beautiful ponds that are right on the Cape Cod Rail Trail -- Seymour Pond and Long Pond -- cover 181 and 735 acres, respectively.

Not Indian Lake either

But Scargo Lake, which is only a few miles east of those two ponds, has an area of only 59 acres.  (Go figure.)

I'm not sure which Indian Lake the late Tony Romeo was thinking of when he wrote "Indian Lake" for the Cowsills in 1968.  He was born in Troy, New York, so maybe he thinking of one (or more) of the six Indian Lakes in New York state.

Romeo -- who also wrote "I Think I Love You" for the Partridge Family -- lived for a number of years in Dutchess County, New York, so perhaps he was thinking of the Indian Lake in Dutchess County.  (That lake is located smack dab on the New York-Connecticut state line, and part of it is located in Litchfield County, Connecticut -- which means that there are at most 98 Indian Lakes, because that U. S. Geologic Survey listing I mentioned above names that particular Indian Lake twice.)

The Cowsills with Ed Sullivan

I remember seeing the Cowsills on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967.  At that time, the group consisted of brothers Billy, Bob, Barry, and John Cowsill, their little sister Susan, and their mother Barbara.  (Billy, who was 19 at that time, was the oldest of the siblings.  Susan, who was only 8, was the youngest.)

My father said he thought it was nice that the mother and the little sister were in the group.  My retort was that the father probably said the only way he was buying the boys the drums, guitars, and amplifiers they needed was if they let their mom and their annoying little sister be in the band.

Here's "Indian Lake," which sold a million copies and reached #10 on the Billboard charts in 1968:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Peter Schilling -- "Major Tom" (1983)

Earth below us

Drifting falling

Floating weightless

Calling, calling home

Major Tom is a fictional astronaut who was the hero of David Bowie's breakthrough 1969 single, "Space Oddity":

Ground control to Major Tom

Commencing countdown, engines on

Major Tom subsequently appeared not only in a couple of other David Bowie songs, but in songs by several other recording artists.

Other than "Space Oddity," the best-known Major Tom song is Peter Schilling's 1983 "Major Tom (Coming Home)," which was a #1 or #2 hit in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland.  "Major Tom" made it to #14 on the U.S. Billboard "Hot 100" chart.

Schilling, who is from Stuttgart, originally recorded the song in German, and then recorded it in English.  Schilling released remixed versions of the song in 1994, 2000, and 2003.

Over a dozen others recorded covers of "Major Tom," including our old friend Plastic Bertrand and the Shiny Toy Guns, whose version was featured in a Lincoln MKZ commercial:  

There's a contemporaneous Lincoln commercial featuring Cat Power's cover of "Space Oddity":

William Shatner recorded both "Space Oddity" and "Major Tom" on his 2011 album, Seeking Major Tom, which featured Sheryl Crow, Peter Frampton, Johnny Winter, Brad Paisley, and Bootsy Collins (among others):

The version of "Major Tom (Coming Home)" that inspired this 2 or 3 lines was a pseudo-karaoke version performed by a character on the Breaking Bad television series.  

I've been watching Breaking Bad on DVD (shoutout to my local public library!) and saw the episode with "Major Tom" -- season four, episode four -- while I was visiting my parents in Joplin, Missouri recently.

The character who sings the karaoke "Major Tom" is Gale Boetticher (portrayed by David Costabile), a quirky chemist who assists the show's protagonist manufacture crystal meth before being murdered.

Gale is a sweet, lonely guy who reads science fiction and books about Eastern philosophy, sings along (in Italian) with opera recordings, and uses his chemist's skills to make perfect coffee:

Gale Boetticher making coffee

After he is murdered, the police discover a DVD of him singing "Major Tom" that was apparently recorded at a karaoke bar in Thailand.  (The DVD has Thai subtitles.) 

Here's Gale's version of "Major Tom":

You aficionados of old movies will have already guessed that Gale Boetticher was named after cult director Budd Boetticher, who is remembered mostly for the series of low-budget Westerns starring Randolph Scott that he directed in the late 1950s.

