Sleeveface: Be the Vinyl

By John Rostron and Carl Morris

More than 200 witty images that are as addictive as popping bubble wrap but a lot more fun. This hilarious book immortalizes the craze that began while DJ Carl Morris was having a bit of fun in a Wales bar. Here is how Sleevefacing works: You find an old-school vinyl record sleeve with a nice head-shot of your musical icon (Elvis or David Bowie or Debbie Harry will do nicely), put the sleeve in front of your face, and strike a pose. Now get someone to snap your photo. This growing Web phenomenon has its own Web site (sleeveface.com), Facebook presence, and thousands of inventive practitioners around the globe. Sleeveface compiles the cleverest of these images: the faux Morrisseys, wannabe Bob Dylans, and lookalike Madonnas whose posture and clothing is in perfect sync with their idols' most classic record covers. With essays that celebrate the merits of vinyl in an age when music has gone digital, it will appeal to record collectors, music lovers across the generations, and anybody--which is to say everybody--who ever fancied him or herself a rock god.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579653790
• ISBN13: 9781579653798
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Artisan Publishers
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Fun, creative photo book for music lovers

This book is a real treat - the concept is hilarious and incredibly clever. Each photo shows a person standing behind an album cover that has a face or some other body part on them so they match up. Magically when that happens, the photos seem to come to life. Each photo features obscure and vintage album covers which bring you back while making you laugh at the same time. This book would make an awesome gift, and would be a perfect gift for yourself too. The layout features its quality photos in differing sizes on each page which helps keep it interesting, and the captions featuring the photographer and year are given for each pic. With about 200 pages of pictures, the book is really generous on content too, without ever getting boring.

The alieness of being someone else for a brief point in time or showcasing love for life? Latter.

I knew what this book was when I received it. I did not know what a "sleeve face" was, but do you really need to? They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words, but for me the picture expresses to me what humans treasure deep within themselves, spending most of their life trying to find it in certain moments. That being the ability to laugh at/with ourselves, joy, and mirth. Here, we are lucky enough to view it from film. Each sleeve that a person chooses to mask over themselves are either using spontaneity for their randomness or allowing us to look inside their character to reveal a trait in the them that was surreptitiously implanted with which we could not otherwise know from a picture. I see a moment in time were these people unconsciously chose to express themselves from within, and it was a joy to see it. The actual faces are mere illusions, merely performing for the being holding it. They act as a carrier and vessel of the "mad" puppeteer in the background to paint the overall picture to us. I love it.

Incredibly amusing.

Say what you want, but the internet is a great way to pass time and it is probably the top reason for worldwide procrastination. Sites like [...] make it even easier to become hypnotized by a website and have two hours pass without even noticing. And now it is in book form. A sleeveface, as defined by the introduction, is when "one or more persons obscure or augment any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion." This book contains over 200 of these gems. Of course, some are better than other. Some of the participants go all out with these things. They get matching outfits, they find a similar background, and they position the record sleeve so perfectly that it is hard to tell which is the sleeve and which is the person. My favorite is Miles Davis' Decoy, among others. Some of the sleevefacers also add humor. There is a sleeaveface where the sleeve of a hoky-looking John Travolta record transcends into a pink skirt and legs wrapped with fishnets. Another thing that makes these fun is they remind you of just how ridiculous some album covers used to be. Of course, some of the images are lazier than others, but they are all entertaining in some way or another. This is a great book to have on the coffee table, to give as a gift to an old school LP-lover, or if you're just looking for a good laugh,

Entertaining

I liked the concept of this right when I read the description. I thought there would be some interesting sleeveface shots and I wasn't disappointed. There were some that were so outrageously funny that it left me laughing out loud. And it wasn't just the zaniness of this that was wonderful. Looking at some of these albums, a lot of old music I haven't listened to in a long time came back to me. It made me want to dig up a lot of these great songs and give them another listen. This is a great thing to have around for the coffee table. Visitor can pick it up and get a good laugh and maybe even bring back a few good memories. I wish they had books like this at the Doctor's offices instead of the three year old Time magazines and such. This is timeless. Warning though: some of this has adult content. You may be wise to keep it away from some of the sensitive little ones.

Goofy, creative fun

Sleeveface, as you can read in the book's description, involves taking an lp cover, creating some kind of clever context for it, then snapping a picture. Pictures of famous faces (on album covers) held in front of someone else's body are only the starting point for the wildly creative photos collected here. Most of the photographers inspired by authors Carl Morris and John Rostron can make a witty image, in fact most of these are laugh-out-loud funny, but some are much more: thought-provoking, even touching portraits. Emma Caldwell's reimagining of Tom Waits's Rain Dogs is a beautiful example. A couple reviewers have suggested this as an interesting gift idea, and I can't imagine the music buff, photographer, designer or just general wiseacre who wouldn't love it. Cool and different.