Carl Morris said he was just horsing around when he held the cover of an old vinyl copy of “McCartney II” in front of his face while DJ’ing one night last year at a nightclub in Cardiff, Wales.
The gag, which made it look as though Paul McCartney’s head had replaced his own mug, sparked a few laughs.
But soon it also sparked an Internet phenomenon called Sleeveface (sleeveface.com). All it takes to join in are an album cover, a camera and a huge dose of creativity.
“I was really just bored and thought I’d do a Liverpool accent and pretend to be Paul McCartney,” said Morris, 26. “Then my friends and I were at some parties and going through records, and we did a few more.”
Soon he was posting a small gallery of his friends’ photos on the Web.
Then the trend took off.
Today, thousands have sent in photos from all over the world via social networking sites such as Facebook and Flickr.
There’s even a tutorial on sleevefacing on the video-sharing site YouTube.
According to Morris’ Web site, sleevefacing means “one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion.”
Some concoctions are fairly straightforward, simply matching up bodies and colors so that everything is perfectly blended. But others — for example, featuring the likes of televangelist Tammy Faye Messner — border on the bizarre.
“There are lots of good ones you can do with David Bowie, Johnny Cash and Barbra Streisand,” said Morris, who by day manages an independent music label called My Kung Fu.
“You can also create some weird encounters by combining two sleeves in different ways,” he said.
