​What It’s Like to Form a Band in Prison

Being in a musician in prison isn't as romantic as it sounds. Sure, Gucci Mane has arguably released some of his best work from inside the pen, but for normal convicts it's pretty difficult to make music, especially when you're in a band.

To start, the equipment isn't good—not that you'd expect prison to have a legit music center where dudes with 25-to-life can hang out and noodle along to "Stairway in Heaven." Generally, the amps and PAs suck—but that only matters when you can find capable musicians who are down to write music together or jam, which as you can imagine is not easy. Plus, even if there is a practice space, good luck seriously shredding without pissing off the COs who don't want to hear your feedback-filled Sabbath covers.

Even if prison seems in theory like an inspiring place to create anti-authority art, forming a band that outlives the members' sentences is a rare feat. In the late aughts, I was locked up in FCI Loretto, a federal prison in Pennsylvania, where I met three musicians who managed to become an exception to the rule.

Singer/guitarist Jason Scott, drummer Pet Markovina, and bassist Johnny Dunlop are a rock trio called The Institution. They met when were all locked up for various drug charges and ended up forming a band that's lasted beyond the prison gates. Self-described as "melodic, progressive rock" in the vein of the Deftones or Soundgarden, the Institute recorded dozens of songs in the belly of the beast, using a VHS recorder to lay down demos.

In the five years since the three members were released from Loretto, the band has played over 300 live shows, self-released a full-length album featuring material primarily written in prison, and are currently finishing an acoustic EP and sophomore LP in a real studio.

I caught up with lead man Jason Scott and drummer Pete Markovina via Skype to talk about forming a band behind bars, how prison affected the group's creative process, and what it's been like to keep the project going on the outside.

VICE: When you first formed the band, did you imagine it could be something after you were all let out of prison?
Jason Scott: I went home at the end of 2008 and we were three years into the band at that point. We started talking about taking the band to the street in 2006. That was always the plan: We're going to get out and do this for real. We were just setting the plan into motion and executing it. Pete got home in 2010 and John got home in 2011. He came right out to San Francisco where I was living. Pete was already here. The real world kind of hit John, our bassist, with overwhelming force, and he got lost for a couple years. But he came back around.

Pete Markovina: At first, there was no getting around the fact that the whole mini-world we created in this horrible prison situation was over when Jason was let free while we were still in there. But it's been almost five years since we've all been home and still going.

What did being in a band change about your prison experience? How did it make incarceration better or worse?
Jason: Working on original stuff was what kept us focused in there while everyone else was playing dominos, gambling, and doing things of that nature, which really amounts to nothing. The music kept us focused. It was almost like we were free.

Pete: That's the result of making use of your time while in prison instead of watching TV, having a weekend orderly job, or just wasting your time. That was a big part of how we were able to do it. We all loved what we do and we put in the time and effort to practice. Jason became a master at guitar because he has like 10,000 hours in. He knows all the chords, all the structure, and all the theory. That's what jail can do for you; it gives you uninterrupted time to practice.

Hegemony, your first full-length release, contains all songs that you wrote and honed in prison, right?
Jason: All except one. They were all written while we were locked up at Loretto. Pete worked in the library and he had access to a VHS recorder. He would sneak that thing down to the prison's band room during the day and we would record demos. Pete transferred those VHS recordings to DVDs on the libraries equipment, and we mailed them out and put them up on MySpace. Our music, which was illegally recorded in the institution, was then out in the ether.

Pete: We walked out of Loretto with like 42 songs complete. We call those "the Loretto Sessions" informally. That was a hell of a caper. We had no way to record audio except on VHS tape. It's all crackling and shit. We dubbed it to the DVDs just to hear it. It was pretty nuts, but it worked out good.

Were you ever censored or punished for being in the band in prison?
Jason: We were never really censored. The only time we got in trouble was when we were playing Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name," and I was singing the part that goes, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me," and this recreation cop came down to the band room and threatened to shut us down, screaming and yelling.

How is it writing music now compared to when you were locked up?
Jason: It's harder to write out here because we're trying to get on our feet. There are 60 billion things to do and 60 billion more the next day.

Pete: The big difference is that when we were in there, we had those set days. I had my own practice times and they had their own practice times and then we had the band slots. The writing was a lot more abundant and fluent in prison because Jason had tapped into a really strong and creative streak and he was able to consistently come up with these riffs and ideas that he really had uninterrupted time and focus to work through. Him and John were really able to work through that stuff and we could put it together more efficiently.

