Popular Classical [Record sleeves. 3 / Stephen Fowler.

Artist's book. Each page (including the front cover) bears an image of a home made record sleeve. Some leaves bear one side of the sleeve on the recto and other side on the verso.

"For quite sometime I have been trying to work out the inspiration for the books and then it acquired to me that the probable source was a book called 'This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles since Punk and Disco' and before that another book on 'Easy Listening Music' would also have been of inspiration.In both publications and particularly 'This is Uncool', they have reproductions of record sleeves and unlike the average record sleeve book , the sleeves were quite worn with evidence of being used,handled and played. (Some still had the original price tags on them.) The sort of sleeves one would have in ones own collection or find rummaging around in secondhand shops. One or two sleeves had hand written band credits on them, this i found particularly appealing. The sleeves had become physical objects in their own right not just flat art works produced by glamorous graphic designers. I went through my record collections and found a sleeves like 'Jimi hendrix purple haze' I also picked up curiosties like the cutt away Elvis Portrait sleeve and a Eddie Cocharn sleeve, these were starting points for the first volume. Since then readers have revisted their own collections to find sleeves they made in the past or picked up. The books have highlighted and connected folk/vernacular art and pop art in peoples living rooms and bedrooms." -- from information provided by the artist.

Drawn from the collections of Stephen Fowler, Rocky Alvarez, Stephen Parker and Joe Egg.

Title supplied by artist: Home made record sleeves.

Title of sleeve on cover: When you walk in the room [by] Searches [on] Popular classical [label]. Osborne's Music Centre, 4 & 57 Parson's Street, Banbury.

Contributor: Rocky Alvarez.