music from prison

IdleRich

IdleRich
The Stranglers played a gig at Chelmsford Prison too (with the Pistols playing there, it was almost a stop on the gig circuit)
If one sought to identify the exact moment when this country actually climbed into the famed handcart and headed directly towards hell, then one could do worse than look at the moment when political correctness went mad and changed prisons so that going to jail was no longer a brutal period of confinement in horrendous conditions which one had to survive on a tiny amount of barely edible food, but rather became something akin to a pleasant spell in a holiday camp during which the prisoner was allowed to have a tv in his common room, watch his favourite bands and hardly ever get raped. You couldn't make it up.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Ah, well this is a big one that I only just remembered - The Stones, "We Love You" - doesn't it start with the sound of the cell door being shut and locked?
That immediately puts me in mind of Bernard Szajner's track Welcome To Death Row from his album in support of Amnesty International. I think somewhere on this opening track (or possibly one of the others) there are the noises of cell doors being slammed and footsteps, probably of a sinister gaoler type figure, approaching down the echoing corridor.



This is of course an album in support of political prisoners rather than most of the above which, if not at actually celebrating incarceration, do tend to see it as a likely consequence of the thug lifestyle. Not something to be actively sought out for sure, but something which, should it occur, does convey upon the artist a certain mark of authenticity.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
Minimalist composer Ingram Marshall made the album Alcatraz using ambiences from the now deserted island prison


Actually reviewed that album in a column about New Age (smuggled in as much ambient, Pauline Oliveros and ECM as I could to avoid having to listen to / write about actual New Age - this is early '90s, long before New Age becoming hip)
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
John Lydon got slung in the slammer on a visit to Dublin after an altercation with some policemen in a bar.

The traumatic experience inspired this PiL song which references Mountjoy


I wonder if "Four Enclosed Walls," the first track on Flowers of Romance, is also about being in the nick
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
Johnny's "replacement" in the Pistols was a jailbird not actually in jail but on the lam and living the life of Riley down Rio way - Ronald Biggs the Great Train Robber and Wandsworth HMP escapee

 

blissblogger

Well-known member
Another experimental electronic musician who made a record about prison


This has been Creel Poned - below is the Mimaroglu / Alpha State blurb about the unofficial reish

Creel Pone replication of this wonderful pair of Chicagoland "Paste-on" Private Press LPs. The first, "Labyrinth (Prison Walls)" was self-issued on the Composer's "Warp Records" (no relation) in 1978 & covers the score for "LABYRINTH", a piece created for electronic music and laser light created in 1977-78 & first performed at Chicago's Omega Intermedia Center. LABYRINTH is dedicated to Steve Biko, freedom fighter murdered by South African government.

The second, "Omnicircus", offers a single "Electronic Composition" in two parts, "Kriegspiel" & "Eropoc," intended at the soundtrack "for the first 2 sections of 'OMNICIRCUS', a theatre piece for electronic music, computer graphics, video synthesis, dance, sculpture, architecture, and drama" by one Frank Garvey.

Garvey is an intriguing character; born & raised in Urbana in an artistic family - his father was a close collaborator of Harry Partch's - he studied Video Art & Animation at at the Art Institute of Chicago before heading out to the Bay Area in the 80s & setting up a "Robotic" theater / performance collective under the same name as this piece - albeit 10 years later - before relocating to Pittsburgh to teach at Carnegie Mellon in the late 90s. The music here would appear to be born out of a post-Industrial fascination with harsh, sliding, mechanistic textures - not too far removed from the tape-echo addled synthesis of Maurizio "M.B." Bianchi - this certainly makes sense given Garvey's later predilections towards Jean Tinguely / Mark Pauline -styled automatons & associated anti-humanistic conceits. Text on the rear-cover of "Omnicircus" - placed just below a tell-all mushroom cloud - reads: "The danger of nuclear destruction; the enveloping of the embryo by the womb; the enveloping of the womb by the pelvis; the enveloping of the pelvis by the tissue seared by newstar; the enveloping of the carrion crow; the enveloping of the carrion dog; the enveloping of the carrion itself by the primeval light of hellfire newstar."
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Ok, I found a Vybz kartel song about being in prison, check these lyrics!

Yo frata (back to life) me wa go (back to reality)
Me wa go (back to reality)
Listen, you can get pum pum a prison
A next man have you gal when you missing
Stay far from war that a coppa
And led you can't get head when you dead.
The food a shit, bed concrete, sunday gleaner ah me damn sheet
You can't sleep dere me a warn you
Bare roach and rat crawl pon you
When the cage lock you gave to thug it up
Inna them place yah dutty like rubbish truck
Me just a preeback (reminescence) happy day memories
Weh me kids, weh me wife, weh me benz is
Them place yah make you know who you friends is
Make you know the real gal them from
If you a punk if you nah nuh defen-is
Badman jailer beat out you senses the electric fances and the tall wall
Regular me see man siddung and staat bawl
Society deh suh near but you can't go
Everyday suh me just a pray suh me want guh
(Back to life) me wa go (back to reality)
Me wa go (back to life) me wa go (back to reality)
Listen, you can't get pum pum a prison
A next man have you gal when you missing
Stay far from war that a coppa and led
You can't get head when dead
Lock down fi 23 hour
1 hour split up inna 2 half hour
15 fi food and 15 fi showa
Couple hour lata the next 3o minutes is
15 fi wash dutty clothes if you got none
15 fi look smoking fi guh lock down
Real thugz nuh backdown
Inna them pl; ace fi youh get a jamma stop
The medical a wait fi yuh
The victim surrenda
Waada fuck up the offenda
Su whi a the real winna?
Longtime me don't eat a real dinna
Meal inya fuck uo
Suh me smuggle some rum
Through the steel winda
Just fi get me appetite happy
Right you know prison gave a code
But zip not you code
Like mavado me want do road
Suh society let me out back pon yuh road
Me waa go (back to life)
Me waa go (back to reality, back to reality)

 
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