The Sex Pistols -- Live at Chelmsford Top Security Prison

  Why two album covers, you ask? Because the story of the Sex Pistol's 1976 concert in Chelmsford Prison in England is one of the more bizarre stories of an album I've ever heard. I have to give props to Ned Raggett and Mark Deming and their Allmusic reviews for providing information I had no idea of until not too long ago.

 The album on the left is the original release of the Sex Pistol's 1976 concert to a crowd of English prisoners. I first heard it some time during high school, from a cassette I checked out at the public library. I didn't know that much about punk music at the time, but I knew that, as far as legendary went, the Sex Pistols were tops. I had heard "Never Mind the Bollocks" before, and may have been too young to understand exactly what was so historically important about that album. But after a few listens, I was able to quickly latch on to this one. It doesn't seem anymore to be so "punk rock" as it is "punk rock & roll", and I think that makes it more accessible.

Throughout the show, the sound of agitated prisners and alarm sirens is persistent. Lead singer Johnny Rotten spends most of his time between songs (and some during them) berating & belittling the prisoners in ways only a man protected by a very sturdy chain-link fence and armed guards would dare: "You're all stupid, you got caught. Better do your homework next time."...."I bet you like it here, it's just like being in the womb, i'nt it?" As the show continues, you start to wonder if the band will actually MAKE IT through the show without being ripped apart, Natural Born Killers-style. But they continue on in the same fashion for the duration, rocking HARD on covers of The Who's "Substitute" and The Monkees (!?!?!?) "Stepping Stone". Guitarist Steve Jones and bassist Glen Matlock (no, Sid was not on this one, thankfully), while they're not in perfect form, play so torridly, they sound like they're about to make their guitars scream in pain. They finally do finish, and even take an encore,  asking if the crowd will "come and see us at our next gig? The drinks are all on us!"

Let me ask you: What could be more punk than a bunch of, well, "punks", playing for a group of caged human animals that are this close to tearing them apart, and relishing the opportunity? Clearly, this isn't Johnny Cash's prison crowd; by the sound of it, these guys are out for BLOOD! As the set fades out, you wonder exactly HOW the band managed to get out of there un-shivved!

Here's where the whole rock-&-roll fantasy begins crumbling down. From the liner notes written by band engineer Dave Goodman, we learn that the songs were re-sequenced for release #1. OK, not a big deal in and of itself. But, over the course of time, a number of "truths" come out:

-- Bassist Glen Matlock's instrument was not picked up by the mixing board, and was dubbed later in the studio -- confirmed as TRUE
-- The crowd noise and the sirens were added later by Dave Goodman -- confirmed as TRUE
-- While some of Johnny Rotten's diatribes were original, the vast majority were recorded after the show (TRUE), supposedly by a "very poor" Rotten immitator -- unable to be confirmed
-- Supposedly, this Johnny Rotten "immitator" sings over the REAL Rotten on certain tracks -- unable to be confirmed

Oddly, only a very small part of me was disappointed by these revelations. Release #1, in my opinion, still rocks. But I decided to open my ears to the "original" show, and bought it on disc this week. Indeed, Matlock's bass is barely audible, the songs are sequenced differently, and some of the spoken words by Rotten on Release #1 have been re-recorded from the original, or added afterwards. Echo effects have definitely been added, particularly on "Anarchy In the UK".

But the "real" version of the show is not without detraction, either. I didn't even get the version shown in album cover #2. Instead, I got a release of the show from 1992 on the "Dojo Limited" label. At least my version has only one song title wrong, renaming "Satellite" into "Suburban Kids". The pictured version also misnames "Lazy Sod" into "Seventeen". The most noticable difference on the "real" version is the lack of a rioutous prison mob. Instead, the prisoners aren't mic'd at all, and you can barely hear their bewilderment or cheers, although Goodman says "the band ended up to thunderous applause". If the ending cheers were really that loud, you wouldn't be able to tell from this recording.

While trying to come up with an example of a similar situation in the istory of recorded music I could compare this event to, the first one that popped into my mind couldn't have been more musically different: Duke Ellington's "Ellington At Newport". As historical as the recording of Ellington's 1956 show at the Newport Jazz Festival was, only two real tracks from the show made it on the LP. Three others were re-recorded in the studio, and canned applause was added, to perfect the tunes, and (according to AMG's Scott Yanow) because Paul Gonsalves's famous solo was played into the wrong mic. For years, unless you were a jazz "smart", you wouldn't have known that this was not the real recording. A "full recording" of the real concert was released in 1999, then re-released in it's "true" complete form less than a decade later.

It goes without saying that Duke Ellington's fans are probably a little higher-brow than those of the Sex Pistols. But while the release of original Ellington source material would be a historical revelation, in this case, the release of the original Sex Pistols show at Chelmsford adds next to nothing to an understanding of the group's history. in fact, without the overdubbed bass and fake prisoner noise, it sounds far more hollow; even worse of a sin, Recording #2 makes them sound unable to cajole a nursery of babies from an afternoon nap, much less be one of the most infamous punk rock bands of all time. Recording #1 may be just a studio creation of what Dave Goodman believes would be a great Sex Pistols prison show, but rock mythology perpetuates rock history, and Recording #1 makes a great chapter.

To see the THIRD release of this show, click HERE.

To see the famous clip that earned them infamy on the Bill Grundy Show, click HERE