A ‘facepalm’ is my reaction to the ‘sleeveface’ trend - Kevin Buckle
Ever since Avalanche opened in the eighties next to Edinburgh University there has always been an element of dealing with young people.
While now I can play the grumpy old man, then I was only a few years older than the university students and ten years older than the groups of young boys who would travel into Edinburgh on a Saturday mostly from Fife.
The young lads when the relatively small shop we had then was full would attempt to get to the metal rack next to the counter by crawling along the floor.
What I remember most, though, is they would often put a pile of coins on the counter claiming it was the £3.99 or £4.99 you could buy LPs for then. It looked about right and when they said I could count it I declined saying that I trusted them.
I thought I was being kind to them but after several insisted I count I found that they were often giving me too much so I was not doing them a favour at all. Luckily it was never over by very much.
One thing that has stayed a constant in all this time up to the present day is the inability of some young people to understand the alphabet and remember in those early days we are talking mainly about university students. We would regularly be asked how our CDs were alphabetical.
Now with young people so influenced by social media including TikTok there is a vast array of misinformation out there for us to deal with. However, the latest trend is sleeveface in which a person holds up a record sleeve in front of their face and somebody else takes a picture.
This is actually not a new idea but unfortunately as happens so often these days the kids have completely missed the point. The idea is deemed to have been started in Cardiff in 2007 by a Welsh DJ and his friend after they took photos of themselves and others in the bar holding LP records over their faces during a DJ set. There is even a book and a website
https://www.sleeveface.com/
Now unfortunately the kids regularly just pick up an album they like and hold it over their face completely missing the point that the sleeve is meant to have a face on it and if possible even the clothing on the sleeve and the person holding the album will blend.
I have seen one good photo using the Lana Del Rey album Born To Die album in which the person holding the sleeve has a matching white blouse but otherwise though searching sleeveface images comes up with some great examples they are all old ones.
I could live with the craze if the kids were making an effort but they are literally just holding up a sleeve with or without a face on it and then just to compound matters often not even bothering to put the sleeve back in the right place.