Artist

ARMANDO PIAZZA

Very few people probably knew these album until some years ago, as they went totally unnoticed at the time. 
Armando Piazza was a singer-songwriter from Naples and released these albums with curious titles on the local B.B.B. label (that also released the Showmen 2 album), selling them by himself in concerts and through magazines. The albums contained acid-psych ballads, all English-sung and mainly based on acoustic guitar but sometime with good use of electric instruments, they're also notable for the help of American musician Shawn Phillips (who lived in Naples for some years) on guitar and bass. 

A welcome reissue by Akarma couples both albums on a single CD.

LP
Suàn	B.B.B. (BSLA 0002)	1972	laminated gatefold cover with attached four-page booklet
Naus (ars mensuralis)	B.B.B. (BSLB 0011)	1973	laminated single cover
CD
Suàn/Naus	Akarma (AK 1027)	2001	reissue of 1972 and 1973 album on a single CD - mini LP quadruple foldout cover

Both albums are rare to find, especially the first, and have probably been released in very small quantity by the small B.B.B. label. The albums were poorly distributed in shops and were privately sold at the time by Piazza through Ciao 2001 and other magazines.
An odd addition concerns the cassette tape version of Suàn (cat.no. NL PP 22), issued with two different covers and that contains che omits the track I met a woman. The second edition is credited to Shawn Phillips and Armando Piazza, and was probably issued later, when Phillips was well known in Italy.

The cover of Suan exists in two versions, the first with inner pages having a white background, the other (apparently the rarest one) with lyrics in white type on black background. The later version also has a difference in the outer cover, where the "moustache" logo and the catalogue number (which are located on the front in the version with the white inner) are on the back cover here.
Suàn was reissued on vinyl for the first time in 2008 by the greek label Missing Vinyl (cat.no.MV002), in a nice limited pressing faithfully reproducing the original cover and including the lyric booklet (with white background).

Second album Naus (subtitled Ars mensuralis) had a laminated single cover. The catalogue number on both cover and label is BSLB 0011, but on the matrix is BSBL 0011. The difficult numbering system adopted by B.B.B. on their records had even confused them!

No counterfeits exist.

Suàn - LP and label

Suàn - cassette tape, two different covers

Naus - LP and label

Naus - cassette tape

Thanks to Giuliano Semprucci and Massimo Viviani for pictures and information.