For those who for some reason haven't yet understood from any of the many previous posts and mentions, how fanatical I am about the Prisoners, let me state it again succinctly: VERY! To me, they were by far the best of the 80s garage revival and just take a moment to think about all the incredible bands the world had at that time (Tell Tale Hearts, The Creeps, Crimson Shadows, The Last Drive, The Stems, Miracle Workers, Chesterfield Kings etc). The Prisoners were a bone-juddering affair. The group came together at the close of the mod revival thing or the dawn of the new garage-psych resurrection and despite being perfect for both scenes, the group remained largely snobbish about such trends. In fact, they even snubbed their hometown and their friend Billy Childish by rejecting the Medway's recording methods.
If they had been willing to change their approach, the outcome might have been different. However, the band was set on doing things their own way and refused to heed any advice on how to achieve success. Consequently, The Prisoners never graduated from playing in smaller London venues. Quality over quantity, fuck you very much!
As you can see for yourself, I used the legendary "Live at Leeds" by The Who as a pattern for the cover of this compilation of live recordings of the Prisoners from a time when they and I were very young. Their sound brings more to mind, though, the Rolling Stones of the "Got Live If You Want It" era, if the latter had had a Hammond in their line-up and Steve Winwood on keys shortly before he left to join Traffic.
So, the idea behind this concept was simple, yet it has not been officially implemented until now. Every legitimate released live recording of them had to be collected, whether from the relatively rare split LP with the Milkshakes or the stray tracks included as bonus material on the CD reissues of the ever-top Big Beat/Ace label. The end result was a set of 18 songs, none of which had been used twice and a time period that it seems to be their absolute peak:1983–1988 (most probably, in some cases I wasn't sure about the date of recording). I made this to try and deceive myself since I never had the chance to see them live.
I chose the order of the tracks purely chronologically, and I listened to it several times before posting it (as usually). I always try to consider every possible detail, such as sound matching and flow, as if it were an official release (I have quite a few issues with OCD, I am aware of that). You know what? I really enjoyed it and I hope you did too! Here's just another labour of love from this blog to some of the heroes of its youth.