Here's a trailer for The Tall T, one of those Boetticher-Scott westerns:

Here's the English version of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)":

Click below to buy a karaoke version of the song from Amazon:

Haydn Quartet -- "Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet" (1909)

Through the field of clover

We'll drive up to Dover

On our golden wedding day

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I told you about "The Butterfly Effect" mural, which I saw on my last trip to my hometown -- Joplin, Missouri.  Click here if you haven't already read that post.

After looking at "The Butterfly Effect," I continued down Main Street and stumbled upon the dedication ceremony for another mural located at 8th and Main:

Here's a link to a local TV news report on the mural dedication ceremony, which includes an interview with artist Garin Baker.  

Like ancient Gaul, Baker's mural -- titled "Celebrating the Performing Arts in Joplin" -- est divisa in partes tres.  

The left-hand part of the mural depicts the Club Theatre, a 1400-seat theatre which opened in 1891:

Click here to read an account of the Club Theatre on the "Historic Joplin" website.  

The Club Theatre

The center of the mural shows the Fox Theatre, a lavish movie palace that seated almost 2000 patrons and opened in 1930:

The Fox, where I saw a number of movies when I was growing up in Joplin, closed in 1970 and is now owned by a church.

Click here to read more about the history of the Fox Theatre.

The right-hand panel of the mural depicts several young ballerinas, who symbolize the future of the performing arts in Joplin:

Here's a closer view of that portion of the mural:

Click here to read the artist's account of the creation of this mural.

Percy Wenrich, who was born in Joplin, in 1887, was one of the most successful composers of popular music of his generation.  His hit songs included "Moonlight Bay," "When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose," and "Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet."

Here's a photo of the young Wenrich, whose nickname was "The Joplin Kid":

"Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet" became Joplin's official song in 1951, a year before Wenrich died.  At the same time, the city named a hill on Main Street "Dover Hill" in honor of Wenrich.  (According to a contemporary newspaper report, the Dover Hill referenced in Wenrich's song was actually a few miles west of Joplin, near the Kansas line.)

Here's a 1909 recording of "Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet" by the Haydn Quartet, which was perhaps the most popular recording groups of the early 20th century.  The group's other hits included "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and "By the Light of the Silv'ry Moon."

It's probably a safe bet that this will be the oldest song ever featured on 2 or 3 lines.  But you never know.

Click below to buy a copy of that recording from Amazon:

The Butterfly Effect -- "Phoenix" (2005)

I am always by your side

I am always by your side

When I went to my hometown -- Joplin, Missouri -- to visit my parents recently, I saw a mural titled "The Butterfly Effect: Dreams Take Flight" on a building at 15th and Main.

That mural was in the works long before an EF-5 tornado struck Joplin just over three years ago, killing about 160 people and destroying the city's largest hospital, its high school, and about 7000 homes:

Lead muralist David Loewenstein of the Community Mural Project, the organization behind the artwork, said that his team decided to feature tornado-related images in the mural because the storm was a recurring image in the drawings created by some 200 Joplin children who the artists worked with.  

The mural features butterflies because a number of children who survived the tornado later reported that they had been protected by guardian angels who took the form of "butterfly people," and because many of the children who collaborated with the mural artists drew pictures of them.

Click here to read a St. Louis Post-Dispatch piece about Joplin's butterfly people.  

Click here to see a CBS Evening News report on the butterfly people.

And here's a secondhand account of one incident involving the butterfly people:  

As the tornado approached, a father and his two young children were outside in their yard.  They did not have enough time to get in to the house for cover.  The father of the kids threw himself on top of his babies and they were on the ground.  The father dug his hands into the ground as the tornado plowed right over them.  The soles of the shoes he was wearing, were ripped right off.  He LOST the soles to his SHOES!  Amazing!  The father and the children stood up, after the tornado moved on, UNHARMED.  The 4-year-old little girl looked at her daddy and said, “Daddy, I saw that big butterfly holding you down."

"The Butterfly Effect" mural was dedicated about four months after the tornado struck.  Click here to read more about the mural and the dedication ceremony.

Click here and you'll be taken to artist Loewenstein's website, which has a good photo of the entire "The Butterfly Effect" mural.  

