/>There’s a terrific article in today’s New
York Times about a guy who decades ago created an alter ego, a musician
named Mingering Mike. He then went about painting hundreds of fake album covers
that have, over the years, wound up in flea markets and swap meets.  Here’s an
excerpt:

“I went to a flea market, and there was a huge record
collection there, at least 20 boxes,” Mr. Hadar said, recalling the morning of
the discovery. “I was going through that very happily when I came across this
box full of strange hand-painted album covers. I realized they were fake and was
about to put them back, but then I looked at them more closely.”

/>Pulling the records out of the sleeves, he was surprised to find that they
were made not of vinyl but of cardboard. Each had been cut in the shape of a
record, with grooves and a hand-lettered label painted on. Nearly all the albums
were credited to an unknown black musician named Mingering Mike, and dated from
1968 to 1976.

The front covers were intricately painted to look like
classic funk albums; on the spines were titles and fake catalog numbers; the
backs had everything from liner notes to copyright information to original
logos; the inner sleeve was often a shopping bag meticulously taped together to
hold a record; and some actually opened to reveal beautiful gatefold sleeves. A
few albums had even been covered in shrink-wrap and bore price stickers and
labels with apocryphal promotional quotes.

What Mr. Hadar found was
a cache of seemingly nonexistent music: soundtracks to imaginary films,
instrumental albums, a benefit album for sickle cell anemia, a tribute to Bruce
Lee, a triple-record work titled “Life in Paris,” songs protesting the Vietnam
War and promoting racial unity, and records of Christmas, Easter and American
bicentennial music. He had discovered, perhaps, an outsider artist.”

/>To read the article online, click href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/arts/music/02MIKE.html">here (you
may need to register first at the New York Times website)