The Institution's touring lineup

Are there other bands like you guys who met in prison?
Jason Scott: One thing that makes our situation different is that we're a band that only played with each other. Most of the time in prison, it's groups of people that occasionally play together—not bands so much. I haven't heard of anyone that's exactly like us. When we first got out, the last thing we wanted anybody to know about was where we came from. We didn't want to be known as the jail band and have that stigma no matter what we're playing. But now we are with it because it has a lot to do with who we are. Time has allowed us to embrace our history in a way that we couldn't before, since we got our feet on the ground and we're rolling.

To listen or purchase the Institution's first LP, Hegemony, visit their website or stream the record on Spotify.

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Pacifico Silano Uses Forgotten Gay Porn to Create New Queer History

All images courtesy of Pacifico Silano

Pacifico Silano is a photographer of photographs. In many ways, he is a historian. The Brooklyn-based artist's new exhibition, Tear Sheets, currently at The Camera Club of New York, pushes conversations that, as he puts it, "are my history."

The images in the show are cultivated appropriations of historic queer ephemera, such as psychiatric literature and porn mags from the 70s and 80s like Blueboy, Torso, and Honcho. Within the context of Tear Sheets, these discarded objects and boy-blasted come rags rise above forgotten cultural detritus and reveal themselves to be platforms of activism, nightlife, awareness, and gay rights, as well as relics of queer socialization and identity in pre-digital times.

Silano's subtle manipulations of his materials allow seemingly conflicting topics to fuse seamlessly, such as references to gay smut and weightier things like HIV/AIDS, political oppression, and cultural marginalization. For example, the artist uses negative space in his works where he incorporates huge fields of white, sometimes black. The edge of the appropriated images cast shadows on to the voided space, emphasizing the feeling that something has been lost or forgotten, such as underground cultural spaces, sites of identity like defunct porn publications, or time periods and memories that came before the artist was even around to embrace them.

But he also builds on top of appropriate images, as well as overlaps and tucks source material behind other objects, figuratively molding history or creating something new through use of archival items. Reinterpretation blossoms from Silano's metamorphoses and his appropriations become highly suggestive and pensive.

Anyone can search for a sense of culture that seemed important at a certain time. But Silano thrives as an artist in his ability to interpret hazy memories and allow them to become what they weren't before. From this inquest of space and history there is discovery and invention. The world spins forward, and we look back in commemoration—to learn and reflect, to see new.

Pacifico Silano's 'Tear Sheets' is on view at BAXTER ST. CCNY through January 16. Efrem Zelony-Mindell is a photography and writer based in NYC.

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The Vile Majesty of Hollywood Boulevard on New Year’s Eve

If you're looking for old Hollywood glamour, my advice would be to stay the hell out of Hollywood. The Hollywood Boulevard of today is a garish nightmare, riddled with overpriced clubs and stripper accessory stores and gift shops that still, I shit you not, sell Charlie Sheen "#WINNING" shirts. It is, to thousands, a perfectly perverse place to drunkenly celebrate the passing of another year.

Tourists wander around, dazed children in tow, as women's asses pop out of bandage dresses like dough from a tube. If you bring your child to Hollywood on vacation, the state should legally have the right to remove that child from your care.

A man dressed as Christ, thorns and all, plays "Low Rider" outside the Hard Rock Cafe as the clock strikes midnight. "If you take a picture or video," his sign says, "Don't forget to tip." Everyone takes a picture or video. No one tips. Fireworks pop in the distance.

The pungent stench of weed emanates through the halls of the mall at Hollywood and Highland, in spite of the fact that there are cops at every corner; a man flagrantly chugs from a bottle of Ciroc within eyesight of law enforcement. Someone driving an Infiniti almost plows into a crosswalk of people. Once he realizes his mistake he slams on the breaks, ruefully putting his head in his hands. "Hit me," a kid crossing the street says. "I have to pay the rest of this tuition."

L. Ron Hubbard's Winter Wonderland—which, if you didn't already guess, is Scientology's "holiday village" featuring a clown handing out balloons that have not been turned into animals, just cylindrical tubes of plastic—beckons. A WC Fields-level lush posing as Santa pushes literature on you after an obligatory photo. "It's actually written by L. Ron Hubbard," he'll tell you. "It's simple, but really profound."

A man in his 20s, splayed out over one of the boulevard's stars, stares catatonically into the distance. "Just give me your hand," his female companion implores him. He'll refuse, muttering, "Just just go on with the rest of your life without me." It is 12:16 AM.

"You get me in that picture?" a woman will ask you. Terrified, you meekly reply that you may have. She'll ask to see the picture in question because she wants to know if her "ass is hanging out." Now, you've never been in a situation wherein you were unsure whether or not your ass was hanging out, but you are not her. You are an observer, not a participant. Upon examination of the picture, you'll both determine that her ass is, indeed, hanging out. "I ain't a prostitute," she'll tell you. "Even though I look like one."