The mural incorporates not only butterflies, but also depictions of clean-up activity, references to Joplin's history, and a phoenix -- the mythical bird that is reborn from the ashes of its ancestor.

Langston Hughes

The mural contains two excerpts from "In Time of Silver Rain," a poem by Joplin native Langston Hughes.  (Hughes wrote the poem for playright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun, after she told him she had cancer.)

These lines from the Hughes poem appear in the far left panel of the mural:

In time of silver rain
The butterflies 

Lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry

These lines appear in the far right panel, just above the depiction of the phoenix:

And trees put forth 

New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky

Here's a closeup:

Here's a photo of another portion of the mural:

Click here and you'll be taken to a more detailed explanation of the mural's content.  

There's now another public project in Joplin that uses the butterfly in symbolic fashion.  Last month, on the third anniversary of the Joplin tornado, the "Landscapes of Resilience" butterfly garden opened in the rebuilt Cunningham Park.   

Click here to read about the butterfly garden, which I missed on this trip but will definitely visit when I return in September.  

The Butterfly Effect is an alternative metal band from Australia.  "Phoenix" was a download-only single released in 2005.  I was looking for a song that referenced the phoenix or butterflies to feature in this post.  I got two for the price of one with this song.

Here's "Phoenix":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: 

Frank Weir -- "The Happy Wanderer" (1954)

I love to go a-wandering

Along the mountain track

And as I go I love to sing

I'm never without my iPod on my daily walks and bike rides.  I usually sing along (loudly) with the songs I'm listening to -- and don't think that I stop singing when I meet another hiker or biker on the way.

I ain't shy, boys and girls.  And I have always been one hell of a good singer.  So why hide my vocal light under a bushel when I meet other happy wanderers?  No-sir-ee, Bob!

When I was in my hometown of Joplin, Missouri last month, I wandered happily on the trails along both banks of Shoal Creek between the low-water bridge in McIndoe Park and the old Redings Mill bridge.  

That's about a three-mile hike with a fair amount of elevation change -- it takes a good hour to complete the circuit.

My starting point is usually the Wildcat Glades Conservation and Audubon Center just off South Main Street:

I headed north on the east side of Shoal Creek, and after a few minutes I saw these fisherman.  You can tell how shallow Shoal Creek is here:

I came to the low-water bridge after two-thirds of a mile, and crossed the creek:

Heading south on the west side of Shoal Creek, I passed under the Interstate 44 highway bridge.  The graffiti artists had been at work on the bridge supports and the paved trail itself.

Here's an inspiring message:

This graffitist posed a knotty conundrum:

(Think about it.)

Some people never get enough potty humor:

Once you've passed the I-44 bridge, the trail starts to go uphill and then forks.

The right fork takes you to the Wildcat Park chert glades, an almost unique ecosystem.  (There are only 60 acres of chert glades in the world, and almost half of them are in Joplin's Wildcat Park.)

To me, the most remarkable thing about the chert glades is the existence of real-life cactus there.  Chert, which is a very hard sedimentary rock, breaks down into thin, dry soil suitable for plants that are usually found in deserts:

Click here to read an article about the Joplin chert glades from Audubon magazine.

The left fork leads to the mile-long "Bluff Trail," which rises until it is about 100 feet above Shoal Creek.

Back in the day, before they built the barrier, you could pull off the road into this area and make out in relative safety:

The trail goes right along the edge of the bluff -- if you suffer from acrophobia, you might not really enjoy yourself on this part of the hike:

Here's a video that will give you a better idea of what the bluff trail is like:

At one point, you have to hop over this crack in the bluff.  The native Americans who once lived in this area believed this fissure went all the way to the very center of the earth:

(I'm so full of sh*t, my eyes are brown.)

The trail ends at the old Redings Mill bridge -- once used by cars, it is now a pedestrian-only bridge.

