Search - Prisoners :: Rare & Unissued

In 1988, a year after they had fallen apart, loved by a hard-core legion of fans who had supported them up and down the country and across Europe, the Prisoners released Rare And Unissued on Billy Childish's Hangman label. Despite its rather lo-fi nature, it became a prized possession for many of those fans and has never been available on CD before. In the intervening 20 years the Prisoners legend has grown. Graham Day and Allan Crockford formed a variety of groups from Planet to the Solar Flares (Allan is currently in the Billboard Garage charts with his group the Stabilisers), organist James Taylor has his Quartet and virtually invented Acid Jazz. The Prisoners are now seen as the great pioneers of modern day garage, lauded in the NME as one of the most influential bands of the 80s. Recently their Last Fourfathers album was described by Uncut as 'one of the most important in British rock'. Everyone from Oasis' Noel Gallagher to Radio One's Steve Lamacq claim to love them, as do Ian Brown and The Horrors along the way. Our version of Rare And Unissued leaves off a handful of tracks that were included on Big Beat's reissues of the original albums, but otherwise sees the Hangman album present and correct with great live tracks, live cuts and early B-sides showing a truly breathtaking outfit in action. We have added to that collection two wonderful studio out-take tracks; an instrumental called Unbeliever (Fast) from the Wizer sessions and a take of Love Me Lies recorded live in a studio some time before the its appearance at those sessions. Also added are two cuts recorded at a live demo session in 1984 which appeared on various small run compilations - Joe 90 and an amazing version of Hush. The whole package is completed with notes that include in-depth comments from the Prisoners, and illustrations of all the various releases from which these tracks have been culled.