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The Real-Life Crime Lords Who Make Scarface Look Soft

All images courtesy of Ioan Grillo and Bloomsbury Press

There's a 23-year-old kid in a prison in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico who goes by the nickname Montana. In his cell, he has a poster of the Al Pacino movie gangster he's named after. But Montana isn't your average Scarface wannabe. According to journalist Ioan Grillo, he committed his first murder at age 13 and has supposedly killed another 30-plus people in the following decade he spent working for the Mara Salvatrucha gang before being locked up. And Montana isn't an isolated example of a present-day criminal mimicking and even one-upping the lives of infamous real-life and fictitious gangsters.

In his new book Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and The New Politics of Latin America, Grillo makes it clear that gang members like Montana, cartel leaders, sicarios, and powerful members of crime organizations exist all over Latin America and the Caribbean—not just Mexico. From the Shower Posse gang in Jamaica and the Comando Vermelho syndicate in Brazil, to the gangs running rampant throughout Central America, there is ample evidence that giant crime networks are thriving all around the world today. And these cartels and gangs are run by a modern type of criminal Grillo describes as "part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star"—violent Pablo Escobar-types who make pop culture villains look soft.

To write the book, Grillo embedded himself in the front lines of cities where gangs, cartels, and police are facing off and killing one another (as well as civilians) by the thousands. The British reporter interviewed former sicarios in Mexican prisons, rode shotgun with police through Venezuelan slums, and investigated crime lords in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and shantytowns of Kingston. In his research, Grillo realized a new breed of criminal kingpin was becoming the norm right in front of his eyes: One with deep pockets, a heavily armed militia at his back, and a cocky swagger that often results in impulsive power flexing whenever the mood strikes. To these gangster warlords, life has become a video game or gangster movie where every pop culture cliche has come to pass.

Grillo previously penned El Narco, which profiled how Mexican cartels rose to power in the mid-aughts. Gangster Warlords is a step-up for the writer, documenting a very grim reality that's unfolding in real time. VICE spoke to Grillo via Skype from his base in Mexico City to talk about his new book and gain insight about what's going on in the narco arenas down south.

For more on crime, watch our doc 'How Pablo Escobar's Legacy of Violence Drives Today's Cartel Wars':

VICE: You have reported extensively from Mexico on that country's drug cartels and violence, but when did you start researching what's going on in other nearby countries?
Ioan Grillo: I've found from the 15 years I've been in Mexico reporting on cartel violence that you get connections to other places. When you realize that there are similar and even worse situations in many places around Latin America and the Caribbean, you can follow the trail of dominos between the Mexican cartels to Honduran gangsters to Colombian gangsters. You can follow guns that travel from the United States and Mexico all the way to the Caribbean. You have these physical connections that you find, but also you see the similarities of the situations. It's not a coincidence that suddenly you have cartel-related violence in Mexico killing 17,000 people a year, and organized crime violence is killing tens of thousands in Brazil and Honduras, too.

That really led me to look at the bigger picture. I'd already been down in the slums of Colombia and very quickly came to an understanding that the cartel is the authority there, the shadow power in these ghettos. The same thing is happening in Mexico. But then you start seeing other parallels, like in Jamaica where the areas between different ghettos have been cleared out. If you go to Honduras, you'll see the same thing has happened, where the gangs are forcing people out of areas to create buffer zones between their territories. You find these similarities and you start to see a clearer picture of what these gangster warlords are like and what they have become .

Do you think a lot of these crime groups and gangster warlords are influenced by or are part of the legacy of Pablo Escobar and what he did in Colombia in the 1980s?
Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel built a model. He was a man ahead of his time in that sense. He tapped into the cocaine dollars and made more money than you or I could possibly imagine. Pablo dominated the cocaine market, but now it's spread right across the continent and is growing. Brazil is the number two market in the world for consumption of cocaine after the United States. Right now they are number one for consuming crack cocaine. In Brazil, you go to these favelas and they have a table and they sit there selling drugs. When you have these poor countries with young men that have very little job opportunities living in these slums and the cartels offer them drugs, money, women—all of these things—these very quickly recruit their own private armies.