The bridge crosses Shoal Creek just above these beautiful shoals:

As I was crossing the bridge, I saw two kayakers going down the creek:

On the way back to the Audubon Center, you pass a cave with a blocked-off entrance:

Shortly after that, I came to the end of the trail:

Friedrich-Wilhelm Möller composed the music for "The Happy Wanderer" shortly after the end of World War II.  His sister Edith wrote the lyrics, which are based on a text by a 19th-century German poet, for the Obernkirchen Children's Choir, which she conducted.  The choir's performance of the song at a music festival in 1953 was broadcast by the BBC, and British listeners loved it. 

The Obernkirchen choir's recording of the song was one of the top five singles in the UK in 1954, and it was covered by many other recording artists -- including Frank Weir, a British jazz musician.

His recording of the song featured a male chorus, with Weir's soprano saxophone solos between verses. 

Here's the original recording, in German:

Here's Frank Weir's cover, in English:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Little Big Town -- "Little White Church" (2010)

I might be cheap

But I ain't free

I recently visited my hometown -- Joplin, Missouri -- and was pleasantly surprised to discover some truly fabulous nightlife.  Who knew Joplin had so much after-dark action going on?

With the court's permission, let me introduce the People's Exhibit A: the Redings Mill Inn.

The Redings Mill Inn

The Redings Mill Inn has been around since 1872.  I'm not speaking from personal knowledge, of course -- but that's what the sign outside the Inn says.

My mother remembers visiting the Redings Mill Inn back in the forties, when it was a class joint offering fine food and dancing.

I remember the Inn from back in the seventies, when it was called Gene and Darlene's.

Mural of the old Redings Mill
at the Redings Mill Inn

I decided to drop in last month to see what if the place had changed much since my last visit 40 or so years ago.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the old dog had learned some new tricks -- namely, karaoke.

The very first song I heard when I walked in was perhaps my favorite country-and-western song of all time -- David Allan Coe's "You Never Even Called Me By My Name."

That song is famous for the following verse, which proudly incorporates the five fundamental subjects of country-western songs -- namely, momma, trains, trucks, prison, and getting drunk:

I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison

And I went to pick her up in the rain

Before I could get to the station in the pickup truck

She got runned over by a damned old train

Two enthusiastic male karaokers sang the hell out of that bad boy, and I enjoyed every second of their performance:

The festivities were overseen by the Inn's manager, a hail-fellow-well-met type who went by the name Roscoe.  (You are correct -- Roscoe is not her real name.)  That's Roscoe you hear on the video above, replying to each "You never even called me by my name" with a hearty "Dirty rotten motherf*cker!" -- which apparently is her way of calling the singer by his name per his request.

Most of the audience was content to remain seated during the performances, listening intently and sucking down beer like Prohibition was starting in the next hour or two.

But one couple tripped the light fantastic all evening:

Roscoe proved she was someone who had her patrons' best interests at heart when I ordered a draft Budweiser.  "It's $2.50, hon," she said.  "But a pitcher's only $6, so if you're going to have more than a couple, that's your best bet."

An honest innkeeper indeed!  And talented to boot, as I learned when Roscoe took the stage to perform today's featured song, Little Big Town's 2010 hit, "Little White Church":  

When I complimented Roscoe on her performance, she modestly told me that her 21-year-old daughter was a much more talented chanteuse.  The younger Roscoe had performed with her mother earlier that evening, but -- alas and alack -- I had missed the mother-daughter duet. :-(

"Little White Church" is a cautionary tale that all 21-year-olds of the female persuasion should pay close heed to.  Let's face it, ladies -- you've got something we men want, and we'll do just about anything to get it.  

I'm talking about chicken and gravy, of course -- as this verse makes clear:

No more calling me baby

No more loving like crazy

No more chicken and gravy

I ain't gonna have your baby! 

Unless you take her down to the little white church and make an honest women out of her, of course.  But that's the one thing a man won't do -- unless he is truly desperate for that chicken and gravy.

I look forward to enjoying karaoke night at the Redings Mill Inn on my next visit to dear old Joplin.  Perhaps I'll even consume enough adult beverages to take my turn at the microphone.

If I do, I'll need to pick a really dynamite song to perform.  Maybe my loyal readers will help me out by suggesting some songs that would be good choices for my international karaoke debut?

Here's "Little White Church"

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: