How Not To Run a Prison Concert 

You can never be too prepared

You will do awesome at anything you do.😊

Play some death metal at Alcatraz 😂😂

You guys should all rob a bank just to go to prison together.

@@MrKillervincent Alcatraz isn’t an operating prison.

Id recommend watching it to anyone who hasnt seen it.

Yes! I was going to comment about that. It’s them at the Napa State Hospital and it all looks like it’s shot exclusively on security cameras. Classic. The perfect venue for the Godfathers (and godmother) of psychobilly.

@@attentiondeficitsquirrel7660 Lux seemed like he had a great time dancin with the institutionalized.

@@daBEAGLE1017 Yes! They even let one of them sing a few notes! It’s great because there are fleeting moments when it’s difficult to distinguish the patients from the band.

@@attentiondeficitsquirrel7660 i wouldnt have called what she was doing as singing. More like wailing. I mustve watched that show 10X already and everytime it makes me happy.

Anyone who doesn't like Johnny Cash is dead inside, and incapable of feeling anything but sadness and despair.

​@@slappy8941ironically, Thats what most of his music is about

I think Johnny Cash definitely fits within the niche of being accessible to an old and modern mainstream audience while using a what wouldn't be considered mainstream sound in modern day. Truly one of the most important figures in music.

If you don’t like Johnny cash aren’t you even human?

No I don't got to respect the most overrated garbage ever! I don't respect any scumbag that puts on a concert for criminals

oh my god thats gold

"Ironically, the song is used by the Colorado Police Department as the soundtrack to their instructional videos demonstrating the consequences of drink driving."

@@thc_freebaser Our D.A.R.E. people used "Because I Got High" when I was in first grade. Obviously they only played the first verse.

@@G_FRE I wonder how many kids looked up the full thing after

He doesn't mind stooping to the common people

I genuinely wish I cared about the message songs carried more, I'm just too focused on how it sounds.

and yet we live in one

Lame.

I agree with what you're saying but man "greatest musician?" Come on

They were in there for a reason, deemed a danger to others. There's a line between being quirky and being dangerous.

I've been on a psych ward before. A good three quarters of the people in there are normal enough to present as "normal enough", until they aren't. In an alternate timeline, a schizophrenic thought the lead singer was mocking him, so bit him in the neck or stabbed him with a pen he stole from a nurse and broke at an angle. We are in there as dangers to ourselves and/or others. So yeah, we'll all look like we're jamming until we're not. We'd all sit and watch the TV like some strange happy-family until an advert that triggered some kid would come on and we couldn't change the channel because entire TV monitor was stored in a transparent safe. I bet being at this concert was so liberating for a short few moments, and it's equal parts benevolent and stupid that they performed there! But then the moment is gone, and these people (like myself) have issues with their very neurological structures, so a single concert isn't the gap between living and suicide lol. Bit disrespectful to the general human condition to say "omg they probably saved lives!" no, everyone still lives with their condition whether they listened to a band or not.

​@@AdamOwenBrowning I've been in a psych ward too and while I can't speak for everyone's experience, the one I was in was the most alienating and inhumane environment - but in lots of lowkey ways. The place I was in felt like it discouraged any kind of human expression and that is kinda the antithesis of how I deal with my own issues. I thrive off music and art, as it gives me space to feel free to "be myself". I know what you mean when you say people live with these issues their entire lives, but sometimes it only takes one experience or one piece of art to flip your entire way of thinking and it doesn't have to be much. I don't think that's disrespectful to the human condition, and I'm not saying these people's issues sudddenly went away or got better afterwards. I'm just happy that in such a rigid conformist time, some people were given the freedom to feel like they weren't ostracized and could actually engage with something.

@@AdamOwenBrowning​: You’ve clearly been though some shit, so I want to make it clear I’m not judging your experience in institutions or your walk in life generally. But to be fair, EVERYONE is normal enough until they aren’t. Everyone has a point that when they’re pushed past it they’ll be a danger to themselves or to others. Again, I’m not naive enough to think there aren’t people whose issues don’t warrant being separated from society because clearly there are. Just out of curiosity, your "three quarters" assessment, is that based on your personal experience or is there any research to back it up, because I haven’t been able to find anything about it online?

That's one of my favorite things ever! It was so natural and seeing everyone including the Cramps having such a good time made me tear up. It was the perfect music for the occasion too.The first time I saw it was on 120 Minutes on MTV, I thought I imagined it until I could look it up on the internet many years later.

Preach it!

I bought youuuuu and a brand new Ford.....

@@GAFloppa you said you wanted a Cadillac.. I gave you seven children, and now you want to give them back

Oh yeah. No doubt. If you have not heard it, go listen to it...and listen good.

@@lagartogrande1908 "lets have a warm welcome for Warden Smith" ,( or whatever his name was). Inmates: "Booooo! Boooo!"

Maybe we can lobby to get Music For Airports played in its entirety

This sounds like it could be pushing into “unreasonable punishment” type territory

@@mack9225 depends on the style! pick something with a bit of noise or edge to it, nothing too easy-listening

@@lachlancampbell5679 nah I was playin I actually personally love ambient music hahaha but I know a lot of people that get annoyed by it super quick

@@mack9225 oh it's definitely a hard sell for many! My friends won't give it five seconds

⬛

I think he was implying that it was a bad idea in general because if your own band were to do the same thing you're risking your careers just to drop acid

Cuz this dudes a narc! Same with the cramps thing about the patient doctor confidentiality, like, who cares??

I came here to comment the same thing lol, nowadays hell no but back than I could see it happening easy

@@angel-q that's just a gross misinterpretation. The author meant that it's pretty miraculous the mental hospital didn't notice and have an issue with it, which they had all the right to do. That's why this footage is pretty unlikely and we're lucky we've got it

How 2 get stabbed 101

Then they get out right after for serving their time and having to listen to that album.

All 3 people

they only filmed saint anger, they played the classics

@@pyro7358 They'd get stabbed just for playing St. Anger.

Chino atleast used to be the lowest of low security prisons, it's got an interesting history

I was a looking for the Metallica comment :)

St. Anger huh...

Imagine being in prison and then getting forced to listen to St. Anger. Pretty sure that qualifies as "cruel and unusual"

He was though. You just described Einstein perfectly

@@electromancer2645 Einstein worked in a patent office for a few years, then went on to become the biggest thing to happen to physics since Newton. Bear built the wall of sound and worked as GD's audio engineer for a few years, and became the biggest thing to happen to LSD since Hoffmann.

@@d3adc0ps Einstein was a plagiarist and a fraud who depended on compiling other's works and having his actual genius wife do all the real math.

@@d3adc0ps he was purposely left out of the Manhattan project upon request by people who were actually geniuses because they knew he was a fraud.

@@electromancer2645 exceptionally smooth-brained take

yeah i think as far as life albums go there’s no touching folsom prison or 98.12.28

If you don't have the box set, get it. It's great!

I love the inmates loudly booing the Warden! That record is better than BB King Live at the Regal in my opinion.

Your first 2 sentences are electrifying. I feel like I should be able to turn a page; I just want to keep reading to see where it goes.

What did you see in mental institutions?

​@@kirjianlet's just say a normal person would feel like absolute shit if they were in a mental institution, let alone someone who is mentally ill. They aren't there to help the mentally ill, they're there to separate them from the rest of society.

@@kirjian I was in the criminal ward at the one I went to so I was in with people who had done crazy shit, I saw extreme violence from the patients against each other, from the staff against the patients (forced injections to calm them when they freaked out,etc.) and a lot of sexual violence stuff aimed at each other and me but I cliqued up with another kid that was there for an evaluation like me and we avoided that shit luckily. Probably a lot like prison but with even more unstable unpredictable people.

Did you do regular set material or try to tailor it more? Did you get feedback?

@@picahudsoniaunflocked5426 I used regular material but tried to make it the best material for the moment. I did ad lib one joke about how they must go hard in the paint (we were doing the show on the jail basketball court) because the paint had been rubbed off the court

I used to serve low security prisoners at my first job, because the guards would take them out on errands as they got close to the end of their sentence. I never thought anything of it tbh.

Danheads unite

Kid Charlemagne is such a great song. I love steely dan

Interesting

i did not realise

and the band's name is a reference to a dildo. makes you think.....

Did not know that last bit so thanks.

"BB King Live At Cook County Jail" is another great record.

@@goodun2974 I was hoping to find this comment!👍

@@jacktorrance2633 There's a funny moment at the beginning of the Cook County Jail record when some woman with a high pitched church-lady voice tells the audience of prisoners to clap their hands for Warden Smith or whatever his name was (presumably for bringing BB in to play), and they all boo loudly!

What did you do?

And also I agree with the comment

@@mcfcfan1870 I got caught up in the War on Drugs. Probably the most common thread amongst those I was locked up with. 😕

I'm pretty sure he preformed for the women too

@@misstekhead you might enjoy the comedy of amy oppy (amy oppy comedy), she did 20 years for $20 of crack. I hope you are doing great now

People who haven't been, have no idea how bad food can get. I live in one of the richest counties in the country, and they spend the least per meal in their jail. Like 16 cents a meal I think. Its almost inedible. One hot meal a day pre pandemic (then it went to zero hot meals). How are you going to call a sandwich of stale bread, thick sweaty bologna, a piece of unmountable cheese, and 4 stale knock off Oreos dinner? And they serve it at 4:00 p.m., so you don't need for another 12 hours. Like, I know jail is punishment but that shit is torture. Let me ever get 9 to 12 months in jail again, I will stand up and call the judge a c*nt in front of the whole Court to catch that contempt of court charge and hopefully just get sent to prison instead for 14 months.

I only went to juvenile, but the food there was basically the same shit they fed in school cafeterias.

@@cakesodomy4358 "Let me ever get 9 to 12 months in jail again".... and you don't see a problem with that statement??? How about don't commit crimes and you won't have to worry about the shit food... I swear people's mentality nowadays is too fucked for us to last as a species.

@@marikasdaughter6263 How about how dare you judge? You have zero idea what charge that person was facing or under what circumstances. Laws vary between jurisdictions, plenty of innocent people plead out or take the rap for others or are charged with unjust laws or unenforceable laws designed to punish vulnerable groups, & people convicted of crimes are not necessarily bad people who will harm or keep harming others. This person didn't bring up their charge or circumstances or try to justify anything, but commented in response to another person bc they could relate to each others' experience. They apparently served time. They were already judged. How about you get back on your high horse & take your self-righteous shame-mongering boss-babe self back to Karentown & leave these folks in peace, Ma'am.

nice story

So it was like the arsenio audience

If you’d find the time now it would be nice to hear the longer story

when I first read that, I thought--"I never knew the croc hunter did time"

Correction: it was at Sing Sing, David Hoffman filmed the whole thing and there's a fantastic video of King performing The Thrill is Gone with some excellent banter at the beginning..

Hey there, I appreciate the kind words & thoughtful comment, but I take issue with one thing you said -- "a bit of deeper research could easily be done to understand these peoples actions instead of making assumptions." I stand by my research and do not believe I've portrayed anyone inaccurately. With Fugazi I very deliberately pointed out their strong punk ethos & said verbatim "they did it for the right reasons." As far as BB King, I actually included a clip from that concert and mentioned how it was one of several 70s prison concerts that have become famous & well-regarded. I don't think any assumptions were made there. It sounds like you might be getting hung up on the title, "How Not To Run a Prison Concert" although I specifically say in the intro that it would "explore all the ways that you *should, and should not* run a prison concert." In other words, this was never intended to be a roundup of prison concert failures, but rather a nuanced look at prison concerts over the years (at least, as nuanced as one can get with 120 years of history in 13 minutes.)

@@Bandsplaining hey, sorry for insinuating you don't do enough research. The hard work you do is readily apparent in all of your work, that comment was more about things you said that seemed to be a jump in your argument that didn't readily make sense to me. I didn't recognise the b.b king footage you used as Hoffman's, his work is fascinating. I look forward to your next!

@@rossamundbrennan7248 fax fax, but imma call u gay cause it’s the internet.

Angela Davis should pay a visit to Portlaoise Prison and realise the people in there should not be on the streets

Im sitting here watching this and saw I was subbed already and wondered what I had seen before and bam it's the dude who put me onto zamrock fuckin A love this guy

I think most Punk/outsider musicians have more experience than most interacting with people who suffer with mental and physical disabilities, PTSD and all manner of other differently abled brains. Many of these folks, self included, spent some amount of their life living on the streets, in squats, on couches, in group homes, generally sleeping rough. And in these places you find people as mentioned above, Your compatriots. There are people who get you they become your family, there are people who want to hurt you, fu(k you and steal from you. But those folks all leave an impression. Seeing bands want to give back to those that have been hospitalized or imprisoned is to me the mark of a true artist, that understands the balm of music, and the elixir of art and wants to share it with some people in our world that need it the most.

