Unknown Private Press LP "Songs by Sue" - Tragic Story
$
20
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Description
This is a SEALED copy of a mysterious private press album, Songs by Sue. Not a cut out - Completely intact and inside the shrink.
A very unique recording with a sad story behind it. Sue, we don't learn her last name from the sleeve, was a wheelchair-bound polio victim who at the end of her young life was an Activities Director at a nursing home and an Art Teacher at a parochial school. She must have performed musically at times and some of those performances found their way onto tape. In the aftermath of her passing , Sue's friends and family collected her recordings together and had them committed to vinyl as a lasting tribute to her. This is categorically, found art, there must have been only a few recordings to choose from since some of the recordings are very low fidelity so everything that was found was used. The varying levels of quality act as an unintended aesthetic, imagine a simple musical performance being recorded and re-recorded with only the hardware and sound pickup changing. Once you had the recordings you could sequence them based on their differences and contrasts. That is accidentally what is happening sonically here. Beyond the actual performances by Sue there is an additional layer of sound that has been added, someone decided to add some electronic keyboard orchestral washes to the basic tracks. These are heard with the same presence from track to track but again this consistency plays against the widely varying fidelity of the found recordings by Sue. Sue must have had very loving friends for them to have created this living testament to her life. The back cover is a further expression of that love; here someone has created an elaborate ink drawing using the name "Sue" as it's principle graphic building block. Amazing!! What Friends!
I am also listing more than a half dozen sealed Grateful Dead albums I've been saving for a special occasion. I've always been happy with my copies of these albums so I never opened these. Please check out my other auctions if you're interested. If you ask me this is the best of them all, though. Thanks.
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