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Today I was surprised by a memory of Berlin90, the band formed by inmates of Sangonera prison. During their long nights deprived of freedom they tuned into Contraband Music. One day they got in touch entering a competition for demo tapes and  they weren't bad at all.. 

They recorded a song, “Stormy waters”, which featured on a compilation album we released under the title of “A year of Rock in Murcia 91', which included Ferroblues, Doble Cero, Fenómenos Extraños, Joaquín Talismán, Los Marañones, Enlightened, Ross and many others. 

Not only that; I managed to get permission for them to leave to leave the prison to come to our studios on Liberty Avenue ( I imagine how good those street signs must have looked to them ) to record an interview. Their eyes shone when they stood in front of the microphones and the red light turned on. 

When the press heard of them they stopped being anonymous, they even managed to play in a venue outside the prison. For a while they wrote me letters , and I sent them messages and played their songs. I imagined that they listened in the solitude of their cells. Many other inmates joined in with their transistors to share that small ray of freedom. 

Then I adapted the catchphrase of “El Vibora” (an underground comics magazine), and every night I repeated that catchphrase 

“Música de Contrabando (Smuggler's music) the most popular music programme in Spanish jails,” which I thought would make them smile in the dark. One day the letters stopped arriving. It didn't make me sad, quite the opposite, because surely they were already free.