If you were an elementary school student in the 1970s, your school library probably contained a copy of The Little Prince. Written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a French nobleman, pilot, and adventurer, and published in 1943, it has since become an oddball but revered children’s classic, standing beside The Phantom Tollbooth, Willie Wonka and the …
Tag: Music
Zepped Again! (Part II)
Once you start looking for Led Zep references, you find that there’s no shortage of how the band’s visual iconography spawned homage over the years. Take this logo for a vanity record label created by jokester Les Claypool of the American band Primus. For comparison, LZ’s iconic “Icarus” logo, with its Art Nouveau typeface, is …
Zeptoons, Part 2
On to the second part of my Zeptoons series. There is much more to explore on Deviantart, including these toons by artist and writer electricsorbet, who, like her compatriot Nicola Rivka, mines LZ and other bands for worshipful and often satirical content. In her art she concentrates on the darker side of LZ: Jimmy’s heroin …
Zeptoons, Part 1
Now we come to the part of Zep May I have been so excited about. Zeptoons! Done by fans, in loving homage to the band. The one above depicts an incident from a real-life concert where live doves were released, one happening to fly right into Robert’s hand. But the artist turns it into more …
Zepfics: Short Stories [Review]
Angels Losing Sleep, by Leah Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Ten years ago Livejournal had a short-lived Zepfic community, which in turn had replaced an earlier one that was short-lived; from the more recent one (active 2011-2014) I read this story. Zepfics have a rich range of real-life conflicts and tragedies to hang their …
It Suits Bonzo Well
In spite all of John Bonham’s drunken misbehavior on tour it’s impossible to find any picture of him where he looks caught in the act. Robert and Jimmy mug and often get snapped in less-than-flattering poses, and John Paul Jones can look ridiculous on occasion, but Bonham just hangs. It’s like he doesn’t want …
Zepfics: A History
I became aware of Led Zeppelin fanfic in the late 1990s when the web exploded with archive sites. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I’d known of Star Trek fanfic for years, and Buffy, X-files, and Xena fanfic sites were all over the place. But Zep fanfic was a new thing, especially …
Led Zeppelin: The Biography [Review]
Led Zeppelin: The Biography by Bob Spitz Penguin Press, 2021 When the first Led Zeppelin biography, Hammer of the Gods, by Stephen Davis, was published in 1985, it caused a sensation. Riding on the coattails of the equally sensationalistic No One Here Gets Out Alive, the Jim Morrison autobiography published in 1980 that caused a …