Recorded in 1983 on a rudimentary portable cassette deck inside his cell at the California Medical Facility (CMF) in Vacaville, Live at San Quentin stands as one of the most viscerally raw documents in the outsider folk canon. Charles Manson — armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and an unchecked stream of consciousness — delivers an hour of improvised songs and spoken declarations, all punctuated by the ambient sounds of institutional life: flushing toilets, distant inmate chatter, and the dull hum of incarceration.