Watch our doc on Matthew Heineman, the filmmaker behind 'Cartel Land':

Who are some of the more notorious gangster warlords you cover in the book?
Dudus Coke, aka the President, a Jamaican drug trafficker who is now incarcerated, is one. Bunny Wailer, the big reggae artist, had a song called "Don't Touch the President" about him. Coke was a rock star, CEO-type who did a lot of charity work that he took to incredible levels. In the song, Bunny Wailer sings, "Sometimes out of evil, come the poor good/Can't you see the progress in the neighborhood." It's like he's saying from the evil of drug money comes good. At the same time, he was also moving a lot of cocaine to the UK and United States. He had women moving the cocaine in condoms in their vaginas. There would be like 30 of them on a plane. The might bust one or two, but there would still be 28 or 29 who got through.

Another figure that I look at is Nazario "El Mas Loco" Moreno, who led both La Familia Michoacana and the Knights Templar cartel in Mexico. He wrote his own religious text called Pensamientos, meaning "My Thoughts," and he became venerated as a saint—even beyond rock star status. When people misguidedly thought he'd been killed, they actually prayed to the guy. How can people be praying to a man who is trafficking crystal meth? I went to the area where he's from. He believed that people who drank Coca Cola were rich because he grew up poor and drank water from the river, but this guy took over his entire area.

Did you notice pop culture's influence on any of these criminals and crime figures?
I went into a prison in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico where a gang leader had a pool table in his cell and a disco sound system for parties. On his wall he had a life size poster of Al Pacino as Scarface. I interviewed this young Mara Salvatrucha gang member and his nickname was Montana. This is a guy, 23 years old, who's killed 30 people and started killing when he was 13. He described to me all of his murders and all the craziness behind his incredibly violent life.

In Jamaica, the criminals and kingpins are called Dons. I was interviewing this older guy from the Shower Posse gang in hopes of finding out why. He told me that they started calling themselves Don's after Don Corleone when The Godfather came out.

In Honduras, I asked when these guys got so violent and someone told me it was after they saw the movie Blood In, Blood Out dubbed into Spanish. The young gangsters all know that movie by heart.

Image via Ioan Grillo

How do we stop all the gang and cartel violence? Did you come to any solutions through your research?
We can't prohibit singers from talking about drug traffickers or Hollywood from making movies. Watching movies or listening to records isn't the problem. Law enforcement is part of the problem. The police and the soldiers are part of that violence. I don't want to blame everything on them, but they are clearly part of the problem rather than part of the solution. In America, it's a big deal right now about police officers killing African Americans, but right across Latin America and the Caribbean police officers are killing at a level way, way higher than the United States.

What do you mean?
I just came back from Venezuela and you should see the police there. Some estimate that the police killed over 1,000 people in 2014 . That's in a country with 30 million. In the United States, that would be like killing over 10,000 people. In Jamaica, the police are very aggressive and heavily armed—they come into the ghettoes real gung ho. The police commit one in every four murders there. In Mexico, we have seen extraordinary things like the police working with the cartels, kidnapping, killing students, murdering innocents. The police are part of the problem. Often they are corrupt and make money off the criminals, and can get away with murder. But on the other side, the police are also facing extraordinarily violent and heavily armed criminals and gangs.

So the fight between the two is super complex.
It's a mess on both sides. These criminal kingpins have this crazy role in society where they head these big business empires and organizations. They're attacking policemen, throwing grenades at people in squares, all these crazy violent acts. But they are also a part of popular culture. We have soap operas and songs being made about them. We are looking at who these figures are, what do they mean to society, how do they challenge the government? It's weird how this relates to and plays out in popular culture, especially right now with all these TV series like Narcos. We are reliving Pablo Escobar while this stuff is still happening out in the world.

'Gangster Warlords' is out January 19 on Bloomsbury Press. Pre-order it here and visit Grillo's website for more on his work.

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Leslie's Diary Comics: Leslie Spends The Holidays Alone in Today's Comic from Leslie Stein

Follow Leslie on Instagram, Tumblr, and buy her books from Fantagraphics.

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As an American Muslim, I'm Tired of Having to Prove I Belong

Muslim-American men pray in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan as part of a demonstration against Donald Trump in December. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

I first felt what it meant to be an outsider on a work trip to Israel. My headscarf marked me as a Muslim, and it was clear some Israelis assumed I was an Arab, and by their logic, unwelcome. People pointed, stared, treated me rudely. Security checks at borders were longer and more intrusive ordeals for me than for my non-Muslim colleagues, and I grew frustrated and exhausted with constantly having to provide details on my family background and nationality to prove my identity.

But I told myself this was expected, especially during these tense times, and tried not to take it personally. Does everyone tell themselves these sorts of things when they are profiled? I just wanted to finish my work and leave as soon as possible for friendlier territory—East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and finally, America, my home. Sure enough, when I got off the plane in the US, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. No one at the airport, grocery store, or mall stared or treated me differently. I was American, the same as everyone else.

