CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/20/2021

For the cool collector Dad: 'Marred for Life! Defaced Record Covers from the Collection of Greg Wooten'

It was impossible to choose a single image from our Father's Day favorite Marred for Life!, collecting 275 out of approximately 1500 anonymously vandalized vintage record covers from the collection of west coast musician and design purveyor Greg Wooten. They're all so good! "I spend a lot of my free time making the rounds in the L.A. record shop scene, "Wooten writes. "I like the dual mission of looking for the cleanest, best examples of rare spiritual Jazz LPs while simultaneously scouring the dollar bins, hoping to find a Carpenters' record where some kid I'll never know decided to black-out some of their teeth! I often wonder, but will never know, how each of these defaced covers, found in the world, came to be. Once I jumped into the defaced hole, I realized that the range of defacing was wide—so many subcategories, from really thought-out and artful to just blatantly disrespectful. Bloodshot eyes, blackened teeth, mustaches, tattoos, reviews, love letters, collage, psychedelia, pornography, etc. Sometimes over-the-top and other times wonderfully subtle—and often, really funny too! I can't help but see these as anonymous and personal folk art of some sort."