The Sound Recordings subgroup of the Sinclair collection provides a unique perspective on Sinclair's interests and activities, and thus complements and expands the manuscript and photographic holdings. Including recordings of meetings, interviews, demonstrations, and musical performances, the collection strongly represents the sounds and voices of the counterculture movement.
While recording some of the same activity and covering the same basic time frames, the Sound Reels and Sound Cassettes series augment, rather than duplicate, one another. Both the reels and cassettes series are arranged in eight units. In order to facilitate access the reels are numbered sequentially within the series as a whole. Both series include recordings of meetings and interviews; the reels have the longest run of meetings (16 tapes spanning the years 1968 to 1972, with most tapes covering 1972), while the cassettes have a much larger collection of interviews.
A special strength of the Sound Cassettes is the recordings of trials and trial-related events. Included are the John Sinclair marijuana trial, "Free John" rally and prison release, and the CIA conspiracy case against Pun Plamondon. The cassettes also showcase Sinclair's involvement with community radio. The radio shows unit consists of samples taken from Sinclair's radio shows on college or public radio stations in both Michigan and New Orleans. The cassettes also include tapes of some of Sinclair's lectures on the history of Blues, Jazz and Rock and Roll music from his classes at Wayne State University.
The greatest strength of the Sound Reels is the large number of musical performances. The recordings of various "free park concerts," and the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivals, and live recordings and studio outtakes of the MC 5, the UP, and other area musical acts, provide a valuable glimpse of the musical and cultural environment of Detroit and Ann Arbor from the late 1960's to the mid-1980's.
The Sound Discs are primarily commercial and limited-run pressings of musical groups which John Sinclair managed, or artists who recorded for Strata Records, the company Sinclair organized in 1977. Most notable are recordings of the MC 5 and the UP. Also included is a set of discs recording the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, both preliminary and final pressings. The discs are arranged by size in two chronological units.
