The Story Behind Our New Single Cover
Fri., Sep. 20. 2019 1:28pm EDT
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
As many classic-rock fans will notice, the cover of our new single spoofs the cover of an old album, Led Zeppelin III. However, although we did spoof a Led Zeppelin song on this single, that song actually came from Led Zeppelin's fourth album, not their third. What's up with that?
I knew that David Smith of Traverse City MI had been working on a piece of ApX fan artwork spoofing the Led Zeppelin III cover. He'd made many different versions over the course of many months, and every single time he'd completed one, he'd shared it with me. :)
What Dave didn't know was that we already had a new Led Zeppelin parody in the works. I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if we gave him a chance to display the fruit of his hard labor on a single cover for that parody? I asked Dave, and he was all for that.
I gave him new photos of us to use, because we wanted the cover to feature the ApX guys who participated in making the songs on this single. Then I asked my wife to make a faux sticker that said "Featuring the Hits 'Back Talk' and 'Bethany'" so we could get the song names on it.
Now, as noted earlier, "Black Dog" was not on Led Zeppelin III, but we'd already spoofed the prime candidate from Led Zeppelin III, "Immigrant Song," in January 2018, and I doubt we'll spoof another Led Zeppelin III song anytime soon.
And there is precedent for us making Led Zeppelin mixed-metaphor mash-ups. Twenty years ago, our Biblical Graffiti CD spoofed the title of their Physical Graffiti album, but featured a parody of a song from their Houses of the Holy album.
In fact, 45 years ago, Led Zeppelin did a similar thing when they put the song "Houses of the Holy" on their Physical Graffiti album, NOT on their Houses of the Holy album.
So it wasn't a communication breakdown, and it's not like it was nobody's fault but mine. That's the way Zep did it, so that's the way we did it. Twice. You have to wonder how many more times it'll happen. Sorry to ramble on like that. Thank you for putting up with me.
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