In those days anything could go down at the punk shows so I'm sure it wasn't much difference of a comfort zone

That Aukstyon footage is wild... do you know if there's any more backstory? Pretty crazy they did that in '88

@@Bandsplaining This is all I got on the topic (from an interview with the lead singer) In 1987 we played in a prison, located in Yablonevka. I still remember this concert. This performance was arranged by a photographer who, unfortunately, has already died. He himself once sat in this prison. He was arrested for pornography charges. His wife worked in the Leningrad circus, and one night he decided to shoot a naked card ballet in the arena. He was then caught and given six years. After his release, he agreed with the prison's political officer about our concert. We played at an asphalt-covered parade ground. The scenery was very dark, nothing but a gigantic parade ground and rows of benches. After the concert, we went into Lenin's room to change. Back then we used to perform with makeup on. Anyway, so we are washing off the makeup and then we are told that the "political officer wants to talk to you". He came and began to give us a lecture that on the whole everything was fine, but “here, here and here it was necessary to sing not like this, but like this” This has never happened with us. We have always been in your face about not carrying, and someone's opinion was meaningless. We only cared about our own enjoyment of the music. We did not recognize nor respect the opinions of the authorities, maybe it saved us. Those who did not like our work, we just told to piss off. But here is a person who expresses his opinion towards us, and we do not object to him because there is a feeling that we can easily be left in this prison. Fuck knows ... You also have to know what kind of faces we had at that time, and the kind of music we played in front of the prisoners, god knows what was all that. The program was from “Everything is calm in Baghdad” (the album from 1989). I don´t know if the prisoners really needed all this. We asked who was sitting in the audience, We were told: "Drug addicts, murderers, burglars." In general, these are the typical prisoners. No political prisoners were at the concert. Interviewer: - So you haven't got any fans in the criminal underworld? What fans? They perceived us as degenerates. It was like waving a red rag in front of a bull. They are sitting, and here we go! There was such infantile freedom in our faces back then, I think this was unpleasant for them. We even had the idea that the commander did it on purpose in order to annoy the prisoners. Like - "look at what freaks are free to roam the streets nowadays".

@@nikitalane5543 Wow, that's incredible on so many levels. "Look at what freaks are free to roam the streets nowadays." 😂 Thanks so much for digging that up and (presumably) translating it too. Do you happen to have a link to that interview as well?

Haha it actually just takes a really long time to make one of these. Because I never talk straight into the camera, and instead show archival footage/photographs, it takes a long time to edit. It's also completely a 1-man operation still. But I reckon that could change in the near future. I like that idea. Always really enjoyed Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker & the like, and have been meaning to find more topics about electric blues. Appreciate the comment!

The simple answer is after ww2 europe was poor and shattered and america was the richest country in the world som teenagers started eating up american culture first with blues and country and by the late 50s rock n roll

@@jonastomsson4479 an adjacent answer is that during the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England, the government basically banned public performance of traditional folk music that contained any hint of labor struggles or class warfare ( same as they tried to ban speaking Gaelic), and so a lot of traditional music of the British Isles was largely forgotten ---- but when record company scouts and so-called "songcatchers" started venturing out to isolated areas of the US with portable record cutting machines, they discovered old traditional songs that had come to the US with irish and Scottish immigrants and had survived in the Appalachias through the oral tradition! This eventually spurred music fans and musicologists to rediscover their roots and search dusty libraries for the Childe ballads and so on.

Crazy how much you underestimate how much work it takes to make a video like this. I suggest you do the research and make your own video and keep track of your hours

I think that's probably the quality it was shot in, considering it was 1978 on a consumer-level video camera. The label that released the tape also released a DVD in 2004. But based on the reviews of the DVD, I don't think it's any different -- "Fuzzy, blured, grainy, out of focus, one mike sound, superb" www.amazon.com/Cramps-Live-State-Mental-Hospital/dp/B00018D5RQ#customerReviews

@The return of Mr. Tickles I saw them in concert 17 times. They are the greatest rock band ever. So there.

I actually haven't seen it. Early on everyone was saying my voice sounded like Ray Romano so I just looked for the sexiest picture of him I could find. Turns out it was from that show. It sounds pretty cool, though, so I really should check it out.

@@Bandsplaining Ray Romano has the thickest NY accent but I guess you sound a little alike lol the show wasn’t my favorite, but as a person who loves music you’d probably enjoy it.

Ha! Good to know. And agreed, I never quite understood why Ray Romano. I've never lived in NYC, or even the east coast. A couple people have said I sound like Harold Ramis and I think that makes more sense.

Oh yeah ten years for me 👍

The Lone Rangers, the first band to play a show while in prison

Why not?