However, this was all before San Bernardino, before the alleged shooters were identified as Muslim, before Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from coming to America full stop, before the sudden spike in violence and threats against American Muslims. My Muslim friends and family worried about being harassed or attacked; some women I knew considered taking off their hijabs. It was overwhelming—Islamophobic incidents were already on the rise after the Paris attacks just a month earlier, but San Bernardino and its aftermath hit much closer to home.

What was perhaps most frightening of all was the sense that that the need to prove myself had followed me from Israel to America. I had not changed, but all of a sudden my religion made me a target of suspicion. This is not my imagination, and the phenomenon is not limited to a few loud far-right voices. While he was careful to make the distinction between ISIS and Islam in a recent speech, even President Barack Obama stated that it was the "responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization."

Watch a recap of our coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement:

Imagine if Obama had replaced "Muslims around the world" with "white Americans" or "Christians" in reference to white supremacists like Dylan Roof, who killed nine people in a Charleston church this summer, or Robert Lewis Dear, a self-identifying Christian who killed three at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs just a few days before the San Bernardino tragedy. This would no doubt be met with widespread outrage. In fact, if you ask white Americans whether they should be held responsible for Dear's actions, they emphatically disagree. They feel no need to root out white supremacist or radical Christian propaganda, and insist, correctly, that they're separate from such extremists. So why isn't the same courtesy extended to Muslims? Why is this associated blame so commonplace?

I entered the counterterrorism field because I felt a civic obligation as an American, not a religious one as a Muslim. And as someone who has written extensively about my experience as a Muslim American, the double standards are frustrating and, frankly, exhausting. It seems that nothing we say or do is enough, and the countless condemnations of terrorism by Muslims fall on deaf ears. Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks continue without consequence. It is now common for teachers to ask Muslim children (or those that "appear" Muslim) if they have bombs in their backpacks and for police to arrest and incarcerate them for days because a classmate joked about them having one. We are effectively being treated as outsiders in our own country.

Some Muslims have taken to social media to counter that sentiment through blogs, crowdsourced fundraisers, videos, and hashtag campaigns like #MuslimApartment and #MuslimAmericanFaces. More power to those that have the energy and enthusiasm for this work, but how long will this be necessary? As Muslim Americans, we don't have an obligation to prove, explain, or apologize for anything. Just as we accept that the overwhelming majority of Christians in this country are not all inclined to bomb abortion clinics in the name of Christianity, so should we assume the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists hell-bent on killing non-Muslims.

I for one am done trying to convince people that I'm American and on their side. What could I possibly do or say that hasn't already been done or said? It is time for the double standards, vitriolic rhetoric, and hate crimes against Muslims to end. Let us move forward as Americans and fight intolerance, discrimination and injustice together. Let us live.

Wardah Khalid is a writer, speaker, and analyst on Middle East policy and Islam in America. She is the author of the "Young American Muslim" blog for the Houston Chronicle, was previously Middle East policy analyst at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and also worked as a countering violent extremism consultant. Follow her on Twitter.

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Videos to Soothe Your New Year's Hangover

Image via Flickr user Savara

No matter what eat-right-and-exercise intentions you're starting this year with, chances are 2016 began the same way 2015 did: with the kind of bone-deep hangover that leaves your eyes bloodshot, your hands shaking, and your head soggy and full of fear. January 1 is always punctuated by the memories of embarrassing and offensive things you did on December 31. We can't help you change that. But we can give you something to look at while you hide out in you room, and perhaps provide some emotional respite and guidance.

Hangover Cures with Nick Liu

When you feel like an empty ball of pain, hollow and useless to the human race, you can always distract yourself from your shame spiral by thinking of all the delicious things that await you when you finally get up the energy to get an egg sandwich. Or just watch Nick Liu nurse Matty Matheson back to health through Chinese comfort food, and pray for your own benevolent food angel.

The Cute Show: Wiener Dog Races!

If you're feeling particularly endorphin-starved, there's only one solution: cute animal videos. This is literally the reason the internet was invented. Don't fight it.

Space Barbie

Speaking of the internet, there is no better time to delve into its deep and sweet trove of oddities than when you're confined to a dark room nursing a coconut water. Meet the people behind the cat videos, find your next sexual fixation, or transcend time and the cosmos with a human Barbie.

Get Fit with Sara Sampaio

You've made it this far, now it's time to get stuck into some not-fully-thought-through resolutions. In 2016 your clothes will not be covered in a perma-crust of spilled food, you won't be a hot ball of anxiety, you will establish the basic outline of a unique identity. But first you need to make the promise you've made and broken so many times, but will never stop believing in: This year you will get healthy and never drink again.

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