About
“Guitar Face” refers to the humorous involuntary facial expressions often made by guitarists while performing in front of an audience.
Origin
In 1997, a webpage was launched on Angelfire[3] titled “Guitar Face: A Horrible, Disfiguring Condition,” which humorously described guitarist facial expressions as a medical condition afflicting blues players around the world.
Spread
On January 11th, 2001, The Straight Dope Forums[6] member PeterN submitted a thread titled “Why do guitarists make those odd faces?”, in which user cornflakes replied with a link to the Angelfire website. In October 2004, a guitar face contest was held by the guitar magazine Guitar Xpress, which awarded the winner with an Epiphone guitar.[5] On November 22nd, 2005, Urban Dictionary[2] user kingnuthin posted an entry for “guitar face,” which defined the term as “making an unusual face while playing the guitar.”
On February 19th, 2012, YouTuber Jesse Phillips uploaded a video titled “That Guitar Face Video,” in which he demonstrates how to properly perform a guitar face (shown below). On March 5th, he posted a follow-up video providing specific examples of various guitar faces (shown below, right).
On November 12th, YouTuber WreckroomRecords uploaded a video titled “Faces of Rock,” demonstrating various guitarists facial expressions associated with certain rock and roll genres (shown below).
On July 16th, 2014, the Tumblr blog Slug Solos[7] was launched, featuring photoshopped pictures of guitarists holding large gastropod molluscs to fit their facial expression (shown below). On February 5th, 2015, Phillips’ second guitar face video reached the front page of the /r/videos[4] subreddit, accumulating upwards of 6,000 votes (93% upvoted) and 800 comments prior to being archived. On March 6th, Imgur[8] user TheCrispyDuck reposted the Slug Solos photoshops in a gallery titled “Guitar Solo Faces Make A Lot More Sense When Guitars Are Replaced With Giant Slugs.”
On July 21st, Billboard[1] published a listicle titled “The 22 Funniest Guitar Faces.” On May 12th, 2016, the Consequence of Sound Facebook page posted a montage of guitarist John Mayer making various pained facial expressions while playing the guitar (shown below).
Search Interest
External References
[1]Billboard – The 22 Funniest Guitar Playing Faces
[2]Urban Dictionary – Guitar Face
[3]Angelfire – Guitar Face
[4]Reddit – That Guitar Face Video
[5]The New York Times – He Can Play Guitar But Can He Grimace?
[6]The Straight Dope – Why do some guitarists make those odd faces?
[7]Tumblr – Slug Solos
[8]Imgur – Guitar Solo Faces