Nothing to Sing About

If I hear Pete Yorn equate his “Strange Condition” to “a day in prison” one more time, I swear I’m gonna wring his scrawny neck. How dare he stand out there in the free world and compare some dumb love to the gulag.

“A day in prison?” I betcha he couldn’t even survive a night in jail. Such were my wicked thoughts as I paced to the radio in my 7’ x 10’ cell at the State Correctional Institute at Chester, Penn. I had good reason to be miffed at creaky Pete’s croak: I’d stopped counting my own days in prison once I got to a thousand.

Now don’t get me wrong. I dig Pete Yorn. When his sound’s around to be dug, anyway. Smart, sly, a little off. And “Strange Condition” isn’t a bad song; might even be a good one, far as I can tell. But this lazy metaphor is beneath him and most certainly beneath contempt. Worse, it’s an insult to everyone who’s spent time behind bars, never mind the two-million-plus Americans currently serving.

You don’t know hurt, Pete, ‘til you’ve been caged.

But Yorn’s hardly the first pop star—alterna or otherwise—to stoop to such shallows. In fact, he’s part of a seamy tradition of songsters who think it wise or clever or—egad—cool to sing as if they know what jail feels like.

Take Sir Cliff Richard’s tragic mistrack, “Locked Inside Your Prison.” Your love is like a prison wall
And it’s getting higher
I get so far and then I fall
I can’t get through the wire
Oh oh oh I’m locked inside your prison

Gimme a break. These aren’t the sentiments of a guy who’s even seen Inside, let alone been there, unless, perhaps, he went In, was turned out, then was forced to forever croon inanities. Why else with the “Oh, oh, oh?” The only good thing about Cliff’s song is that no one remembers it.

The Postal Service—a credibly memorable duo—incredibly take a club to task in “This Place Is A Prison,” a beautiful song that makes no sense. I know whatcha mean and I dig whatcha do, but you’re wrong. I’ve known clubs and, Postmasters, they’re no prison. Perhaps a zoo might be a better analogy, one where the captives have all come voluntarily. Lined up and paid their way in even. And before all you animals get in an uproar—I’ve been to the zoo; I’ve also been captured and caged, and I’ll never go again.

What does it take to get a drink in this place?
What does it take, how long must I wait?

Boo f—ing hoo. You want wait? Try waiting for count to clear, for Main Line to finish, for yard to be called, for mail that can’t come ’cause a cruel guard won’t deliver. Try waiting for some state to set you free.

What does it take to get a release date in this place?

That’s better.

Well beyond the pale, wan metaphor of these ultra-bright pop-ists comes the mealy-mouthed, messiah-plexed Scott Stapp, whose “My Own Prison” is nothing short of a sham conceit. Yeah, I know. The Stapp got popped for reckless driving, but he only spent a few hours with the cops—crying and signing crosses undoubtedly—and his so-called prison is constructed strictly from bullshit and histrionics.

Come to think of it, maybe the Creedless wonder deserves a break today. I mean, imagine being sentenced to be Scott Stapp for the rest of your life. Now that’s hard time.

Probably the most flagrant foulster of late has gotta be Richard Ashcroft, whose “Break the Night with Colour” video poses in image what the ex-Verve frontman fails to know in life. If you’ve seen the clip, you’ll be aware that tricky Dick is seated at a grey-green and white baby grand in a jailhouse holding pen. If you know anything about jailhouse holding pens, you’ll know the charade is at best a monstrous absurdity. Now I’ve never been locked-up ’cross the pond (thankfully), but I bet a thousand pounds sterling there’s not a holding pen in all the old land that’s outfitted with a baby grand.

Hell, in New York’s Tombs you’re lucky if you get a bit of bench space, let alone a seat at a piano. And you couldn’t play it if you did—everyone’s handcuffed. Maybe the ivories are a figment of his barred imagination. Who knows? But this is certain—they’re a crass incongruity. The stuck clock’s a nice touch, though, and the tune’s got a feel about it, too. The desolate, the hurt, the all-by-myself. But Richard, it’s a pose. And you’re supposed to have better posture.

Oh, and Steve Tyler, that Rikers Island shirt I saw you sport on some A&E special wasn’t cool. You ever been there? No? Well, I have. C-95. And it was anything but cool. In fact, just going through whatcha gotta go through to get to Rikers will knock the cool right outta you.

Getting cuffed and thrown into the back of a patrol car is just the NYPD Blue part of the ordeal. What the program doesn’t show is—once you’re booked and fingerprinted—you get stripped to your soul, made to bare every orifice, and then you’re tossed into a standing-room-only cage with some very angry men.

Then you wait. And you wait. And you wait some more. You may get a phone call; you may not. You will get a ride downtown to those infamous Tombs, which might not be so bad if the ride wasn’t in the back of a paneled van half the size of the cage you just left and crammed with even madder men. And that hours-long wait outside the gate where you get intimate with the sour smells of your fellow detainees? That kinda kills cool dead, too.

Then comes the cuffed night, the shackled crawl to court, the who-knows-what-will-happen, and the windless postponing of that which will. Remanding, the bullpen shuffle, more cuffs, more shackles, the long ride over the East River and through the ’hoods among some very dangerous despair. The checkpoint, the drop-off, another strip search, another bullpen or two, bologna if you dare, then injection into a dorm built for a couple dozen but housing 64.